'Go low': GOP hopefuls urged to beat Trump with 'basic schoolyard taunting'

Donald Trump's rivals will never vanquish him unless they get down in the mud and beat him at his own game, according to a new column.

Seasoned political observers might have assumed that open criminal charges in multiple cases might hamper Trump's chances at re-election, but his GOP rivals have been unable to capitalize on that glaring liability with voters who already believed the Department of Justice was irredeemably corrupt before he was indicted, wrote MSNBC's Ana Marie Cox.

"I guess if you spend years telling people they can’t trust the government, they won’t trust the government. Who knew?" Cox wrote.

"This willful confirmation bias is why, if the roles were reversed, Trump wouldn’t use facts to take down a rival in the DOJ's crosshairs," she added. "Why should facts matter, anyway? That cultivated sense of persecution that Trump has both enacted and encouraged isn’t based on facts. He’s just focused on the personal failings of the dimwit that got caught."

Cox can't envision the former president giving any of his rivals a pass on alleged criminality, and she imagines that Trump would add gross racial insinuations if Nikki Haley or Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) were under investigation -- and she urged the other GOP contenders to fight dirty.

"Go low, Republican presidential hopefuls! Go very low!" Cox wrote. "Mock Trump’s desperate, Norma Desmond-like refusal to part with the accumulated memorabilia of his fleeting fame, but double down on basic schoolyard taunting. Campaign on the way Trump looks, the way Trump sounds, the way Trump walks, the way Trump eats, his physical fitness. Basically, say the things about him that he says about other people."

She conceded that those insults were "rude and unacceptable," and she agreed Sen. Marco Rubio's attempt to play that game failed because he was unable to fully commit to Trump's racist bit, but she said that's their only hope.

"I am not even going to indulge in examples, as much as I want to," Cox wrote. "I don’t think the majority of Americans find that sort of humor appealing in a leader. But depressingly, it’s part of what Republicans are looking for."