Why some GOP candidates don’t act as aggrieved as Donald Trump

One of Donald Trump’s signature political achievements, which like most of them owes to his genius for shamelessness, has been to convert self-pity from a Republican vice into a virtue. He has likewise turned claims of victimhood inside out, from confessions of weakness into boasts. “I am a victim,” Mr Trump declared twice in announcing his present bid for the presidency. He has called one source of his suffering “the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country”, and another, simply, “a lynching”. It may be the only Trump whine he has ever managed to sell, but, as he exhorts his supporters to feel sorry for themselves and to rage at their oppressors, and presents himself as their persecuted billionaire champion, they gulp it all down.