After looking at some public opinion polling about conservative feelings towards Donald Trump, I came to a pretty interesting conclusion and decided to write it up at New York.

The announcement of Neil Gorsuch as SCOTUS nominee represented a new high point in Donald Trump’s relationship with the conservative movement and the GOP. It was a full-on love-fest — and beyond the immediate and overwhelmingly positive response among right-of-center folk, the nomination has established significantly more trust for Trump among serious conservatives.

But before mainstream Republicans get too comfortable with the 45th president, they should consider the bad news: That he is stealing their voter base away from them, even as they cheer him on for nominating Gorsuch.

That is the most obvious lesson to derive from some new large-sample data from Morning Consult (via The Upshot):

“54 percent of registered voters in districts represented by Republicans viewed Mr. Trump favorably compared with only 42 percent who view him unfavorably. More important, people who identify with the party overwhelmingly view him favorably. In districts represented by Republicans, fully 87 percent of registered Republicans view Mr. Trump favorably.

“Support for Mr. Trump in G.O.P. districts is even higher among registered Republicans who are extremely interested in politics (94 percent favorable), identify as strong Republicans (92 percent favorable) or say they are very conservative (94 percent favorable). These groups are especially likely to vote in primaries and are key constituencies in nomination contests for higher office. As a result, they wield disproportionate influence on legislator behavior.”

To put it simply, while Republicans may have assumed their most conservative “base” supporters would help them bend Donald Trump to their will when push came to shove, the opposite may prove true: the GOP base increasingly looks like it may become a whip with which Trump lashes establishment conservative elected officials and opinion-leaders to keep them in line.

It’s been true for quite some time that most Republicans in Congress feared primary challenges from their right more than anything Democrats could throw at them. What has changed is that the voters most likely to participate in Republican challenges seem to have fallen in love with Donald Trump, and could keep elected officials who previously thought themselves safe on their toes and ready to defend Trump even when long-cherished ideological tenets would otherwise have them supporting different policies. The alternative would be to likely face a primary challenge by a more robustly Trumpian politician, with the knowledge that the base would probably be with the populist.

While it’s premature to predict the potentially wild course of events just ahead, friction between Trump and his party could be relatively manageable — and a visible schism might never open up between the president and the party mainstream. We could see an implicit deal where Trump gives the older forces in the GOP most of what they want on economic and fiscal policy so long as they go along with Trump on trade, immigration, crime, and maybe some token “populist” gestures like jobs initiatives or protecting Social Security and Medicare.They can probably reach rough agreement on most national security matters so long as defense spending goes up and the administration doesn’t completely abandon Europe to Putin.

But if there is a rupture that threatens the smooth-functioning machine Republicans need to enact an agenda with little or no Democratic support, don’t assume Trump will have to come hat in hand to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, or beg for support from conservative think-tanks or opinion outlets.

In that context, it’s less surprising, if no less scandalous, that the GOP has surrendered to Trump so quickly.

One of the strangest phenomena of this strange week was to watch congressional Republicans gather in Philadelphia to get their act together, only to wind up more lost than ever. I wrote about the first two days of their “retreat”–and a retreat it was!–at New York:

The congressional Republican retreat in Philadelphia this week was supposed to foster highly efficient private discussions and briefings, and let the solons emerge from their labors revealed as a lean, mean, legislating machine. From reports at the end of the first day, however, they looked more like lost sheep, disappointed at the inability of their leaders to provide clear direction on how they would negotiate the tangle of health care, budget, and tax legislation they’ve committed to enact. There is particular anxiety about the very first item on everyone’s agenda: the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.

“Exact, specific and detailed — that’s what people want,” said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee. “We’re going to own this stuff, and we better be able to explain it.”

They sure didn’t get that kind of guidance. Here’s an example:

“I don’t think you will see a plan,” said Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio), chairman of a key subcommittee on health care. “I think you will see components of a plan that are part of different pieces of legislation that will make up what will ultimately be the plan.”

That’s clear as mud, isn’t it?

Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan tried to generate a sense of decisiveness and momentum by talking about the timetable for one reconciliation bill to repeal (and replace?) Obamacare, another to cut taxes, and additional actions required on appropriations. But the content of all this frenetic activity was left maddeningly vague.

The big problem Republicans face, of course (beyond the unpopularity and the fiscal unfeasibility of much of what they want), is that they’ve chosen a partisan strategy to enact their agenda, which means precision timing and, most of all, advance assurances their own president is onboard are critical. Nobody wants to be halfway through an amendment vote-a-rama on a budget-reconciliation bill repealing Obamacare to find out via Twitter that Donald Trump has changed his mind or finally understood some key issue thought to be long resolved. So the Republicans in Philadelphia expected some guidance and feedback from the president, scheduled to address them on the second day.

