… Mr. Trump blurs the left/right ideological divide, combining extreme views on issues like immigration with more moderate positions on others like Social Security and Medicare. He’s pulled this off by bypassing the American party system (with few exceptions, the G.O.P. establishment has not supported Mr. Trump) and substituting a kind of populist nationalism for conservative ideology. …
Advanced democracies typically have parliamentary systems in which incumbent legislators ultimately choose the chief executive, preventing the rise of Trump-like outsiders from within the major parties. But several populist-nationalist candidates have made it quite far in Europe and Latin America with appeals that scramble traditional party alignments and ideological divides. CONT.
Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth), New York Times