Donald Trump has been outthinking the Republican establishment for months. Last spring and early summer, he may not have anticipated that his utterly undisguised nativism but otherwise indecipherable political program would be embraced by so many in the base, as well as the base's periphery. Yet when his peculiar brand gained an electoral foothold (which was immediate), Trump boldly exploited it for everything it was worth — and then some.
He's been brilliant at playing the populist game, recognizing, as he has, that boldness translated into vulgar recklessness is a principal element of effective demagoguery.
His most brilliant move, however, is only now upon the establishment. Once again he is several moves ahead of the party's thinning wise men, who are still trying to comprehend merely the rules of Trump's game — which, mirabile dictu, are undergoing a cutting permutation. As the establishment absorbs or at least attempts to absorb how Trump got to where he is, he is already moving on — more brilliantly than ever.
Yesterday, in a CNN interview, Trump mused that "the establishment actually is against me but really coming on line because they see me as opposed to Cruz, who is a nasty guy who can’t get along with anybody." Here, the ostensible target of Trump's wrath — the immeasurably nasty Ted Cruz — is, in large part, a throwaway line. Cruz is going down, and Trump is but mopping up. The latter's much deeper intent awaited: "Look, at a certain point, we got to make deals."
What's Trump doing? — that is, really doing? He is attempting to co-opt the very establishment that is belatedly plotting to confront and destroy Donald Trump as a unified force. He's playing both sides, both black and white; he's maneuvering the establishment's deal-making "pragmatists" off the board before they can coalesce against him. He is solving the establishment's "unity problem" by becoming the establishment itself, suitably repackaged in Trump's anti-establishment brand.
Look, or so The Donald is saying to the wider field of rank-and-file Republicans, you don't need a Chris or a Jeb or a Marco or John — the disfigured faces of the old, disordered establishment — since the broader establishment is already "coming on line" for me. I'm the anti-establishment establishment guy who can "make deals" once in the Oval Office; moderate, cooler-headed, pragmatic conservatives need not worry, for they need no alternative to Trump.
In short, Trump is using the establishment's disorder against it, and he's doing so preemptively. He's not waiting for Jeb and Enemies to hang themselves separately; he is eliminating (attempting, anyway) even the basis of their continued reason for being.
Had the establishment's bickering stumblebums come together as a unified force months or even weeks ago, they could have preempted Trump's present maneuver. Instead they scattered and opened wide and allowed for The Donald's co-opting adjustment — which is positively brilliant. He is modifying his vulgar recklessness at just the right time: days before Iowa and New Hampshire, then South Carolina, all of which could pretty much cinch this thing. And the disordered establishment will, true to form, never quite know what hit them, because, even truer to form, they never saw this coming.