Instead, Trump gave them a ton of headaches even as they arrived in Philadelphia, with a bunch of executive orders on hot-button issues. It was painfully clear nobody at the gathering had been given a heads-up on what he planned to do while they were away from Washington, and new issues to grapple with were absolutely the last things they needed.

But the senators and congressmen dutifully cheered the new boss during his pithy remarks today, even as many inwardly cringed at his cavalier disregard for their needs, and his insistence on pursuing entirely imaginary priorities like “voter fraud,” a reminder that he is still upset about losing the popular vote last November.

What they did not get from Trump’s speech was even an ounce of guidance. His comments on tax reform amounted to one vague sentence. On Obamacare, he spent most of his time making the strange and incredible claim that he had thought seriously about letting the present system stay in place until it collapsed, but instead decided to “help out” Democrats by putting it to the sword. He did mention his interest in a big fat infrastructure spending binge, which most Republicans, worried about the red ink he seems determined to spill, would love just to go away. All in all, it was a sort of unplugged version of a 2016 Trump campaign speech.

Sure, Trump or his underlings could convey more concrete hopes, wishes, and instructions informally whenever they wanted. But listening to Republicans in Philadelphia and elsewhere, it sure sounds like that’s not happening, at least not yet. And so they rush toward the deadlines they’ve set for themselves, without the slightest assurance any of their complex legislative maneuvers will turn out well.

After I wrote all that, the Washington Post published an account of their discussions on Obamacare, based on a recording of the GOP retreat, and believe it or not, they sound even more confused than I had imagined. They’re not at all in any sort of agreement on timing, substance, procedures, or what kind of health system they think will exist when they are through with their efforts. According to their own budget resolution, they were supposed to start putting together the reconciliation bill that would repeal Obamacare today. They are miles and miles away from that point right now, and may never get there, at this rate.

As Donald Trump announced various “America First” initiatives on his first day in office, I could not avoid the feeling another nationalist-populist’s legacy was finally reaching fruition, and so I wrote about it at New York.

Jeff Greenfield wrote a column in September with the headline: “Trump Is Pat Buchanan With Better Timing.” The similarities are obvious: Both men spurned the Republican Establishment, rejected GOP economic doctrines from free trade to inclusive immigration laws to “entitlement reform,” and were hostile to globalism in all its forms. They even shared the same “America First” slogan, itself a typically Buchananite shout-out to the old-right isolationists who were indifferent (or worse) toward the possibility of Hitler winning World War II.

That reflects one difference between the two demagogues, of course: Buchanan has always had an acute if skewed sense of history, while the 45th president’s contact with the subject is probably limited to extremely brief exposure to the History Channel. And they are hardly in lockstep on every policy issue: Buchanan has taken angry exception, for example, to his protégé’s long-distance love affair with Bibi Netanyahu.

But it is the priorities President Trump has revealed in his first days in office that really make one pause to realize how similar he is to Buchanan: canceling TPP and demanding the renegotiation of NAFTA; tossing day one goodies to the anti-abortion movement; ordering a quick start to his beloved border wall while threatening the undocumented; and now, initiating a systematic program of disinvestment in international organizations, especially the U.N. All these are things you might have expected in a Buchanan administration, including the last item: As the Reform Party candidate for president in 2000, Buchanan made withdrawal from the U.N. and expelling the organization from New York a campaign staple. And in 2002, he wrote an entire book attacking liberal immigration policies under the inflammatory title, The Death of the West.

Beyond policies, the tone Donald Trump has adopted as president so far is very faithful to the example set by Buchanan, the pol who invented the term “culture war,” which he regarded as a very good thing. Trump’s belligerent inaugural address and manifest determination to bend the GOP to his will nicely reflect Buchanan’s incessantly combative approach to intra-party and inter-party politics.

While we naturally think of Pat Buchanan as a figure from another era, he is actually only eight years older than Donald Trump. Perhaps he can lend Stephen Miller a hand in the presidential speechwriting shop, where he once labored in the vineyards of Richard M. Nixon. He would fit right in.

Immediately after watching Donald Trump’s strange, divisive inaugural address today, I offered an unhappy take on it at New York.

Those familiar with Donald Trump’s inaugural address before he delivered it advised us it would be “Jacksonian.” By that I suppose they meant belligerent, nationalist, and populist. But if you look at the address Andrew Jackson himself delivered at his first inauguration, after a bitter campaign, it could not have been more different. Here’s how Jackson referred to his predecessors in office (including the man he defeated, John Quincy Adams):

“A diffidence, perhaps too just, in my own qualifications will teach me to look with reverence to the examples of public virtue left by my illustrious predecessors.”

