As Donald Trump began to climb in polls last week, there were reports of panic among GOP Beltway types. I explain the phenomenon at New York:

Non-Republicans may be forgiven for feeling confused by a report from BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins that many Republican insiders are privately freaked out by the renewed possibility that Donald Trump could actually be elected president. Wasn’t their horror toward Trump mostly a matter of fearing he’d be a disastrous loser who’d drag the whole ticket down with him? If he’s doing well enough to be a threat to win, won’t that make it infinitely easier to hang on to a Republican-controlled Congress?

These are good questions, but the truth is GOP-insider fear of Trump was never just about his 2016 general-election prospects. Some Never Trump conservatives sincerely fear the man on some of the same grounds many liberals feel. Others are worried about what Trump is doing to conservatism itself.

But there is an underexamined reason for a secret GOP desire to see the mogul lose in November: The immediate future of the Republican Party could actually be pretty rosy under a President Hillary Clinton. Unless the GOP loses the House along with the Senate, it should have the power to pretty much stymy anything the 45th president tries to do. If they hang on to the Senate, their obstructionist power might extend to Supreme Court and other appointments. Either way, 2018 would be set up as a boffo year for the “out party” up and down the ballot. The Senate landscape that year is already astoundingly positive for Republicans, and there’s no reason to think the GOP will immediately lose the midterm-turnout advantage that proved so useful in 2010 and 2014. Indeed, a President Trump is about the only thing that could screw up 2018 for Republicans.

A third straight Democratic term in the White House, moreover, would greatly improve Republican odds to finally break their presidential losing streak in 2020. That’s an even bigger deal than you might immediately imagine, since that’s the election year that will determine control of the state legislatures that will conduct congressional and state redistricting for the next decade. By contrast, a 2020 reelection campaign for President Trump would be a dicey affair, particularly since he’s pretty likely to draw a primary opponent.

And then, of course, there’s the big X factor for those Republicans who don’t care for Trump: If he loses, he could quite possibly be disposed of quickly as a factor in Republican politics. Yes, Republicans would have to figure out some way to keep the white ethno-nationalist passions he aroused at bay or better yet channeled in a more constructive direction. But there’s a good chance Republicans could treat the near disaster of 2016 as a cautionary tale and go back to fighting among “movement conservatives” and “reformocons” and pragmatists over control of the party, perhaps even finding ways to detoxify the party for Latino and millennial voters.

If Trump wins, of course, you can add to his prestige as the Republican who broke the Democrats’ grip on the White House the vast patronage powers of the executive branch and the even greater power of presidents to define their party in the public’s eye.

Yikes!

This weekend Christian Right leaders held their most important election-year clambake, and the dynamics were fascinating, as I noted at New York.

As a couple of thousand Christian Right activists gathered in Washington for the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit this weekend, it was more obvious than ever that the GOP is straining the loyalties of the faithful. The star attraction, Donald Trump, was, after all, the fifth-place finisher in the presidential straw poll at last September’s VVS.

But like a long-suffering spouse, the Christian Right is sticking with Donald Trump as we head toward Election Day because he is convincingly the enemy of its enemies and is willing to make a few key gestures in the direction of the righteous, albeit in a clumsy and offhand way.

None of the Christian conservative leaders who have made opposition to Trump (e.g., Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention) a matter of conscience were allowed near the podium of the VVS. Still, much anxious rhetoric was aimed at those who are thinking about voting third or fifth party or staying home. Former representative Michele Bachmann characteristically used the most extreme words possible to condemn that temptation, comparing the election to the choice God gave the Hebrews in presenting his covenant with them: “I have set before you life and death. Which will you choose?”

But while there may be some questions about turnout rates on the margins, you did not get the sense listening to Trump address the gathering that he is especially worried about this particular slice of the electorate. He did not bother to mention abortion or same-sex marriage (though his promises to appoint “Federalist Society” Supreme Court justices in the mode of Antonin Scalia was a well-understood dog whistle on those subjects), which may be a first for a Republican nominee talking to this kind of gathering.

As has been his habit when in Christian Right company of late, Trump placed greatest emphasis on promising something of interest almost exclusively to evangelical clergy: repealing the “Johnson Amendment” that prevents candidate endorsements and other electioneering from the pulpit for tax-exempt religious (and for that matter nonreligious) organizations.

