Trump's Faction*

Indiana has spoken and Ted Cruz has suspended his campaign. Barring an awesome surge by John 'The Postman' Kasich, Donald Trump will take the GOP prize, for better or worse.

According to some, it will be the worser part: a northeastern liberal with a Dear Leader complex rivaling the Kims of North Korea, will become the new face of the party of Lincoln.

Well. As one who cannot be accused of being a Trumpster, I am here to advise everyone to calm down. The Trump Faction is not something new in Republican politics, nor is it unconservative. It is instead a strand within conservatism that has largely been abandoned by Republicans over the last decade.

The strand can be broadly categorized as patriotism, a positive pride in America, it's founding and its continuing importance in the world. It is a muscular loyalty to ''My Country 'tis of Thee'', the sense of triumph in ''USA, USA, USA'', and a basket of little reflexive social norms like the requirement that politicians must wear flag lapel pins.

This patriotic strand of Republicanism is so strong that it fairly leaps off the pages of some reputable social science studies, which indicate that any association with things like the flag or 4th of July parades will significantly influence people to vote Republican. Clearly, patriotism is not just a strand of Republicanism, but the strongest, most durable brand it has among the people at large.

What would cause the Republicans to abandon such a positive brand? Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular: there has been a fullscale assault on American patriotism from the Left, arguably beginning when Barack Obama tried to go without a flag lapel pin in the 2008 primaries. He failed to pull it off, but the Democrat's continued the fight nevertheless in the ensuing years, branding, ceaselessly branding, every display of patriotism as nationalism, Naziism, and/or xenophobia.They have been so successful that in many instances the display of the flag itself has been banned as some sort of Hate crime.

And thru all of this, the Republicans have been silent, acquiescent, as they have been on so many other Obama agenda items, unwilling to engage and fight for this most basic of American societal values: loyalty to this Country. Thus, the opening for Trump: to pick up on a major inflection of the body politic that crosses all traditional interest groups, men, women, blacks, conservative, liberal, young, old, middle, etc, etc, et al.

So, Trump is not some nascent demagogue, tapping the populist anger of a mob; he's just an opportunist, feeding the patriotic fervor of a people starved by their 'leaders.'

So, what to do? Stick to our principles and be loudly and unapologeticaly American, and we can both steer a Trump Presidency through the gate of liberty and limited government, and bring the people back to an America we can all be proud of once again.

And don't give up, don't ever give up.

*For a similar but not identical take, see also -Trump’s Faction by Henry Olsen, National Review Online.