Why Donald Trump will get away with insulting John McCain

In the immediate aftermath of Trump-McCain-gate — in which Donald Trump dismissed Sen. John McCain's storied Vietnam War record by asserting he likes "people who weren't captured" — the consensus was that Trump was going down. The comment was so beyond the pale that it gave almost every single Republican candidate in the primary field an opportunity to dump on Trump, presenting something of a unified front against the reality television star and real estate magnate.

But not so fast, says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, who makes the argument that a certain segment of the GOP primary electorate really won't care:

Among the ugly attacks that McCain has suffered in the past from his own party include the whisper campaign that his adopted daughter from Bangladesh was actually his illegitimate black child. Karl Rove denied that he was the source of that rumor, which was spread during the 2000 South Carolina primary between McCain and Rove's boss, George W. Bush.

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