As Amy Sullivan has pointed out, the evangelical rank and file don’t appear to support this idea — yet it always gets big applause from the leadership, and also illustrates the purely transactional nature of Trump’s appeal to politically active Christian Right elites. They really have nowhere else to go now that Trump has conquered the GOP, yet he’s willing to promise them a tasty policy snack that makes it easier for them to swallow their misgivings about supporting this crude philistine.

For the benefit of the more credulous, Trump’s running-mate Mike Pence, the designated conservative whisperer of the ticket, came along and told the VVS attendees on Saturday that “at the very core, the very heart, of this good man is … a faith in God and a faith in the American people.” This is about as convincing as James Dobson’s unsupported claim that Trump is a “baby Christian,” like one of those ancient barbarians who converted to Christianity but needed a while to figure out the new faith was incompatible with slaughtering prisoners or keeping concubines.

Trump mostly has faith in himself and in the golden calf of worldly success. But he’s the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, and thus leader of that mess of pottage for which Christian Right leaders have exchanged their birthright. So what are they to do?

They cheer.

Selah.

As part of the effort to “normalize” the abnormal candidacy of Donald Trump, his running-mate Mike Pence went to the Ronald Reagan library and delivered a speech comparing his boss to the 40th president. It was a good try, but didn’t pass the smell test, as I noted at New York this week:

In Pence’s account, 2016 became 1980 redux. Now as then, a rough-hewn former entertainer mocked by the “smart set” came forward with “blunt” talk and attracted a huge movement of Republicans, independents, and particularly Democrats, determined to pare back government, rebuild the military, unleash businesses, get the oil wells pumping and the coal mines humming, and Make America Great Again.

Listening to Pence, you could almost buy the parallels, putting aside little problems like Reagan’s devotion to free trade, Trump’s odd infatuation with Russia’s dictator, Reagan’s preparation for the presidency in two terms as governor of the nation’s largest state, and most of all, the massive contrast between Trump’s dark and dystopian outlook and Reagan’s sunny optimism.

But then the Hoosier governor went too far, describing the “fundamental similarity of the two men” as being rooted in their common “honesty and toughness.” That was the first of six references to Trump’s honesty or truthfulness. Coming the morning after the mogul lied through his teeth about his original positions on the Iraq War and the military intervention in Libya, it’s amazing Pence was not struck by lightning — if not during his paeans to Trump’s honesty then during his claim that the great narcissist is a man of deep humility.

Pence follows a familiar approach in labeling Trump’s frequently hate-filled utterances as “straight talk.” This rebranding was skewered by the exasperated folks at PolitiFact, as they named his collective campaign statements the “Lie of the Year” for 2015:

“It’s the trope on Trump: He’s authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That’s because Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.”

If, as Pence said today, “honesty is the axis on which leadership spins,” Trump is the unlikeliest national leader you could imagine.

You don’t have to be a fan or Ronald Reagan’s legacy as president–and I am most decidedly not–to feel an impulse to defend him from this imposter.

At last night’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum” sponsored by veterans’ groups and featuring consecutive appearances by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, moderator Matt Lauer got a lot of well-justified criticism for focusing on Clinton’s email practices and letting Trump get away with–well, not murder, but some bold-face lies. I wrote an immediate reaction for New York that took a serious look at what Trump actually said about foreign policy and national security.

Hillary Clinton spent most of her time answering hostile questions about her use of emails as secretary of state and her vote to authorize the Iraq War. She really did not need to present a national security philosophy, because she has been doing that regularly ever since her first race for the Senate in 2000. When finally allowed to escape her defensive crouch via a question about her process for deciding when to use military force to defeat ISIS, she gave a classic Democratic Goldilocks answer, eschewing too hot (ground troops) and too cold (disengagement) responses.

Donald Trump, however, is another matter. He has typically offered impulsive answers to sporadic questions about national security policy, and has occasionally — viz., his cluelessness in a primary debate about the strategic triad of air, land, and sea delivery systems for nuclear weapons — looked like someone who should be kept far from the levers of power.

In this forum, he did not sound clueless, which was a small triumph. But two strange aspects of his approach to national security became clear.

First, when challenged by moderator Matt Lauer to reconcile his talk of a “plan” for defeating ISIS with his boast that he would be “unpredictable” to confuse America’s enemies, Trump came down squarely on the side of unpredictability, criticizing Barack Obama for telling the world what he would do. The idea of a president deliberately pursuing an erratic course of action and refusing to articulate policies is certainly new.

