I literally lost count of the number of times I was told over the past 14 months that "they" would never let Trump be the Republican presidential nominee. Who exactly "they" were was never specified, but I assumed it to mean the Republican Party establishment — the party's elected officials, major donors and professional consulting class. The belief — right up until Trump squashed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) like a bug in the Indiana primary May 3 — was that the establishment would sort this whole thing out, that the Trump fever would break and order would be restored.

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What Rauch rightly notes is that the establishment had been rendered toothless long before the rise of Trump. For all of the backbiting and blame-gaming that went on following Trump's seizure of the nomination, there was absolutely nothing the establishment could have done to stop Trump. The establishment had no clothes, politically speaking. And it had been naked for a while.

Think back to last fall. Even as Republican establishment types were insisting privately that the whole Trump phenomenon would surely blow over before Iowa and New Hampshire voters kicked off the voting process, something was happening on Capitol Hill that exposed just how powerless they really were going to be in stopping the real estate executive.

John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped down as speaker of the House, chased out of the job by a tea-party wing that saw compromise as capitulation. In the days following Boehner's surprise announcement, conventional wisdom soon cemented: Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) was the only person who had anything close to the votes to succeed Boehner. It was presented as a foregone conclusion.

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Until, of course, House Republicans met behind closed doors. And McCarthy couldn't get the votes — or anywhere close. How could this happen, everyone asked. McCarthy was the clear establishment pick! And the rebels didn't even have a candidate of their own! What did it all mean?

The answer — then and now — is simple: The political carrots and sticks — fundraising, earmarks, etc. -- that the party establishment long used to keep its more rebellious elements in line had either been eliminated entirely or deeply diminished in efficacy. (Boehner sealed his own fate when he led an earmark ban as one of his first acts as speaker in 2011.)

Without any way to punish or reward their own members and, by extension, the party's rank and file, the Republican establishment was just another group within an increasingly fractious GOP. And it was a group that, when it came to its commitment to governance — compromise and all that jazz — was deeply out of step with the party base. The party base had long resented "Washington Republicans" but had always been kept in line by the political cattle prods wielded by the establishment. With those prods gone, there was nothing stopping the party base from exacting its revenge.

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And the establishment was effectively bringing a knife to a gunfight. The likes of former Florida governor Jeb Bush or Ohio Gov. John Kasich pleading for the base to be reasonable and understand that what Trump was promising simply couldn't be achieved was totally ineffective — especially in the face of Trump's "be stronger, tougher and better" pitch.