There aren’t many people who foresaw the Trumpocalypse, but here’s Steve M. from April 2011:
But can’t you see him magisterially propelling himself into an Iowa state fair, or down a main street in small-town New Hampshire, in a motorcade of Escalades? And are we really sure that couldn’t work — winning the nomination, by being the macher, the mack, the big pimp?
[….]The folks who moan that we’re on “the road to serfdom” — don’t they really want to be the serfs of rich guys like Trump?
I just don’t know. I’ve always heard that campaigning in the early states was an exercise in humility — the pigshit on your Gucci loafers at the Iowa state fair and all that. But is it different now on the right? Does the base want to prostrate itself before a plutocrat overlord, and not hold him to the same standards as mere mortals?