Trump began (after a brief thank-you to Barack Obama for cooperating during the transition) by attacking all his recent predecessors, as, well, self-interested betrayers of the public trust:

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The Establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

“That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment; it belongs to you.”

That set the tone for his address, an angry screed of a campaign speech. I’ve been watching and listening to inaugural addresses since John F. Kennedy’s, in 1960. I’ve never heard anything like this one in terms of its divisive content and complete lack of uplift. Even its call for the blessings of the Almighty was to a nationalist God Trump seemed to be charging with protecting the country — if and only if our military and police forces failed. And absent any admission of his own fallibility, his appeal to unity sounded more like a threat of repression than a call for mutual understanding and bipartisanship.

He accused “Washington” of deliberately abandoning factories and their workers, deliberately robbing Americans of their income and wantonly spending it on foreign countries, and deliberately refusing to hear the cries of an aggrieved, impoverished, and powerless citizenry. And having painted this dark picture of a horrific status quo, he proceeded to set out literally impossible goals for his own presidency.

The “American carnage” of crime and gangs and drugs “stops right here and stops right now.” Really? And as for “radical Islamic terrorism”? He plainly promised that “we will eradicate [it] from the face of the Earth.” Seriously. And: “We will bring back our jobs … our borders … our wealth.” Gee, will the rest of the world cooperate to make that happen?

By the time Trump got to the climax of the address, a secular doxology of the national greatness he would achieve (wealthy! strong! safe!), the hope of so many people, especially those who fear him, that the 45th president would rise to the moment and make a graceful, civic-minded speech, had long been dashed.

Trump can, of course, eventually transcend this moment. But it was an ominous beginning for a presidency that was so hard to envision as normal.

I began the day depressed, and ended it depressed and nearly as angry as Trump himself. As he would say on Twitter: Sad!

Even as we all try to understand how Donald Trump’s election as president, he’s looking ahead. I noted this, with awe, at New York this week:

The most visible symbol of Donald Trump’s implausibly successful presidential candidacy — with the possible exception of his hair — were the red hats he and many of his supporters routinely wore, emblazoned with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” In an interview with the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, Trump discussed how he came up with and quickly trademarked the MAGA slogan back in 2012. His lawyers actually fired off cease-and-desist letters whenever GOP rivals used the phrase in speeches.

The president-elect, a man whose convictions about the value of “branding” are clearer than those he possesses about almost any other topic, is undoubtedly convinced his alleged origination and fierce flogging of MAGA was key to his political success. And perhaps he is right: Its plainly reactionary, yet policy-flexible nature made it a lot more compelling than the straddling stances on the past and present all his opponents assumed. That definitely included Hillary Clinton, who could never overcome the sense she was running for a third term for her husband or for Barack Obama, or both. And it put the Trump campaign in touch with an important strain of right-wing sentiment that is not strictly about limited government — viz. the efforts of David Brooks and William Kristol to promote something they called “National Greatness Conservatism” just before the turn of the millennium.

In any event, the shelf life of MAGA is limited, and as this remarkable moment in the interview with Tumulty shows, Donald Trump is thinking ahead:

“Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

“‘Are you ready?” he said. “ ‘Keep America Great,’ exclamation point.’

“‘Get me my lawyer!’ the president-elect shouted.

“Two minutes later, one arrived.

“’Will you trademark and register, if you would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Do this: ‘Keep America Great,’ with an exclamation point. With and without an exclamation. ‘Keep America Great,’ ” Trump said.

“‘Got it,’ the lawyer replied.”

It’s news indeed that a few days before he becomes president Trump is already thinking about his reelection. And there’s an obvious logic to KAG. But it doesn’t quite pull on the heartstrings like the simultaneously nostalgic and optimistic MAGA. And it puts Trump on the hook for, you know, actually accomplishing something great.

Trump seems to understand that. After some scary talk suggesting that “greatness” has a lot to do with military displays (“That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military”), he told Tumulty he needed some steak to go with the sizzle:

“’I think they have to feel it,’ Trump acknowledged. ‘Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but you still have to produce the results.'”

Taking office with the lowest approval ratings ever for an incoming president, while possessing a campaign platform based on magic and Big Man posturing, and facing a common fate with congressional “allies” he plainly mistrusts, it’s not clear how Trump thinks he will “produce the results.” Quite possibly, he thinks that as a marketing genius he can convince voters in 2020 — and earlier, when his administration gets its first public feedback in off-year and midterm elections — that life is better through sheer rhetorical enchantment.

It arguably happened once. Happening twice is far less likely.