I strongly recommend Mark Steyn's brilliant and hilarious new column about attending Thursday's Trump rally in Burlington, Berniestan (his phrase), Notes on a Phenomenon, (Steynonline, January 9, 2016)...not least because it confirms many of my own observations after attending another Trump rally, also in supposedly hostile territory, back in November!

Among many insights, Steyn offers this:

[I]f, as some of the dottier rumors suggest, the Republican establishment is planning to run third-party if Trump gets the nomination, it's not clear how much of the state apparatus they'll be taking with them. "If Trump were the nominee, the GOP would cease to be," declares Michael Gerson. The state legislators and volunteers present on Thursday would disagree. [Link in original, emphases added]

And:

It's assumed by the GOP establishment that once the field narrows Trump will bump up against his natural ceiling. I think the opposite is true. Trump has essentially sat out these stupid ten-man TV debates and then resumed his rise once they're over. If it came down to a four- or three- or two-man race, the man I saw on Thursday night would be a formidable debate opponent. And I don't doubt he could hold his own against Hillary. [Emphasis added]

I agree, but Steyn has an MSM career to protect and this is brave.

Another section of Steyn rang a bell:

For many conservative voters, 2014 was the GOP's last chance, and they blew it. For those conservative voters whose priority is immigration, 2016 is America's last chance, and Trump's the only reason anyone's even talking about that. [Emphases added]

See Ann Coulter's column Voters Are Giving You One Last Chance, GOP (November 12, 2014) and, of course, Adios America!

So three very different writers think very much alike on Trump. How interesting that all of us, at different times, have been extruded by National Review (Steyn, Coulter, moi).