If he magically disappeared tomorrow, Carson and Cruz are ready to pick up his banner. Between the three, they represent about half of the Republican Party, which is roughly one half of the American electorate. One in four. The rest of the GOP field is ready to morph into any shape necessary to fill the vacuum should all three leading candidates falter. We can already see how their rhetoric and methods have become increasingly strident, irrational and unscrupulous.

These one-in-four of the electorate are the people who woke up one morning to find that in spite of all the promises made to them, and in spite of their willingness to work hard and play by the rules, the American Dream has passed them, and their children, by. A combination of military reverses, economic erosion, cultural change, demographic shift and historical evolution has led to ignorance, fear, anger, envy and hate. They are pissed, and they will follow anyone who offers them a way out, a scapegoat, a reason why its not really their fault, why its not the fault of the people whose quality they strove to emulate or the system they swore fealty to. Neither are they ready to accept that perhaps no one may be fundamentally responsible for their interrupted destiny. That sometimes that's just the way things work out.

People would rather blame treachery and betrayal for their misfortunes than history, or just bad luck. They need someone to blame and someone to hate, and they need someone they think can make it all just like it was before. Or how they have convinced themselves it was before.

This is nothing new, it has happened before, in not exactly the same way of course, every age is different and conditions are never the same, but similarly enough that the parallels are obvious and unmistakable. Review my post "Weimar Amerika" below, in response to your "garden variety fascist" thread. It doesn't have to happen here, but there's nothing to stop it either. And right now, it looks like its right on schedule.

Trump is the least of our problems. He's is not the disease, he's just a symptom, and if he isn't there, there will be plenty others ready to take his place.