National

While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State. “This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments. The Nusra Front said in a statement on Friday that its aim was to eliminate Division 30 before it could gain a deeper foothold in Syria. The Nusra Front did much the same last year when it smashed the main groups that had been trained and equipped in a different American effort, one run covertly by the C.I.A.

“Cuckservative,” you see, is short for a cuckolded conservative. It’s not about a Republican whose wife is cheating on him, but one whose country is being taken away from him, and who’s too cowardly to do anything about it. OK, that’s gross and sexist enough already, but there’s more. It apparently comes from a kind of pornography known as “cuck,” in which a white husband, either in shame or lust, watches his wife be taken by a black man. Lewis explains it this way: “A cuckservative is, therefore, a race traitor. This is not merely a new way to shout “RINO.” It’s a call to make the GOP an explicitly racist party, devoted to the defense of whites…. ”

Donald Trump makes mainstream Republicans angry, understandably. His inflammatory rhetoric and sudden rise toward the top of 2016 presidential polls threaten their careers. Yet Republican political leaders themselves bear some responsibility for Mr. Trump’s ascent. In dealing with the dyspeptic constituency that has empowered them, they’ve repeatedly failed at anger management. Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, the Republican Party has been a hothouse of grievance: against his health care law, his immigration policy, even his citizenship. The ire of conservatives helped Republican candidates wrest control from the Democrats of the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. But the inability of party leaders to control that intensity has often backfired. In primary campaigns, it has toppled effective Republican lawmakers.

"I have not made up my mind," Gordon said during a brief interview on Thursday. "It's still early. I haven't said no to it."