I think Trump hurt Republicans. Billionaire grabbing headlines with no real evidence or information to add.
People are worried about things that directly effect them. The economy, for example. This was a big distraction and voters considered it in 2008. They voted for Obama anyway.
When did the Constitution become a “distraction”?
The economy is mostly going to hell and we have millions more people out of work in just the last few years. And thr public appears to have re-elected bHusseinO anyway. So the economy didn’t determine the election. That he lies about so many things (including his very identity) also didn’t determine the election. Perhaps we are now in a post-constitutional society and the post-Christian society he likes so much. But Trump’s raising the identity and constitutional issues did inherently also raise the veracity gap issue. In prior times, the public would have been concerned with all of these matters. But we found out that, just like his miserable anti-business, anti-achievement economy with its accelerating joblessness, the public (largely, anyway) didn’t care anymore. Trump played a useful part in bringing this out for us,albeit this isn’t the result he (or I) foresaw. Trump didn’t succeed the way he wanted, true. But we learned something. Alas we are, as they say, in deep doodoo. We now have the kind of politics the people want, it seems. Pray for America.