DAVID BROOKS:

Well, I happen to figure the Republican Party is in a moment of cataclysmic darkness. But it's in a moment of pre-revolutionary moment that we'll probably have a cataclysm in the fall for the party, and then there'll be a moment of ferment where all sorts of different people begin to speak — trying to speak for the party and we'll have a scientific revolution, and then some new party will have emerged in five years. But I suspect it won't be Donald Trump because there is no there there, there's no policy there. There is Trump the personality but when he goes away, that's gone.

What interests me about what he presents to the party that could last is a weird mixture of pessimism — build a wall, pull in American roles abroad and optimism.

When you talk to the Trump supporters, they like the optimism, "Make America Great Again", you can't believe how great we're going to be. And so, there's this weird mixture of fear and hope that he embodies as a person.

The other thing I'm thinking about is the next six months. We've seen in the last week or last day in training fire on Lindsey Graham and on Jeb Bush. He has great ability to train fire on people. That's going to be focused on Hillary Clinton for six months.

What is that going to do to our politics? What is that going to do with the way she reacts? What is that going to do to the American psyche to have probably a level of personal viciousness that we actually haven't seen before because he does erase all the rules? That's going to have some permanent effect on the divisions within this country and probably at least in the short term not for the better.