This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on March 21, 2016. With a con­tested Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion as the most likely out­come this un­likely primary sea­son, Re­pub­lic­ans are try­ing to cal­cu­late what it would mean to have Don­ald Trump at the top of their tick­et. Polling at this point shows Hil­lary Clin­ton trail­ing John Kasich by an av­er­age of 7.4 points, Marco Ru­bio by four points, and ef­fect­ively tied with Ted Cruz. But Clin­ton beats Trump by 6.3 per­cent­age points. A good case can be made that Trump is pos­sibly the only Re­pub­lic­an who can’t beat Clin­ton. Con­sider the ef­fect on GOP Sen­ate and House ma­jor­it­ies. A Trump-led tick­et would be dis­or­i­ent­ing for Re­pub­lic­ans. Just as the Demo­crat­ic Party has been trend­ing more lib­er­al since Pres­id­ent Bill Clin­ton left of­fice 15 years ago, the Re­pub­lic­an Party has been mov­ing to the right just since Pres­id­ent George W. Bush left of­fice just over sev­en years ago. Not long ago, many con­ser­vat­ive Demo­crats in Con­gress were fur­ther to the right than many lib­er­al Re­pub­lic­ans. But that ideo­lo­gic­al over­lap has dis­ap­peared. Each of

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