GOP candidates treating Donald Trump as if he's a real candidate

Well, someone has to.

The best thing about the Donald Trump presidential candidacy is that all the other GOP candidates -- for lack of a better word, let's call them "serious" or "realistic" -- I say, all the other GOP candidates are actually responding to him, in public. Seen on CNN, just this morning:

Reince Priebus has phoned him personally.

George Pataki has invited him to a one-on-one debate on immigration.

Lindsey Graham spent time in comments to an international affairs think tank criticizing Trump and Hillary Clinton, as if they're both of the same caliber of candidate or as if Trump actually had some grown-up understanding of foreign policy.

Following a bouncing link, I see that Ted Cruz actually called Trump "terrific" the other day. I'm not sure if he meant that in sort of a modern, everyday way, like "really neat" or "the bee's knees" or "awesome," or if he was going for a more originalist meaning, like "inducing terror." But whichever meaning he intended to get across doesn't matter so much as why on god's green earth is he bothering to answer any question about Trump?

Another bouncing link shows me that Marco Rubio says that Trump's anti-Mexican comments are "offensive" and that Trump himself is "divisive." Whoa, Marco! Them's fightin' words! Let's cool it with the harsh language and try to be a little more polite next time, eh?

Every action they're taking to delegitimatize Trump only increases how seriously the media is taking him. "Amateur hour" is one term for it. The GOP clown car could not be more literally full of clowns, though at least one outlet is being realistic about the situation.