GOP elites hope they can simply bid the Trump voters good riddance and then the new voters will come. This is wishful thinking. New Deal liberals and civil rights supporters had to coexist inside the Democratic Party with Southern segregationists for decades before their coalition could be remade.

“Go to hell” might be an appropriate response to an alt-right Twitter user sending you racist memes on social media. It is not a constructive response to 40 percent of the Republican primary electorate.

There have always been millions of Republicans who aren’t especially ideological by movement conservative standards. They are patriotic, even nationalists. They are nostalgic for the America of their youth. They voted in huge numbers for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.

Trump liberated them from their march down the Paul Ryan roadmap. Maybe Cruz or Mike Pence can persuade them to re-enlist. But it won’t be easy. The RNC’s post-2012 autopsy assumed future Trump voters could be safely ignored. If the New York businessman loses as badly as the polls predict, many Republicans will treat his supporters with open contempt.

“One can disavow Trump,” writes The Atlantic’s David Frum. “But if one disavows Trump’s voters, one has effectively surrendered any hope of a center-right alternative in national politics.”