They fear that he will actually be the party’s nominee. And if so, what will that do to the party? GOP leaders from House Majority leader Paul Ryan to Arizona Senator John McCain sweat that Trump could not only cost the GOP any shot at the White House but blow their majority hold on the Senate as well. The one thing that would almost certainly insure that is if the sentiment voiced by the conservative activist about Trump is not just a bad case of momentary blowing smoke.

Trump has now emerged as the likely Republican nominee come this fall’s election. The Republican establishment — through Super PAC's supporting Jeb Bush — burned through more than $130 million in an effort to stop Trump, yet he continues to surge in the polls. Donald Trump’s appeal, however, should not come as a surprise if it is seen in sociological terms.

The election walk-over for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is the nightmare that has haunted the GOP party leaders from the moment that Trump and Cruz declared their candidacies. Both men are the most polarizing presidential ticket candidates since Sarah Palin turned the GOP White House bid into a running Comedy Central riff. This election go-round it’s far worse than when Palin was on the ticket in 2008 and later made some soundings about a 2012 presidential bid. 

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” That’s from Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. This is the King whose bust is in Obama’s Oval Office. This is the King the president paraphrases after bombing seven countries in as many years, which he did after a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in which he said as head of state, he could not follow King or Mahatma Gandhi alone.

So the question that once seemed absolutely ludicrous to think let alone ask is now a question that can be seriously asked and even to an extent answered. Just how would Trump govern? There’s little reason to think Trump is suited to patient, give-and-take negotiation and compromise to get his initiatives through Congress. His style is to bellow, bully, and harangue to get his way. As for the issues, Trump has been on the political scene long enough to have enough of a paper trail to piece together from his statements in debates and interviews and speeches a fairly accurate picture of what he will say and do on the big-ticket issues. 

Put simply, Donald Trump, once the Clown Prince of American politics has become the Most Important Person of American politics today. Outrageous as he might be, he is not just setting the cat among the pigeons. He is the cat among the pigeons. He is setting the agenda and everyone else gets to react to it. As testimony to that, the Republican Party’s leaders, while trying to distance the party from Trump’s outrageousness, are nervous about going the full distance. 

Inevitably those whose power was constrained by these new rules gradually figured out ways to use them and at least partially reassert control.  As a result it is nearly impossible to make a credible Senate race in most states without a big bankroll, arguably returning control to those who selected Senators under the old system.  The initiative process, which spread to other states, has also been distorted by those with money who focus on parochial concerns while obliquely attempting to elect their candidates.  

One future historical analysis of Barack Obama’s presidency might read something like this: The most intellectually gifted politician of his generation takes office facing unprecedented challenges. An economy in freefall, two bitterly fought wars long past their expiration date, and a host of other infrastructural issues—all inherited from a presidential administration that history may yet judge to be the worst in modern times.

The fact is that there is no way any politician can justify Keystone and still say it’s time to take stronger action on global warming. As Bill McKibbon’s 350.org puts it: “President Obama says that he will reject the pipeline if it poses a risk to the climate. That makes his decision simple: building an 800,000 barrel-per-day pipeline of the world’s dirtiest oil will mean more tar sands dug up and burned, and more carbon pollution.”

 

The short answer is that in all probability, the Affordable Care Act isn’t going anywhere, but there’s a good chance that after a couple of years, it won’t be exactly the same ACA some of you love and others hate. To recap: Democrats pretty much handed over Senate control to Republicans because, among other things, they couldn’t figure out how to come up with a solid health care message in 2014—when all they had to do was wrap it nicely into a coherent economic pitch.