For what it is worth, I think Cruz will win in Iowa, and Trump will win in New Hampshire. But then the race will narrow sharply and if Trump does not become more specific and more acceptable to the large group of moderates who find him offensive (but are about as irritated as I am by attempts to portray him as a Nazi), he will then start to slide, and I think that Rubio will win over Trump, Bush, and Cruz in Florida and ease in ahead, even if the candidates who have won earlier contests before, such as Bush and Cruz, have to deliver him blocs of delegates to put him across over Trump.

As most of Trump’s views, apart from a couple of areas of immigration and law enforcement, are quite moderate, there is plenty of room to adopt much of his platform on behalf of a largely united party. Trump would receive considerable deference, and the level of his support entitles him to it; he will not do anything that would assist Hillary back into the White House and the idea that he would spend a billion dollars of his own money to win the Ross Perot Prize as a useful idiot for the Clintons was a figment of the febrile and wishful imaginations of CNN and the New York Times. The choice of the vice-presidential candidates could influence the election outcome for the first time since, of all people, Spiro Agnew (in 1968, to cut into the George Wallace vote), if not Lyndon Johnson (1960). The Bush-Clinton era has had its moments, but after the disasters of the last 20 years, I think the country wants a change, and if the Republicans nominate a worthy heir to the wide vote-attracting talents of Eisenhower, Reagan, and, at his best, Nixon, and not the foot-in-mouth disease of some of the blunderbuss candidates interspersed around and after them, it should be their year again.