If Kasich out-primaries Trump...

[Mr. Morden]

It’s all but impossible to imagine Trump actually becoming so unpopular with GOP voters that he isn’t re-nominated.  But I *can* imagine a scenario where he faces a challenge as strong as the one Buchanan gave Bush in ’92: where the challenger breaks 20% nationwide, and breaks 35% in certain states.  If that happens, then I’m not really sure how much it matters if the challenger is charismatic or articulate or “a good campaigner” or whatever.  If there’s a solid minority of GOP voters who are ticked off at Trump, then they’ll protest vote against him with whoever is available.

One caveat to that though, which is that I think whoever primaries Trump will have to get to his right on at least certain issues.  Republican voters overwhelmingly self-conceptualize themselves as conservatives, and I would have to think that if some of them do turn against Trump, they would have to be able to tell themselves a story in which Trump has betrayed conservatism in one way or another.  And so Kasich would be a rather unimpressive challenger if his main criticisms against Trump are on things like Medicaid expansion and immigration.

So in terms of who would make a better primary challenger, I actually think Amash (who would attack Trump from both “left” and “right” at the same time) would probably have more potential than Kasich (who seems like he’d attack more from Trump’s “left”).