I argue that Washington Republicans have done a lot to fuel Trump’s rise in the polls.

The party’s low morale is partly the result of two strategic decisions its leaders have made over the past year. They chose to run an agenda-less campaign to win control of the Senate in 2014, and having won it they chose to act as though their most important goal was to “prove they could govern” — that is, to enact legislation or at least get it to President Barack Obama to sign or veto.

While I wrote my column before I read Peter Suderman’s Trump article in Reason, there is a lot of overlap between our perspectives.