What Trump loses to elite Republican and conservative disdain expressed in op-eds and news show round tables or to Lindsey Graham and John McCain-like denunciations, he has more than made up with new populist Republican support in small towns and communities nationwide. For now, it is hard to imagine any other potential Republican nominee rallying a crowd like Trump or appealing to the losers of globalization in such dramatic fashion.

That we are, once again, being advised that Republican grandees are looking for a new version of Evan McMullin, or that a cranky John Kasich will reenter the primary race in 2020, or that Jeff Flake insists that he is the moral superior to those who stooped to vote for Trump, to be honest, means nada.

More than 90 percent of Republicans voted for Trump before he had a political record, and about the same will do it again based on his conservative agenda as expressed and enacted so far. If the economy hits 3 percent economic growth, with near 4 percent unemployment, the Dow does not crash, and if the Russian collusion charges end up only with symbolic scalps (and all that is possible if not likely), Trump will win over half the independents, solidify his base and likely take the Electoral College.