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People tend to forget the extent to which the last Republican administration was also characterized by cronyism, the appointment of unqualified but well-connected people to key positions

In particular, if you want some notion of what Trump governance is likely to look like, consider the botched occupation of Iraq. People who knew anything about nation-building weren’t wanted; party loyalists — and corporate profiteers — took their place. There’s even a little-known connection: Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, founded Blackwater, the mercenary outfit that, among other things, helped destabilize Iraq by firing into a crowd of civilians.

Now the conditions that prevailed in Iraq — blind ideology, contempt for expertise, effective absence of any enforcement of ethics rules — have come to America, but in a far more acute form.

will happen when we face a crisis? Remember, Katrina was the event that finally revealed the costs of Bush-era cronyism to all.

Real crises need real solutions. They can’t be resolved with a killer tweet, or by having your friends in the F.B.I. or the Kremlin feed the media stories that take your problems off the front page. What the situation demands are knowledgeable, levelheaded people in positions of authority.

Mr. Trump completed his cabinet roster of 21 people only on Thursday, and there’s still a long road ahead for most.

they believe it even though there is no clear example of a modern health care system built along the lines that they desire.

The dominant systems in the developed world, whether government-run or single-payer or Obamacare-esque, are generally statist to degrees that conservatives deplore.

As the conservative policy thinker Yuval Levin wrote late last year, the striking thing about Obamacare to date is how much smaller than expected its effect on the overall health care system has been. Fewer people are being insured on the exchanges than liberals hoped, fewer employers are dumping high-cost employees onto the exchanges than conservatives feared

There is compelling evidence that markets in health care can do more to lower costs and prices than liberals allow, and good reasons to think that free-market competition produces more medical innovation than more socialized systems.

embracing even the smartest conservative Obamacare alternative requires a not-precisely-Burkean leap of faith.

this is the advantage of Cassidy-Collins: It encourages governors and legislators to actually put the conservative theory of health care to the test without simply reversing the ideological colors of the great Obamacare experiment and immediately turning the entire United States health care system over to the right’s technocratic vision.

mostly they tend to be much more heavily regulated and subsidized than the system that conservative health policy wonks and policy-literate Republicans would like to see take over from Obamacare.

he writes:The extremely serious problems we are seeing now are within the one system that Obamacare created from scratch, the exchange system. That system may not survive, and its condition has a lot to teach us about the problems with liberal health economics. But it is a much smaller system than anyone thought it would be at this point, about half the size that C.B.O. projected, so that the effects of any failure it suffers are likely to be more contained than anyone might have expected.

If the Obamacare exchanges aren’t ultimately going to work out, then allowing them to persist in liberal states while an alternative system gets set up in red states is a reasonable way to gradually transition from the liberal model toward the conservative one. If the right’s wonks are right about health policy, the Cassidy-Collins approach should — gradually — enable conservatives to prove it.

if the right is wrong, if its model doesn’t match reality, if people are simply miserable as health care consumers because the system has too much of Friedman and not enough of Burke — well, in that case both the country and conservatism will be better off if we learn that via a voter rebellion in 10 right-leaning states, rather than through a much more widespread backlash against a nationwide health-insurance failure

Second, even if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat to all around him.

Third, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the aroma of bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.

Fourth, it is hard to think of any administration in recent memory, on any level, whose identity is so tainted by cruelty.

As former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”

Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.

With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature.

sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.

Why is his opposition to immigrants and Mexicans in particular so resonant when immigration liberalization ostensibly has majority support in most polls?

Support for immigration “may be greatly overestimated.”

polls conducted by large survey organizations never ask about immigration in geographic contex

This kind of abstract framing tends to push respondents toward giving more “politically correct” answers to standard poll questions about immigration.

The quest by American liberals and progressives for support, or at least tolerance, of diversity, inclusiveness and multiculturalism is likely to prevail — particularly if the compulsory dimension of compliance is curtailed.

one way to better understand the intensity of Trump’s appeal is by looking at something called “psychological reactance.” Haidt describes reactance asthe feeling you get when people try to stop you from doing something you’ve been doing, and you perceive that they have no right or justification for stopping you. So you redouble your efforts and do it even more, just to show that you don’t accept their domination. Men in particular are concerned to show that they do not accept domination.

He has won a unique admixture of support, based in part on what might be called an anti-rational or irrational loyalty but also in part on his recognition of legitimate grievances among his adherents that many other politicians belittle or deny.

In both the workplace and academia, Haidt argues,the accusatory and vindictive approach of many social justice activists and diversity trainers may actually have increased the desire and willingness of some white men to say and do un-PC things.

Trump comes along and punches political correctness in the face. Anyone feeling some degree of anti-PC reactance is going to feel a thrill in their heart, and will want to stand up and applaud. And because feelings drive reasoning, these feelings of gratitude will make it hard for anyone to present arguments to them about the downsides of a Trump presidency.

