The odds are that Donald Trump will become the Republican presidential nominee, but "it's not inevitable," Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol insisted Wednesday morning, predicting a "vigorous fight over the next few weeks."
"The candidates have to make their own case, the candidates have to do a better job, as people have said," Kristol told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program on Wednesday.
"There will be a lot of money spent exposing Donald Trump's record. He has been relatively under attack, but he's not been much attacked in paid TV."
In addition, Kristol said that the "bubble of the Trump power worshiping that's been going on here and the bowing down to Trump and the 'voters have spoken' talk needs to be punctured, accusing show host Joe Scarborough of being guilty of that."
But Kristol admitted that he's been wrong about Trump.
"I have been wrong and I've totally underestimated Trump and I apologize for that," Kristol said.
However, he continued, Trump has a total of about 35 percent of the vote, and while he "may well be the nominee," the voters have not spoken overwhelmingly for Trump, as "65 percent of the voters have voted not for Donald Trump and 53 percent of delegates are not for Donald Trump."
And should Trump not get the nomination, it would not be because the GOP rejected the voters' choice, it would be because most delegates are not committed to him.
The key to beating Trump, Kristol said, may be in Florida and Ohio, the first two winner-take-all states, meaning there needs to be an agreement between the opponents.
"They need to defer to [Marco] Rubio in Florida and defer to [John] Kasich in Ohio and say basically, I don't know if they can say this, but imply at least, that if you are a Cruz voter in Ohio and you look up the day before the primary and it's Trump 42 percent, Kasich 35 percent, vote for Kasich," said Kristol, as if Trump does not win in those states "it remains very much of an open race."
But if a different candidate was in the lead, Kristol admitted he would not be making such recommendations because "there would be a coalescing of the party behind the front-runner.
"There isn't. That's not because people are blind, people don't want to coalesce Donald Trump because they don't think he's an appropriate nominee."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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