From The Big Empty:
Peter Dreier via The American Prospect:
When this election is over, he will seek to reconstruct the remnants of his campaign, which he has increasingly referred to as “our movement,” into a political force that will make the Tea Party and Fox News look tame, leveraging the media savvy of Ailes and Bannon, and the financial support of right-wing billionaires like hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer. Whether they can motivate and mobilize Trump’s hard-core supporters into an effective political movement is an open question. But surely they will utilize their new media empire to provide Trump with a public stage on which to act out his ego-driven fantasies. He will seek to settle scores with his many enemies, including Republicans who refused to support him, withdrew their support for him, or (like Paul Ryan) failed to fall on their swords for him.
I don’t think so. Donald Trump hasn’t the attention-span necessary to sustain a movement. He’s repeatedly demonstrated that he cannot resist getting bogged down in petty squabbles with his detractors, keeping the focus sharply on him and not on issues that may affect his followers.
In the absence of any kind of impending victory, such as a presidential win, his followers will slowly but surely tire of his self-absorbed behavior and recognize that he picks fights not for their benefit but only to feed his own insatiable ego. Trump needs to win arguments, and he does so not by reasoning, not by presenting detailed facts, but by trashing his opponents with personal insults and shaming.