Yeah . . . about that. I recall after Obama won the presidency in 2008 and leftists and the Left-ALLIED Mainstream Media pretty much HOWLED that his election signaled the second place status of the GOP in national politics for forevermore and the total end of the Conservative movement as anything significant, period; and then a month later the GOP absolutely shut down several of Obama's proposed policy bills in the Legislative Branch.
Then the Right shellacked the Dem Party in the 2010 mid term elections. Then after Hurricane Sandy and the MSM and Candy Crowley helped get Barack Obama re-elected the triumphant leftists and their Left-ALLIED MSM again howled that this signaled the end of the GOP in the nation as a serious political party and then a few months later came all those scandals of the Obama administration finally surfacing and, frankly, the launch of ObamaCare being a dismal disgrace and then once again the GOP waxed Dem Party rumps in the mid term elections.
So Donald Trump or no Donald Trump it's reasonable to assume that the GOP and the conservative movement will continue doing just fine.
Apparently you have not heard of do not understand what TrumpZilla is.
The right wing created the tea party monster in order to regain the support of their base after losing two wars and destroying world's economy . The base was rallied against all things liberal and especially all things Obama. What your party did to their base to create that monster was unamerican. Fear racism hate xenophobia were all used to turn a political party in a mob out for blood. That mob mentality lead to your GOP to electoral successes. But it had a cost because a mob can turn on anyone even the people that started it. You saw this when many of your senior party leaders were primaried out of office.
Over the years the party had taught the mob to disregard facts, reason, logic and common sense as liberal lies and bs from the elites . Now having trained the mob to ignore critical thinking has made it shallow and vain. So a loudmouth ill mannered celebrity type who spouts the rhetoric they have been fed for years is really what it was looking for in a leader all along. Not a Romney, they wanted another Palin type character again.
Along comes Trump he fits that bill. He has no problem with jumping on the back of the monster and becoming the voice of the mob. The tea party monster and the man are now one, TrumpZilla.
This happens just as your party wants to put the monster behind it and run a mainstream guy like Jeb. A guy who can get the Hispanic vote they'll need not to lose too badly to win the White House. But now your party faces being consumed by the fatal flaw in their original plan. They never figured out how to turn the monster off. And now someone else has control of it.
Their only hope to save the WH election is to defeat Trump . But so far none of the weapons they would normally use to get rid of a candidate works on TrumpZilla. They couldn't Swiftboat him with his McCain not a hero comment. They couldn't sand bag him at the debates. They can't rumor monger him to death like they've tried with Obama and the Clintons. They can't scandalize him with sound bites . They can't cut off his money or TV exposure. The only thing they have left is a video sting. Which has a high chance of backfiring if the party does not distance itself far enough from the act.
Now the worst thing of all just showed a sign of being possible. Instead of the party banding together to destroy TrumpZilla. Some Republicans are getting the idea that they can hop on its back and ride TrumpZilla to their own personal victories. Jeff Session just briefly jumped on its back and took a little ride along. If that happens on any larger scale the GOP will have a civil war for the very soul of the party on its hands. Only this time there can be only be one unanimous victor or two conservative parties in the end.