Trump responded on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on May 2. What Clinton said “was a very derogatory statement to men,” Trump declared. “It was almost as though she’s going to tell us what to do, tell men what to do.” He continued, “It was a real put-down.”

many Trump followers respond to Clinton in a fashion similar to that of8th grade boys reacting to their homeroom teacher. But I think this has more to do with her gender than with any particular behaviors on her part — in other words, there are some who would respond to any woman running for president as an 8th grader in homeroom who resents the teacher.

since reactance is driven by perceptions rather than by facts, this works well in Trump’s favor, considering his often cavalier relationship with the truth.

research that shows that some people will reject a policy or action that is to their advantage when they feel pushed or forced into making the “correct” decision.

In other words, reactance can foster a totalizing loyalty that does not respond to reasoned fault finding. This might help explain Trump’s seeming immunity to criticism from his adversaries. His followers feel that they have experienced a “diminution of freedom” and believe that Trump can “restore their autonomy.”

I would say that decades of political correctness, with its focus on “straight white men” as the villains and oppressors — now extended to “straight white cis-gendered men” — has caused some degree of reactance in many and perhaps most white men.

Clinton remains the favorite, but she faces five months of treading water in a shark tank. She has yet to discover a compelling rebuttal to Trump on political correctness, and it will be difficult for her to placate opponents of immigration while holding her advantage with her bas

In recent years, many of the industry’s elite have pledged financial support to schools, hospitals, police stations and homeless shelters, all while many of the industry’s companies have avoided paying taxes that would fund those same vital public institutions.

Any philanthropy seems legitimate when it aligns with your own goals.

To many of Gawker’s critics, Mr. Thiel is a hero on a charitable crusade for justice. It would be safe to say that this is how his fellow Silicon Valley philanthropists would also define their giving. They are under a presumptive mandate to improve society according to their own values, purely because they have made a lot of money while most everyone else has not. The Gospel of Wealth dictates that this is not only their ability, but their responsibility.

We did indeed give them this mandate through our politics: loose campaign finance laws and lower tax rates. Through policies that have reinforced exceptional wealth disparities, we have allowed them not just to govern themselves, but us as well.

the concerned public might take a different, simpler tack.Mr. Thiel told an interviewer in 2012 that he feared the result of this precipitous wealth gap. “In the history of the modern world, inequality has only been ended through Communist revolution, war or deflationary economic collapse,” he said. “It’s a disturbing question which of these three is going to happen today, or if there’s a fourth way out.”

If we’re lucky, there may be, but Mr. Thiel isn’t going to like it. Wealth gleaned by way of tax dodges and monopolistic business practices is wealth stolen from the public, even when it is returned in the form of supposed gifts.

Philanthropy has the power to do a great deal of good, but so do tax dollars allocated in an equitable democratic system. Perhaps it’s time to adopt a Gospel of Government.

what he said is nonsense. Israel is guilty of many sins, but “abhorrent processes that took place in Europe,” as he put it, are not happening here. The general was repudiated by politicians, mocked on social media and called upon by pundits to resign. Probably taken aback by such an angry reaction, General Golan backtracked the next day, albeit unconvincingly.

For the last several months there seems to be a widening gap between the public and the I.D.F. on matters of civil behavior.

the public is becoming increasingly divided when it comes to the leaders of Israel’s most revered institution: The left (a smaller group) defends them, while the right (the growing majority) resents their lecturing

As politicians turn the I.D.F. into a political football, the “center” — that is, most of us — watches in horror. We need our army to win all of the good battles.

Then as it became clear that the most establishment-friendly candidates (Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, even the more right-wing Rubio) weren’t going to hack it, it was the establishmentarians and self-conscious moderates who decided that Trump was a man they could do business with, not like that crazy Tea Partier Senator Cruz.

Which is how Trump ended up as the candidate of Sean Hannity and John Boehner, Ann Coulter and Jon Huntsman, with Rush Limbaugh running interference for him with the grass roots, and various lobbyists doing the same on Capitol Hill.

The narcissism of small differences, in other words, led both the professional establishment and the professional base to surrender to a force that they had countless ideological and pragmatic reasons to oppose.

many were clearly motivated by grudges and fears instilled by the party’s civil war, and by a sense that even though Trump might represent a grave threat to their vision of Republicanism, it would still be better to serve under his rule for a season than to risk putting their hated intraparty rivals in the catbird seat.

So to catalog my wrongness: I overestimated the real commitment of both factions’ leaders to their stated principles and favored policies.

It is possible that a dishonorable, cowardly, unprincipled course will yield the result that many in both G.O.P. factions clearly crave: Trump defeated in the general election, his ideas left without a champion, and then a reversion to the party’s status quo

And yes, since to acquiesce to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is to gamble recklessly with the party’s responsibilities to the republic, I overestimated their basic sense of honor.

it’s possible that the establishment and the Tea Party are more like Byzantium and Sassanid Persia in the seventh century A.D., and Trumpism is the Arab-Muslim invasion that put an end to their long-running rivalry, destroyed the Sassanid Dynasty outright, and ushered in a very different age. Write A Comment No doubt many thought at first that those invaders were a temporary problem, an alien force that would wreak havoc and then withdraw, dissolve, retreat.But a new religion had arrived to stay.