Second, when asked about his expressions of admiration of Vladimir Putin, Trump doubled down, calling Putin a better leader than Obama and touting Putin’s domestic poll ratings as a validator of Vlad’s sterling qualities. This was cold comfort to Americans concerned that Trump might emulate his Russian friend in “uniting” his country and Making It Great Again via radical curbs on dissent and diversity.

More generally, Trump is drifting toward a truly Jacksonian national security posture, which can be described as a philosophy of peace through strength — and craziness! He has taken to calling Hillary Clinton “trigger happy” (as he did tonight), even as he calls for much higher defense spending, a larger military, and the elimination of any restraints of use of military force against civilians. The idea seems to be to maintain a credible threat of insane, massively destructive overreaction to any friend or foe who messes with Uncle Sam. This “winning through intimidation” approach helps explain why Putin is a role model for the candidate.

Even though this global, nuclear-armed version of the motto “Don’t tread on me” has been a subcurrent of American popular culture for decades, we have never had a commander-in-chief so irresponsible as to make it the touchstone of actual U.S. policy. Hillary Clinton can be accused of a lot of mistakes and misjudgments over the years, but she has never entertained the idea that America should protect its interests by inspiring sheer terror and emulating despots.

And she doesn’t lie about her support for the Iraq War, either.

It was an amazing Wednesday on the presidential campaign trail. After his strange trip to Mexico, Donald Trump gave a long-awaited definitive policy speech on immigration. And as I explained at New York, he pretty much kissed the Latino vote good-bye:

To get a proper grip on where Donald Trump has taken the Republican Party after his latest spasm of speechifying and posturing on immigration, it’s helpful to go back to the RNC’s famous 2013 “autopsy report” explaining how the GOP could avoid the fate of Mitt Romney. Romney, you may recall, very accurately described his immigration policy as “self-deportation”: Through malign neglect (including random documentation checks by local law enforcement), make life as unpleasant as possible for the undocumented and many of them will go home and take with them the message that the Land of Opportunity was closing its doors.

Here’s how the “autopsy report” described the political consequences of that attitude:

“If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence.”

That did seem to be the case, as Romney lost the Hispanic vote — the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate — in 2012 (according to exit polls) by an astonishing 71-27 margin.

And so the logical thing to do, concluded the report, was to go back to the support for comprehensive immigration reform that was originally devised by Karl Rove as one of the keys to an enduring Republican majority — before “the base” rejected efforts by its last two pre-Romney presidential nominees (George W. Bush and John McCain) to enact it into law.

As we all know, “the base” stopped that from happening once again, and the 2016 nominee turned out to be someone who had made hostility to immigration reform — and a variety of other white ethno-nationalist themes — signature motifs of an unprecedented challenge to Establishment Republicanism.

Now that Trump has (apparently, at least; one can never rule out countless additional reformulations and “pivots” with the wiggy dude) issued his most definitive statement ever on immigration policy, it seems he’s taken Romney’s “self-deportation” position and tried to add some teeth and a snarl.

You might not realize this right away, given his rhetoric, but Trump did not actually embrace a policy of immediate deportation of all 11 million undocumented immigrants, apparently realizing that would involve about a gazillion dollars and the establishment of a fascist police state. His proposal to prioritize the deportation of people convicted of crimes is actually the same as the Obama administration’s.

But if he’s serious about trying to immediately deport the roughly 4 million people who have overstayed visas, that’s a pretty big departure from current practice and would require a half-gazillion dollars and moderately vicious police-state enforcement strategies. That could be just a feint, though, designed (along with a new policy of deporting any undocumented immigrant arrested — not convicted, but arrested — for a crime) to put the word out that there’s a new sheriff in town who is determined to harass and immiserate the undocumented without the insane cost and bad impressions associated with setting up star chambers and massive relocation camps and then bringing out the cattle cars headed south.

Politically, Trump is making the opposite bet posed by the “autopsy report” — not just in the sense of moving violently and permanently away from comprehensive immigration reform, but in gambling that, along with the Wall, the most hateful attitude possible toward the 11 million will satisfy “the base” without the fateful step of going all the way to immediate mass deportations, the logical end of his rhetoric.

Some “pivot,” eh?