No one will ever mistake Donald Trump for a student of James Madison.
The real-estate mogul has demonstrated about as much familiarity with the U.S. Constitution as with the Bible, which is to say, none. Trump has captivated a share of the tea party with a style of politics utterly alien to the Constitution. In the year of Trump, the right is experiencing a post-constitutional moment.
This wouldn’t have seemed possible a few years ago. In 2010, the newly arrived tea party produced a class of constitutional obsessives like Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee who were focused not just on what government shouldn’t do, but on what it couldn’t do and why . . .
Trump exists in a plane where there isn’t a Congress or a Constitution. There are no trade-offs or limits. There is only his will and his team of experts who will figure out how to do whatever he wants to do, no matter how seemingly impossible.