Back when I was teaching political science to first year students at the Air Force Academy, one of the lessons centered around how one might describe and understand the two major political parties in the United States. Simply put, because of our winner-take-all system and single-member districts, third parties are doomed to insignificance, unless they are able to subsume or otherwise push one of the two existing major parties out.

That last happened way back in 1854, when the Whig Party dissolved and the new (then liberal) Republican Party rose to fill the vacuum. The passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the last blow for a political party already falling apart. Northern Whigs joined the new Republican Party, largely over the issue of slavery, while southern Whigs joined the American Party as well as the Constitutional Union Party.

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The last elected Whig president was Zachary Taylor, elected in 1848. When he died, that fireball of presidential energy, the great Millard Fillmore, ascended from the vice presidency to the White House. Fun Fact: in 1846, Abraham Lincoln ran for U.S. Congress as a Whig and won, and served a single term in the House.

The Whigs never elected a national leader again. We had some interesting minor party names during the next few decades, such as the Free-Soil Party, the Know Nothings (my favorite party name), and there were still a few “Democratic-Republican Party” members running around.

But fundamentally, after 1850 it was down to just the Democrats and the Republicans. But parties evolve, and over the next hundred years or so, the Republicans slowly shifted to a center-right party, while the Dems became center-left. And even though the Dems are a far older party, dating back to Jefferson, the Republicans got to calling themselves the GOP: the Grand Old Party.

Then came Donald Trump.

What makes the Trump GOP so very different is to the most extreme degree ever seen in a presidential candidate, let alone a president, his insistence on the party becoming a cult of personality. He follows many of the tactics of classic cult leaders, such as telling his followers that only he speaks the truth, and if anyone claims something is a fact, it isn’t, actually, until Trump blesses it.

Inaugural crowd the biggest in history? Sure, even though photos from the National Park Service show a far smaller crowd than previous presidents. News organization counting your lies? Tell the people the press is the enemy, only trust me. A press organization actually publish documentation of 30,573 Trump lies while in office? Trump just laughs because he knows his base will claim fake news.

Trump is also following the path of many tyrants, in that he is getting his family and closest buddies to take over the formal operation of the Republican Party. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is co-chair of the Republican National Committee, with many additional family members and long-time friends involved as well.

Heck, just yesterday it was announced Trump’s youngest child, Barron, whom the press has scrupulously kept out of the limelight, jumped into Trumpian politics when he was named, along with most of his siblings, to be delegates at the upcoming Republican National Convention. Remember the pasting Bill Clinton took when he, while president, appointed Hillary to lead the national health care effort? He was excoriated by Republicans for what they claimed was horrible nepotism. I guess that standard has gone away.

Which brings me to yet another disturbing story up at Colorado Politics. While Colorado’s most idiotic representative, Lauren Boebert, embarrasses us before the entire nation for mostly non-political reasons (e.g. trying to avoid House metal detectors and then refusing to show the contents of her purse), there is an even more embarrassing person in that body, in the form of Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

A few days ago, Greene tried to get yet another Republican House speaker kicked out of his leadership role. Now, the current speaker, Mike Johnson, is no Boy Scout. He has proudly been a Trump acolyte from the beginning. For example, he recently claimed, “We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable, we don’t have that number.” Why would he lie like that? He knows there is zero evidence of any significant voter fraud in recent elections. But as Trump has declared, absent any proof, 3 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted in 2016, Johnson had to fall in line with his Trumpian overlord.

Greene was unsuccessful only because the Dems decided to cover Johnson’s back on the vote (he kept his job by a vote of 359-to-43). And what was the crime Johnson committed, in the eyes of the 43? Well, he cooperated just a little bit with Democrats on a funding bill that funded more border security and provided critical military aid for Israel and Ukraine. Heck, Greene even offered an amendment to zero out aid to Ukraine, and happily lost that vote by a wide margin.

But are you old enough to remember a time when the GOP was anti-communist? When the then-Soviet Union was an “evil empire?” As an ICBM launch officer early in the 1980s, I can tell you the people picking nuclear targets were anti-communist.

Today, the GOP has fully embraced Vladimir Putin as a great leader to be admired and respected, all while he murders journalists, opposition leaders and others. Yet the Trump cult just calls that being a strong leader. I can’t imagine the past great leaders of the Republican Party would be too thrilled with this turn of events. I can’t think President Ronald Reagan would be pleased by the Putin adoration.

There will come a time, after Trump leads the GOP to major losses this November, the more thoughtful leaders of the GOP will long for the “G” to be meaningful again. I surely hope so.

Until then, stay tuned.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.