You might think every savvy GOP politician would have been paying attention six months ago when Republican strategist Ward Baker spelled out strategies to deal with Trump the “misguided missile.” The widely leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned Republicans to prepare and guard against collateral damage should Trump prevail and win the GOP presidential nomination.

Scott supporter Kurt Wright (R-Burlington) isn’t worried about Trump at the top of their party’s ticket harming the VTGOP. Wright is counting on what he believes is the provincial nature of Vermont voters.

Wright said. “They [voters] don’t care about the national politics. Vermonters are great at separating out what Vermonters do … as opposed to what’s going on in Washington.”

But Wright’s response kind of ignores that much of Trump’s appeal is that he claims not to be a Washington creature.

I guess putting distance between yourself and your own party’s presumptive “misguided missile” candidate is a tough task.

At a press event Thursday Scott tried hard to keep the topic orbiting around the state budget. However only a couple days after Trump crushed all opponents in the Indiana primary, he was pressed to respond to the obvious question: Do you now or will you ever support Donald Trump for President?

Scott deserves credit for declaring he will not vote for Trump. Unlike Bruce Lisman who unbelievably says he intends to “[…] carefully evaluate Donald Trump’s candidacy and listen to what he has to say.” That leaves me more than a little curious over what on earth Trump might say to win over Lisman.

But with six months’ lead time to prepare a winning strategy for coping with Trump’s run at the White House, couldn’t Scott have done better than this?

Scott, who declared he would not vote for Trump, revealed later Thursday he has decided to write in former Republican Gov. Jim Douglas as his presidential choice in the November election.

“He’d make a great president,” Scott said about the four-term governor.

Aww, isn’t that just precious VTGOP fandom! I’m sure Jim thinks you could be a dandy Governor too, Phil! You could be the Governor Dubie Jim Douglas never had.

But it is still pretty early in the game for Scott to put down his Jim Douglas trump card — we’re not even through the primary yet! I’ll bet he’ll need to play that one a few more times before November.