I’m sure if we got to hang out one night and he were given a vial of truth serum I’d agree with McCormick on some things and disagree on others. But on balance he would be in the vein of all the corporate moderate squishes the Republican party put up in the pre-Trump years, with an added dollop of rhetoric about how leaders need to respond to the distressed-asset class of MAGA Americans.

And yet Breitbart and the other performative nationalists on McCormick’s payroll seem ready to shine that turd: The campaign’s high command plans to use their previous experience with Glenn Youngkin as the model to git ’er dun.

Their theory of the case is that with unlimited resources, some shamelessness, a vow to put no other gods before Trump, and a bit of coaching on how to talk to the rubes, they can put shiny MAGA wrapping paper on this globalist, Jeb Bush-supporting, $20,000 fountain pen of a human.

Can it work?

The answer will speak to an theological truth about the movement itself.