But let me stop before I stumble too deep into the swamp of the inconsistent, the implausible, the dangerous and the ill thought-out that makes up so much of Trump’s platform. After all, there’s not much point. Trump’s policies shift by the day and within the day. They serve mainly as props to help him sell himself to GOP voters. If he does win the Republican race, the snake oil will be reformulated as he attempts to outflank Hillary Clinton (and the best guess continues to be that it will be Hillary) and close a deal with the whole country. Never consistently a man of the free-market Right (far from it, in fact), Trump might try to do this by putting together a package of policies designed to locate himself in some respects to her left (a degree of protectionism and a less interventionist foreign policy are, of course, not bad places to start), and, more generally, as more of a CEO-pragmatist than some of his zanier pronouncements might suggest. That’s not quite as absurd as it might sound, but it wouldn’t work. His disapproval ratings have, like his psyche, gone past the point of no return. According to an AP-GfK Poll in early April, 70 per cent of Americans, including close to 50 per cent of Republican voters, have an unfavourable view of Trump. If the Donald is the GOP candidate, he will lose. The only question then will be how great the damage to the rest of his party will be. The adjective “appalling” will do nicely. The Senate would be lost, and probably the House of Representatives too. As for the longer-term consequences for the party that “chose Trump”,  well . . .

At the time of writing, Trump has just won his home state of New York to give himself a comfortable, if not overwhelming, lead over Texas senator Ted Cruz in the delegate race. He looks set to have the largest haul of delegates when the Republican convention opens in Cleveland in July. It’s a lot less clear, however, that the Donald will secure the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination in the first round of voting. If he misses that target by more than a small number of delegates there’s a non-negligible chance that he could be defeated in the subsequent round, or rounds, of voting that follow by the clever, (very) conservative Senator Cruz. When it comes to “delegate wrangling” (yes, that’s the term), Cruz is playing an increasingly impressive ground game. He has, by default, and in the absence of a credible scenario in which someone could ride in as a white knight, become the establishment’s candidate, a remarkable turnaround for a lone wolf not greatly  loved by his GOP colleagues. Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, has ruled himself out for the knightly role and no more plausible candidates have come forward.

But even if Cruz wins the nomination, the Republicans will still have a Trump problem. Trump is rich enough and — a notoriously sore loser — he’d be angry enough to mount an independent run as a spoiler. Under this scenario too, the White House, the Senate and, possibly, the House would be won by the Democrats. Even if the Donald retreats to sulk in (or heckle from) Trump Tent, Cruz may struggle to lure Trump’s hordes back into the fold. The harder line Cruz has taken (how strange!) on immigration in recent months won’t hurt his efforts and nor will tribal dislike of Hillary, particularly if she continues to run to the left (and, pressured by Sanders, she will) of her husband.

If he recaptures those voters, Cruz will have a shot (and the GOP could fare better in the down-ticket contest). But the odds are against him: the polls favour Clinton over Cruz. Now does not feel like a conservative moment, and Cruz, a hardliner and — a pastor’s son — very preachy at times, will find himself under a sustained attack that will cover territory familiar from previous elections, but which may derive additional force from the harm that Trump has done to the Republican brand, notably with women and Latinos.