The conventional wisdom turned out to be correct when it came to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, but was utterly destroyed when it came to the Republicans.
The result is the most remarkable electoral phenomenon in our nation's history--where someone who has never held public office of any kind became the nominee for president of one of our two major parties. It's as if Ronald Reagan had gone straight from Bedtime for Bonzo to the White House, without the Goldwater speech, two terms as governor of California, the insurgent challenge to Gerald Ford, and all those editorials on politics in between (with appropriate apologies to both Reagan and Bonzo).
Contrary to popular perceptions, and as Charles Krauthammer recently noted, Donald Trump's victory had little to do with a backlash on the part of Tea Party conservatives against a Republican Congress that failed to deliver conservative results.
If Trump is a conservative (a dubious proposition at best), he was also clearly the least conservative among the large field he defeated in the primaries and will be by far the least conservative nominee of the GOP in the modern era. This would be a strange outcome for those finding Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan insufficiently right-leaning.
Rather, what Trump had in lieu of conservative credentials was instant name recognition and celebrity status at a time when the lines between politics and entertainment were being increasingly blurred. A fertile environment was being created for an American-style caudillo with a full-blown "personality cult."
That and saturation media coverage (Trump has been nothing if not good copy), a split GOP field that allowed him to win crucial early contests and gain momentum often with less than 35 percent of the vote and, perhaps most importantly, a fatal underestimation of his candidacy by the other contenders, who expended their ammunition against each other rather than him until it was too late, on the assumption that they would be the one to pick up the pieces when his amateur-hour campaign and foot-in-mouth tendencies caused him to implode.
There was, with respect to that last element, a certain poetic justice in seeing Ted Cruz and John Kasich try to form a common front out of desperation at the last minute, only to then bow out within 12 hours of each other after getting annihilated in Indiana.
More than any of this, though, what best explains the unlikely triumph of Trump is the extent to which the man and the historical moment came into alignment.
Trump's take-no-prisoners populism arrived at a time when a good chunk (we'll see how big a chunk in November) of the citizenry had become fed up with the direction of their country. They sense that something had gone wrong, and they weren't necessarily wrong to feel that way.
Along these lines, so many of the Trump supporters I've encountered share similar characteristics--they are hardworking folks who obey the law, play by the rules, and pay their share of taxes. They give a lot more to the surrounding society than they take from it and they believe their country is swirling down the toilet bowl.
They have similar grievances, too--they see criminals in their cities given free rein while the police are demonized, millions of able-bodied Americans going on fake disability at taxpayer (their) expense, and illegal aliens streaming unimpeded across the border as their leaders, those otherwise entrusted with upholding the law, look the other way (because one party sees in this stream cheap labor, the other potential voters).
And they become angry when they're called bigots and racists for complaining about such things. They feel that their interests are being ignored and that they are being screwed over by those running things.
In Trump they found their champion, because no one else would play that role.
That Trump says what he thinks even before he even thinks it turned out to be no disqualifier either; rather, more of an asset in an age when professional politicians so carefully trim their sails after putting wet fingers to the air. His actual positions on the issues, which change by the day, don't matter because what he is selling is bravado and toughness, and those he is selling it to don't care a whit that the details don't make sense and the numbers don't add up.
Finally, Trump had the great good fortune to have the perfect enemies--the more we denounced him and pointed out his unfitness for high office, the more we validated his fans' idea of him as their savior under siege.
But let us not forget what this all means, as one by one the GOP establishment bows down to kiss The Donald's ring--the Tea Party is gone, so too the "supply-siders" and the Christian Right. And the RINOs and the neo-cons as well.
In the end, Republicans have only themselves to blame--Trump didn't cause their demise; he simply, in typically opportunistic fashion, took advantage of it.
Political parties don't last forever, and our country's party of limited government, individual liberty, and free markets is no more. RIP.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 05/23/2016