The Dog Days, and until last week, they haven’t been kind to Donald Trump. Polls then said he’s trailing Hillary. Even the honest ones. That’s in key battleground states. The MSM have toiled like good little propagandists since the Democratic National Convention to deliver a death of a thousand cuts to The Donald. The #NeverTrump rump continues to add theirs. It’s curious watching the Kristols, Ericksons, and Shaprios in league with the Washington Post and New York Times. Trump hate and fear makes for unholy alliances.

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” as the late Dandy Don Meredith used to warble on Monday Night Football; that’s when one or the other team was being hosed. The MSM wants to snooker voters into believing that the game’s over -- in what amounts to the 1st quarter. Or barely the second. But there’s a lot of game left and sound polling points to game on; Hillary’s lead is thin. In fact, post Labor Day is when the game really revs up. This thing may be decided by a field goal. 

What does the #NeverTrump rump think the practical consequences are of downing The Donald? That’s post November, if any of them care to think ahead.

Why, blissful, threat-removing triumph. A vivifying restoration. Joint custody of the narrative… for the GOPe and “movement” conservatives. 

Yes, a restoration for the GOPe. Jeb, who was maliciously cut down before ever getting to assume the throne, gets his chance again. Unless Prince Paul Ryan waylays him. But palace intrigue is better than contending with Trump the Usurper.

All those unruly voters who flooded Republican primaries and caucuses to side with The Donald? Gone with the wind -- or so chastised they’ll knuckle under, voting Republican as atonement.

Freed of the Donald, Speaker Paul Ryan can limelight his DC think-tank maunderings, pushing big government reform (government will still be bigger, but gently improved). Ryan can cooperate with Hillary (because focus groups still insist that’s what Americans want). With Jeb doing the old rah-rah, Ryan will legislate for compassion -- making downtrodden illegals, legal, and opening the gates to Syrians and Muslims, period, because, gosh darn it, “religious tests” are un-American.

But unfettered trade with the Chinese is American, apparently. Flooding the PRC with dollars that helps build its war machine is just red, white, and blue American. The GOPe will once again publicly sport U.S. Chamber of Commerce pins and, along with Silicon Valley titans, extol the advantages of cheap handhelds. Blue collar and Middle Americans will need to keep adjusting. Maybe Speaker Ryan will devise a newer, better retraining and relocation tax credit? You know, with a snappy tag, like the “Bootstraps to Heaven Initiative.” That sounds like nice conscience-cleansing fodder for a presser. Plus, hourly wage jobs grow like weeds on the coasts. So move.

Then there are the aforementioned movement conservatives (puritans, actually), who guard conservatism’s chastity as if it’s a proper Salem lassie. Trump, the cad, the mountebank, has one thing in mind: despoil conservativism. Make the good girl, bad. Conservatives who support Trump -- the cad’s soulless pimps.

The apostles of puritan conservatism huddle together, virtually screeding and hashtagging, pouring forth envenomed rage, awaiting an Apocalypse that surely will usher in a constitutional convention, where modern day Washingtons, Adamses, and Madisons lead us back to that Golden Time.

Utopians, those folk. How dare hard realities and gritty-gray choices get in the way? Hillary is bad, The Donald is worse, and they’ll protest both with ballots for Gary Johnson -- or they’ll just write-in Paul Revere.

Say, though, that Trump loses in November. There’s no status quo ante. No return to the clubby center-ring slapping matches between the GOPe and puritan conservatives -- matches that have been practically ritualized and rendered vacuous over the years.

2016, a Rubicon of sorts, will have been crossed. Those bestirred millions for Trump aren’t going to melt away; they aren’t beating their swords into plowshares. They aren’t repenting, lapping up the collected wisdom of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan. Nor making a National Review subscription a must. No pilgrimages will be made to Kennebunkport. They aren’t going to flock to Monticello, there to genuflect in front of busts of Jefferson.

No, Trump, win or lose, represents a game-changer. There are many possible analogies; none satisfactorily capture the moment entirely. Perhaps World War I offers a clue. The world going into the “war to end all wars” wasn’t the same as the world that came out of that war. That old world, with its old rules, would never be again. Victory for the allies was pyrrhic; defeat for the Germans was humiliating. A second deadly war was practically inevitable (leastwise, in hindsight).

A Trump victory offers a pathway, not a resolution -- not short or midterm, at least. President Trump will have his chance to forge a new nationalist-conservative majority. But let’s not kid ourselves. The success or failure of “Trumpism” depends on many different factors. A nation roiling now with competing values, interests, factions, isms, beliefs, ideologues -- left, right and center, God-based and godless, will continue to roil. A new America, for good or ill, won’t emerge for a time, and the struggle getting there promises to be cruel.

For all those narrow and deluded minds among the #NeverTrump rump -- by their own reckoning -- a Trump win bodes ill for you. But a Trump loss promises only that the fight continues and ratchets up, matter of fact. The passion among the millions coming out for Trump isn’t going away -- and, best bet, that passion ain’t going your way.