Several factors — the fragmented media market, super PACs, new media — have made it easier for factions both within and outside the party to coordinate on their own.
.. The invisible primary itself evolved as a response to the 1970s reforms, but it took party leaders a few cycles to work it out. They may yet work out these changes as well.
.. To see why, look no further than the House of Representatives. In October, House Republicans struggled to find a speaker who could win the support of the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well as more mainstream party members. That same cleavage is now doing for the presidential nomination what it did for the routine in Congress.
.. Changes in the media environment may have made it easier for Mr. Trump, but he is a unique character. Few politicians can match his style.
.. Party leaders might have pushed aside Mr. Trump if they’d had an easy choice among the acceptable candidates. Since they didn’t, the Trump distraction kept them from choosing anyone.
What Wouldn’t Jesus Do?
This visionary and inspiring man humiliated his first wife by conducting a very public affair, chronically bullies and demeans people, and says he has never asked God for forgiveness. His name is emblazoned on a casino that features a strip club; he has discussed anal sex on the air with Howard Stern and, after complimenting his daughter Ivanka’s figure, pointed out that if she “weren’t my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her.” He once supported partial-birth abortion and to this day praises Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. He is a narcissist appealing to people whose faith declares that pride goes before a fall.
Mr. Trump’s character is antithetical to many of the qualities evangelicals should prize in a political leader: integrity, compassion and reasoned convictions, wisdom and prudence, trustworthiness, a commitment to the moral good.
.. Part of the explanation is that many evangelicals feel increasingly powerless, beaten down, aggrieved and under attack. A sense of ressentiment, or a “narrative of injury,” is leading them to look for scapegoats to explain their growing impotence.
Mr. Trump’s evangelical supporters don’t care about his agenda; they are utterly captivated by his persona. They view him as the strongest, most dominant, most assertive political figure they have ever seen. In an odd bow to Nietzschean ethics, they respect and applaud his Will to Power. And so the man who openly admires tyrants like Vladimir V. Putin and praised the Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square because it showed “strength”has become the repository of their hopes.
.. Trumpism is not a political philosophy; it is a purposeful effort, led by a demagogue, to incite ugly passions, stoke resentments and divisions, and create fear of those who are not like “us” — Mexicans, Muslims and Syrian refugees. But it will not end there. There will always be fresh targets.
.. At its core, Christianity teaches that everyone, no matter at what station or in what season in life, has inherent dignity and worth. “Follow justice and justice alone,” Deuteronomy says, “so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” The attitude of Thrasymachus is foreign to biblical Christianity. So is Trumpism. In embracing it, evangelical Christians are doing incalculable damage to their witness.
Trump’s Il Duce Routine
Part of the Trump danger is that he’s captured an American irredentism, a desire to reclaim something — power, confidence, rising incomes — that many people feel is lost. Trump is a late harvest of 9/11 and the fears that took hold that day. He’s the focus of vague hopes and dim resentments that have turned him into a savior-in-waiting. As with Ronald Reagan, it’s not the specifics with Trump, it’s a feeling, a vibration — and no matter how much he dissembles, reveals himself as a thug, traffics in contradictions, the raptness persists.
.. The power of the Oval Office and the temperament of a bully make for an explosive combination, especially when he has shown contempt for the press, a taste for violence, a consistent inhumanity, a devouring ego and an above-the-law swagger.
Trump: The First 100 Days
And then Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, turns to the lectern to offer an inaugural address that for the first time in history is being delivered without any text or, as much as anyone can tell, without any preparation whatsoever.
.. There will be some attention-getting feud with a personality (Lena Dunham? Rosie O’Donnell? Kanye West?).
.. Most likely scenario: An infrastructure bill that allocates a huge amount of federal dollars to bridges, roads and highways—pork that appeals to members of both parties.