Jim Geraghty (via email) asks: Considering the Circumstances, Why Shouldn’t We See a Revolt at the Convention? (UPDATE: Now on-line here):

Why is anyone surprised that talk of a delegate revolt at the convention in Cleveland is picking up? Donald Trump isn’t doing the basic tasks a presidential candidate is supposed to do.

He isn’t hiring staff; he has about 30 paid staff around the country while Hillary Clinton has something in the neighborhood of 700.

He’s refusing to spend any money on ads:

The Clinton campaign and its allies are airing just over $23 million in television ads in eight potential battleground states: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and New Hampshire, according to data released by NBC News.

The Trump campaign? Zero.

Either Trump is illiquid, or he doesn’t have the money.

He’s either refusing to fundraise, or seriously slacking in this key component of a presidential campaign:

While Trump had promised Priebus that he would call two dozen top GOP donors, when RNC chief of staff Katie Walsh recently presented Trump with a list of more than 20 donors, he called only three before stopping, according to two sources familiar with the situation. It’s unclear whether he resumed the donor calls later.

He’s destroyed existing relationships between the Republican party and corporate America that previously had been beyond the realm of policy differences:

Apple has told Republican leaders it will not provide funding or other support for the party’s 2016 presidential convention, as it’s done in the past, citing Donald Trump’s controversial comments about women, immigrants and minorities.

Unlike Facebook, Google and Microsoft, which have all said they will provide some support to the GOP event in Cleveland next month, Apple decided against donating technology or cash to the effort, according to two sources familiar with the iPhone maker’s plans.

He’s getting less popular and he’s only creating more headaches for everyone else in the party. He’s trailing in Kansas, tied in Utah, and Arizona looks shaky.

Republican primary voters selected a candidate with very little appeal to the broader electorate. So which is worse? Alienating the 13.8 million voters who selected him in the primary? Or alienating a majority of the 120 million to 130 million who will vote in November? There’s no good option left; which one is less bad?

For those arguing the delegates have no business overruling primary voters . . . What are delegates for if not to avert a disaster like this? If they aren’t there to use their judgment and conscience, we might as well replace them with programmable robots.

Say this for a ticket out of any two other Republican lawmakers: that ticket will not destroy the party. It’s first act after a terror attack will not be to congratulate itself. It will not suddenly call the troops thieves. It will not call an Indiana-born judge “the Mexican.” An Anybody-Anybody ticket will stop creating problems for other Republicans and start solving them.

He’s right. Convention delegates are not robots, merely functioning to deliver the results of state caucuses and primaries. They are representatives, which role includes consulting their own consciences and using their own best judgement to choose a candidate who can be elected and who would represent effectively the principles of the Republican Party.

Donald Trump is not that candidate. He is too spoiled, narcissistic, and willful to run an effective and rational campaign. He is a divisive figure who cannot, in the final analysis, even attract the support of the entire Republican Party. He is not conservative. His positions consist either of unattractive and long-discredited negative impulses (Nativism and Protectionism) or mere opportunistic rhetorical poses which he is perfectly capable of reversing in an instant.

Trump is almost certain to lose to Hillary, and we cannot even be sure that his being elected would not be the worse result. Donald Trump as president is a frightening prospect. Trump is not really committed to any particular set of principles or theories of government. He is obviously not any kind of strict Constitutionalist. He is not at all a consistent adversary of Statism, Regulation, the Welfare State, Crony Capitalism, Gun Control, Abortion, Gay Rights, or the Progressive side in the Culture Wars. In fact, he is on the record, at one time or another, supporting each and every one of these issues.

The only sense in which Trump appears to be on the Political Right is as a sort of living, breathing embodiment of the crude, angry, and ill-mannered ignorance and vulgarity that the Left imagines in its own libelous imagination to be what being a conservative and a Republican is all about.

If Trump were to be elected, he’d would almost certainly prove incompetent in handling foreign policy and destructive in his economic policies. He would probably be at least as lawless a president as Barack Obama. And he’d leave office in disgrace, ruining the image and reputation of Conservatism and the GOP for a generation.

We still have time to prevent the catastrophe that the nomination to the presidency of Donald J. Trump would represent, and we should proceed to take all steps necessary to avoid that nomination occurring.