) I overestimated their ability to put those principles ahead of personal resentments

Before Trump’s emergence, the Republican elite was in the midst of a long-running civil war, pitting the much-hated “establishment” against the much-feared “base,” the center-right against the Tea Party, the official party leadership against a congeries of activists, media personalities and up-and-coming right-wing politicians

But beneath the noise of battle, the establishment’s leaders and the base’s tribunes were often in near-agreement on policy (or, in some cases, on the absence thereof)

on many issues they were fighting about how to fight, as much as about what specifically to do.

Because of this underlying agreement, the G.O.P. elite’s civil war actually covered over many of the deeper ideological divisions within the party’s rank and file.

For decades, conservative politicians railed against the “judicial activism” of judges who overturned democratically enacted legislation, accusing such judges of seeking to use the power of the courts to impose their own political and social agendas

Now it’s judges who decline to strike down laws who stand accused of being political. Not so long ago, “judicial restraint” was a conservative goal against which judicial performance was measured. Now it’s an epithet hurled at, of all people, Chief Justice Roberts

whose opinion four years ago gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on the basis of a newly manufactured theory of federalism was undoubtedly one of the most activist of all recent Supreme Court decisions. That was the good kind of activism, it seems. Nothing political there. It’s judicial restraint that’s political.

The fear of judicial restraint runs deep. Ilya Shapiro, the Cato Institute scholar who blamed John Roberts for Donald Trump, expressed it vividly. Lamenting the failure of the attack on the Affordable Care Act, he wrote, seemingly without irony: “Constitutional conservatism simply couldn’t survive judicial conservatism.”

A rueful old line from my own heritage says that if you should happen to forget that you’re Jewish, someone will remind you: a truth reconfirmed by the upsurge in vocal anti-Semitism unleashed by the Trump phenomenon.

the road to Trumpism began with ideological conservatives cynically exploiting America’s racial divisions. The modern Republican Party’s central policy agenda of cutting taxes on the rich while slashing benefits has never been very popular, even among its own voters. It won elections nonetheless by getting working-class whites to think of themselves as a group under siege, and to see government programs as giveaways to Those People.

to put it another way, the G.O.P. was able to serve the interests of the 1 percent by posing as the defender of the 80 percent — for that was the white share of the electorate when Ronald Reagan was elected.

some groups with relatively high income, like Jews and, increasingly, Asian-Americans, also vote strongly Democratic. Why? The answer in both cases, surely, is the suspicion that the same racial animus that drives many people to vote Republican could, all too easily, turn against other groups with a long history of persecution

the overwhelming nature of that support reflects group identity.

And race-based political mobilization cuts both ways. Black and Hispanic support for Democrats makes obvious sense, given the fact that these are relatively low-income groups that benefit disproportionately from progressive policies

this is going to be mostly an election about identity.

The Republican nominee represents little more than the rage of white men over a changing nation. And he’ll be facing a woman — yes, gender is another important dimension in this story — who owes her nomination to the very groups his base hates and fears.

one thing is for sure: It’s going to be ugly.

Mr. Trump rejects all three.

Republicans used to argue that character mattered in our political leaders. But apparently that applied only to Democrats like Bill Clinton. Today, we’re told such considerations are irrelevant, inapposite, quaint. We’re electing a president rather than a pope, after all, so there’s no problem wrapping Republican arms around a moral wreck. At least he’s our moral wreck.

The hypocrisy isn’t lost on anyone.

the reality is that Republican lawmakers have been put in this position because Mr. Trump was more popular among Republicans than anyone else in the race. He took the lead in the national polls in July 2015 and pretty much never lost it

his European-style ethnic nationalism, which relies on stoking grievances, resentments and fear of the other — Mexicans, Muslims, Syrian refugees, the Chinese, etc.— has a powerful sway in the Republican Party today. To be clear, not all of Mr. Trump’s supporters are drawn to his ethnic nationalism. But all of his supporters are willing to accept it.

When a narcissist like Mr. Trump is victorious, as he was in the Republican primary, and when he has done it on his terms, he’s not going to listen to outside counsel from people who think they can change the patterns of a lifetime. Republicans have not changed Mr. Trump for the better; he has changed them for the worse

Mr. Trump — through his attacks against Hispanics that began the day he announced his candidacy — is doing with Hispanics today what Senator Goldwater did with black voters in the early 1960s.

The less resistance there is to Mr. Trump now, the more political damage there will be later.

The stain of Trump will last long after his campaign. His insults, cruelty and bigotry will sear themselves into the memory of Americans for a long time to come, especially those who are the targets of his invective

Republican primary voters, in selecting him to represent their party, and Republican leaders now rallying to his side, have made his moral offenses their own