“The Republican nomination contest is accelerating, as is Ukraine's counteroffensive, the latter underscoring the stakes of the former. During Spain's civil war, a rebel general boasted that he had four columns marching on Madrid and ”a fifth column“ in Madrid, meaning supporters of the army's insurgency. Vladimir Putin's fifth column is not in Kyiv but in the Trump-DeSantis faction of the Republican Party.

”Putin has two hopes for a less than completely mortifying rescue from his Ukraine blunder. One is the election of Trump, whose frivolousness about national security complements his weakling's admiration for a bully. Putin's other hope is the election of DeSantis, who says (or said, before retreating when criticized) Russia's attempt to erase a European nation is a “territorial dispute.” And whose pandering to Trumpkins prevents him from denouncing House Republicans who are as eager to abandon Ukraine as they would have been to abandon Czechoslovakia in 1938.“

-- George Will, ”Neither Trump nor DeSantis will get the GOP nomination," The Washington Post. I hope he's right. I hope he's prophetic. It'll make things tougher for the Democrats but it'll be much, much better for the nation. (Well, depending on who winds up with it.)