You have to give the man his due.  Donald Trump entered the nomination process last June as a rejiggered Democrat non-politician running in the Republican Party nomination process alongside 16 other experienced, motivated, better funded and better prepared candidates – and with last Tuesday’s crushing of the final two pretenders in the Indiana primary – left all 16 in a pile of rubble the Trump bulldozer had cleared off the road. But not only the 16.  He additionally has created a meme where the power structures forming the fifty year edifice of a conservative movement that had at the beginning of the primary season demanded that Trump declare loyalty to the party and not go off the rails with a third party run, were now fumbling to say if they would declare loyalty to him.  The former Speaker of the House, who led the first  congressionally directed conservative takeover of American political philosophy in 1994, Newt Gingrich, enthusiastically supports Trump.  The current Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who was hostilely drafted to resurrect the conservative will of a corrupted leadership in 2015 and is the chairman of the party’s nominated convention, cannot bring himself to declare the undisciplined, unideological Trump as his movement’s standard bearer.  The brother of the President of the United States who Trump declared lied to the American people regarding Iraq vows Never Trump.  The former Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, who championed the very Iraq policy that Trump says was a perpetrated lie upon the American people has come forward to support Trump.  It has resulted in the 1996 loser of the presidential election Robert Dole to vociferously endorse Trump, and the most recent loser of 2012, Milt Romney to scheme to get rid of Trump.  Down the line, governors and senators, congressmen and assemblymen, conservative think tanks and journalists, industry chiefs and regular tool box guys, wise thought leaders and talk show blatherers alike, are finding themselves aghast at the prospect of having to choose who they are, when they thought they already knew.  The meme is a question – If you are for Trump or you are against Trump, what does it say about you?

The American style electoral process to this point has been based on a party structure that looked for candidates who would represent the party members values, and attempt to convince the rest of America, on the values fitting the currents times and events.  It has been said and believed, all politics are local.  The party’s strengths are formulated through retail politics of local leaders meeting the constituents, kissing the babies, and fixing the potholes. Successful local leaders then take their local resumes to achieve state offices and learn the art of compromise and debate, interest groups and budgets that prepare them for the national stage.  At the national stage the lessons learned from a career of relationships with like minded people forms the party structure of a national vision that a fully vetted standard bearer must earn the right to represent, perhaps earning after having fallen short a time or two, and refining his or her understanding of the vision process to eventually be selected and succeed.   This was the structure that was built to prevent the hijacking of the party vision by an extreme version or transiently enthusiastic impulse.  The Pat Buchanons, Ron Pauls, George Wallaces, and Pete McCloskeys could not get through the obstacle course and subvert the party to their extremism. It was a protection against demagogues such as Huey Long or Douglas MacArthur democratically overwhelming the mechanisms of restraint.

However perfect the restraints, the parties would occasionally struggle to avoid falling in love with a relative novice, like Wendell Wilkie, Dwight Eisenhower, or Barrack Obama, on the basis of a single gift. Even then there was some logic.  The Republican candidate of 1940, businessman Wilkie was a sacrificial lamb against the massive Democratic machine that controlled all facets national politics led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  The party had nothing to lose in trying a non-politician against the ultimate politician.  In 1952, Eisenhower’s singular gift was that he had adroitly managed the most massive military machine ever assembled and had helped save the entire world.  That certainly made him hard to turn down.  In 2008, the Democrat Party turned to a  state senator who became a one term US Senator only so he could become President.  As to his party’s nefarious recognition of his supposed singular gift, his eventual running mate and gaffemeister Joseph Biden  crudely framed it, saying  “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Donald Trump has exploded all the constraints by being Novice Maximus.  He is not an industrial leader like Wilkie, he is a wheeler dealer business speculator.  He is not a leader of men and women like Eisenhower forged in battle, he is leader dealer  who sells to others his version of dealing, defining success and failure by how closely they adhere to the Trump model, firing non-acolytes in the Apprentice, or failing non-converts in a fraudulent “Trump University”.  He has not captured the media by superficially looking and sounding nonthreatening to them like Obama, but rather overwhelming them and enslaving the media through ratings success their previous biases had prevented them from ever achieving. Trump, the Novice Maximus, towers over all previous models, converting individuals who would not remotely respect his bizarre politics into ‘Trumpeters’ for the cause.

And thus, the dilemma for anyone who has an inkling as to the principles that make this modern republic great.  The Republican Party has positioned themselves to endorse a candidate who shows no identifiable message discipline or understanding, and is proud of it.  This party of limited government influence on people’s lives is about to underwrite an individual that declares he alone will adjudicate whether a company moves their business, a person of muslim faith can gain entrance, another sovereign country will be forced to pay fealty, or that the country he represents will resolve to default on its debt.  The Republican Party, wholly unable to control Novice Maximus in his inevitable drive to the party nomination, now asks its constituents who did not buy into Trump to ‘trust’ the party to be able to ‘control’ Novice Maximus once he has obtained the reins of power through ‘wise council’ and ‘checks and balances’.  This type of logic has been ludicrously promoted before against of demagogic figures, the most disturbing historical example being  the decision of the German right to believe it could ‘control’ Hitler by bringing him into government as Chancellor and having him mentored by Hindenburg.  Obviously, Trump is no Hitler, but the Republican Party is not even remotely Hindenburg.  Donald Trump refined modern social media control with the best propagandists of the 1930’s, and once in place of the ultimate bully pulpit, would be out of the reach of any stabilizers.

What to do?  Vote your principles, and your desire for forward looking, rational answers to our many problems goes down to defeat.  Jump on the Trump Train, and assure the complete destruction of ideological clarity to problem solving, while still going down to defeat, win or lose.  For me, principles trump Trump.  Losing one’s soul is not a reasonable price for defeating the less defined of two evils.  The 1932 german patriot who held on to his humanity and civility and didn’t join the lemmings, at least didn’t have to live the evolving calamity soulless.