The Establishment is throwing Hail Mary after Hail Mary now that Donald Trump is chalking up significant primary wins.

Consider Sen. John McCain’s statement on Thursday, urging the voters to listen to the “smart people” in foreign policy:

“At a time when our world has never been more complex or more in danger, as we watch the threatening actions of a neo-imperial Russia, an assertive China, an expansionist Iran, an insane North Korean ruler, and terrorist movements that are metastasizing across the Middle East and Africa, I want Republican voters to pay close attention to what our party’s most respected and knowledgeable leaders and national security experts are saying about Mr. Trump, and to think long and hard about who they want to be our next Commander-in-Chief and leader of the free world.”

So let me get this straight.

We have had Establishment policies for the last 25 years. Establishment foreign policy. Establishment trade policy. Establishment economic policy. On many of these policies — especially on trade, immigration, and foreign policy — there was a broad consensus among the leadership of both parties.  They all agreed we should have open borders. They all agreed we should invade Iraq and Afghanistan. They all agreed we should join the WTO, and then let China into the WTO. They still believe in those policies to this day. But somehow, after all this time, McCain is worried about “neo-imperial Russia,” an “assertive China,” an “expansionist Iran,” an “insane North Korean ruler,” and “terrorist movements that are metastasizing across the Middle East and Africa.” And McCain’s advice is that we pay “close attention to what our party’s most respected and knowledgeable leaders and national security experts are saying about Mr. Trump.”

Well, if our party’s “most respected and knowledgable leaders and national security experts” were really experts, why is the world in such a mess? Why was the country so angry and upset in 2008 that it turned its back on the GOP and gave the White House to Barack Obama? Why did the country again choose Obama in 2012, thus again rejecting those same “experts”? If we turn policy back over to these experts — the same experts that gave us the mess McCain just described — why won’t they just make things even worse?

The Establishment has no answers to these questions, and that is why they don’t want to talk about them.