Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

...For a while, the main villain on the right was Barack Obama, whose failures, it has been argued, gave Trump his opening... here, here, here, here, here, and here. But the most prominent member of the blame-Trump-on-Obama faction is undoubtedly Jeb Bush, who made the case recently in an interview with NPR:

I would argue that Donald Trump is in fact a creature of Barack Obama.… But for Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s effect would not be nearly as strong as it is. We’re living in a divided country right now, and we need political leaders, rather than continuing to divide as both President Obama and Donald Trump [do], to unite us.

It may be confusing to hear George W. Bush’s younger brother place the blame for political polarization entirely on Obama....

A new argument... [is that] it’s Jeb’s fault.... Bush’s super PAC... has spent most of its time nuking Marco Rubio while barely saying a word about Trump... knocking out--or at least knocking down--the person who may be most able to defeat Trump.... Mike Murphy, Bush’s longtime adviser, who runs Right to Rise, explained the strategy... ‘Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem’... ‘I’d love a two-way race with Trump at the end’).... Bush’s theory... was that Rubio, the candidate many mainstream conservatives have championed as their best chance to defeat Trump and Ted Cruz, was his immediate obstacle. The Bush onslaught against Rubio may end up being the most expensive and sustained negative attack of 2016....

Bush has... been... outspoken about Trump, while Rubio has generally avoided attacking the front-runner. But Bush’s super PAC has been focussed on Rubio. In early December, Right to Rise ran an ad that targeted Cruz, Trump, and Rubio.... ‘When the attacks come here, the person behind this desk will have to protect your family.... Will he be impulsive and reckless, like Donald Trump? Will he have voted to dramatically weaken counterterrorism surveillance, like Ted Cruz? Will he have skipped crucial national-security hearings and votes just to campaign, like Marco Rubio?’... By late December, the group had mostly given up running pro-Bush ads or mentioning any candidate but Rubio. In ‘Briefing’... an absentee senator.... In ‘Promotion’... calling Rubio a ‘Washington politician’ who ‘doesn’t show up for work but wants a promotion’... a weathervane who ‘opposed amnesty,’ ‘flipped and worked with liberal Chuck Schumer to co-author the path-to-citizenship bill,’ ‘threatened to vote against it,’ ‘voted for it,’ and then ‘supported his own DREAM Act’ before ‘he abandoned it.’... The funniest anti-Rubio ad... ‘Boots’... features an actor wearing a suit and a pair of Rubio’s famous thick-heeled shoes--a Christmas present from his wife--dancing in front of a psychedelic backdrop to the music of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.’... 'These boots are made for flippin’/And that’s just what they’ll do/One of these days young Marco’s/Gonna flip, flop, flip on you/You keep spinnin’ when you oughta be truthin’/You keep flippin’ when you shoulda not flop/You keep leavin’ when you oughta be votin’/Now what’s work is work, but you ain’t earned it yet.' The Rubio character struts and hops and moonwalks as issues on which Rubio has allegedly reversed himself flash across the screen: ‘Iran,’ ‘cap and trade,’ ‘Syria,’ ‘immigration.’ Other campaigns and super PACs have also joined Bush in the destroy-Rubio strategy....

There’s one Republican candidate’s unfavorability rating that has remained relatively low, at just forty per cent: Marco Rubio. It probably won’t stay there, and, each point that it goes up, the odds of a Trump nomination increase...