There are a lot of Republican voters, she added, who aren’t looking for an ideological purity test from their preferred candidate so much as someone who gets where they are coming from emotionally, even if he says things that conventional wisdom regarded as fatal.

With months to go until the November election, it’s far too early to know who will win the White House. And the fate of Trump––or his replacement, on the off-chance he is ousted or drops out––will have such a powerful affect on the future of the right that forecasting it today is even more difficult than it was in bygone years when we all got it wrong.

But there is one bit of forward-looking analysis about which I’m confident.

Whether Trump wins or loses or decides to return to reality TV rather than complete the general election, the approach he took to winning all those primaries will not be lost on ambitious young Republican office-seekers. And they can’t help but see that one needn’t hue as close to conservative movement orthodoxy as Paul Ryan or National Review or Mark Levin to win Republican primaries.

The future of the right is uncertain… and less ideologically constrained than it once seemed.