If you are Donald Trump, you are likely beyond sick and tired of hearing from the #TruCons that you don’t represent “conservative principles”:

“Donald Trump said on Saturday that he doesn’t think he needs to unite the GOP in order to win general election. “Does the party have to be together, does it have to be unified?” he said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that will air Sunday. “I’m very different from anybody who’s perhaps ever run for office. I actually don’t think so.” “I think it would be better if it were unified, I think there would be something good about it, but I don’t actually think it has to be unified,” he said. The presumptive GOP nominee said that he can win without the backing of the full party by drawing Democratic voters, specifically supporters of Bernie Sanders. “I have to stay true to my principles also. And I’m a conservative, but don’t forget, this is called the ‘Republican Party,’ not the ‘conservative party,’” Trump said.

That’s a shot across the bow.

Maybe the #TruCons are right. Trump does have a problem with “consistent conservatism.” Republican voters were given 17 other choices – the “greatest field” ever – and rejected #TruConservatism as it has been defined by National Review, CuckState, The Weekly Standard, and so on. If that is what conservatism means, the election showed the base of the party has decided it wants to buy something else.

What is that? Trump should say, my critics have a point, I am a populist and a nationalist, not a conservative. In the United States, the term “conservative” means classical liberal, which is someone who is uninterested as a matter of principle or incapable of conserving anything except for entitlement cuts, free-trade, huge tax cuts for the rich, endless foreign wars, etc. They exist solely to serve the US Chamber of Commerce and the other corrupt billionaire donors who finance the whole show.

Trump should say, we have more important problems in this country to worry about than ethanol subsidies or eminent domain, and I really don’t care if this enrages the dorks. Speaking of conservative dorks, Ross Douthat has a new article about why #TruConservatives shouldn’t support Trump in the fall:

“Reaganite conservatives who help elevate Trump to the presidency, then, would be sleepwalking toward a kind of ideological suicide. Successful party leaders often transform parties in their image. William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson between them turned a conservative Democratic Party progressive. Dwight Eisenhower all but extinguished G.O.P. isolationism. Reagan himself set liberal Republicanism on the path to extinction. A successful President Trump (and to support him is to hope for such a thing) could easily do the same to Reaganism. In a fully-Trumpized G.O.P., Reagan’s ideological coalition would crack up, with hawks drifting toward the Democrats, supply-siders fading into crankery, religious conservatives entering semi-permanent exile. And in its place a Trumpized Republican intelligentsia would arise, with as little interest in Reaganism as today’s conservatives have in the ideas of Nelson Rockefeller or Jacob Javits. …”

In other words, Douthat is saying it is better for the #TruCons to lose to Hillary Clinton than compromise their conservative principles. After Trump is defeated, the #TruCons and the GOP establishment will blame the loss on him and give it another go in 2020, and all those people who supported Trump will return to their place.

Isn’t there a flip side to this argument though? It is not like Trump will be the only name on the ballot on the fall. Why on earth should Trump’s populist and nationalist supporters vote for someone like John McCain or Paul Ryan who represents everything we want to break with? Maybe it is better for us to leave that spot on the ballot blank to ensure that they are defeated and purged from the party?

A huge swath of Trump’s supporters love Donald Trump’s message, but have many, many grievances against the Republican Party. If the #NeverTrump movement wants to go there, why shouldn’t we return the favor tenfold and sink their candidates?

“A successful President Trump (and to support him is to hope for such a thing) could easily do the same to Reaganism. In a fully-Trumpized G.O.P., Reagan’s ideological coalition would crack up, with hawks drifting toward the Democrats, supply-siders fading into crankery, religious conservatives entering semi-permanent exile. And in its place a Trumpized Republican intelligentsia would arise, with as little interest in Reaganism as today’s conservatives have in the ideas of Nelson Rockefeller or Jacob Javits. …”

This is the real threat.

A successful President Trump would owe nothing to the #TruCons and the GOP establishment who opposed him. He would be free to redefine the Republican Party as a populist and nationalist party. The whole #TruCon clique would be discredited and would fade away like the Rockefeller Republicans.

Speaking of which, Trump may have already concluded that the #TruCons and GOP establishment will never be reconciled to their defeat, so the time has come to go full populist and revolutionize the party:

I am honored that the great men and women of the @Teamsters have created a movement from within called Teamsters for Trump! Thank you. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2016

I am going to keep our jobs in the U.S., and totally rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Crooked Hillary has no clue! @Teamsters — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2016

Meet the new Republican Party. It is the old Democratic Party of George Wallace that clashed with the New Left in the 1960s.

It is the final form of a realignment that began with the Dixiecrat revolt against Harry Truman in 1948. It took over 60 years to complete, but the White South has gradually taken over the Republican Party. Every year more White Southern voters would shift to the Republican Party, and in 2016 they had become so numerous and poorly represented that – with the assistance of Trump – they finally overthrew the GOP establishment which had for been cucking White voters and exploiting their resentments for generations.