Washington

HERE is a mind-bending proposition that requires employing a bit of dialectical thinking: If Donald Trump is nominated as the Republican Party's presidential candidate and if he does win the 2016 race to the White House, that would mark the beginning of the end of the Grand Old Party (GOP) and the disintegration of the conservative movement that has provided it with the ideological foundations that have helped hold the Republican coalition together.

Let's put things in a historical perspective: Since the election of Republican icon Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, and through two Republican administrations headed by members of the Bush Dynasty, the GOP and the modern American conservative movement have been compared to a stool being held by three political ideological legs.