I am watching the presidential race this year with horrified fascination. And a glimmer of hope — at the failure of the GOP donor class to line up the voters behind its preferences. Let me be up front with you: I think we need an anti-establishment candidate, and I am neither thrilled nor panicked by the thought of Trump in the White House.

Understand, I believe that Trump could win a general election against either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, and become a thoroughly mediocre, unprincipled president: one who grows the government, enriches his friends and punishes his enemies — just like Richard Nixon, whose conservative talk was belied by his statist, cynical policies. Trump also would probably appoint unreliable people to the U.S. Supreme Court, since his pro-life promise isn’t worth the pre-nup it’s printed on, and he even said as recently as late August that his sister Maryanne Trump Barry — a U.S. circuit court judge who has advocated aggressively for late-term partial birth abortions — would make a “phenomenal” Supreme Court Justice, “one of the best.”

However, I have far less confidence than some that Rubio, Bush or Kasich would wage a tough fight in the Senate to get real conservatives confirmed. That’s not part of the establishment playbook, as Ted Cruz pointed out in the first GOP debate.

And I do agree with Trump, and with the much more principled, disciplined, and civic-minded Cruz, that the Republican establishment has run the party into a quagmire. The three “respectable” candidates still with a chance at the nomination are hard to distinguish from Bernie Sanders on the most critical issue facing voters: the irreversible transformation of America via mass, low-skill immigration.

Mark Kirkorian of National Review is right that lax immigration policies should be a deal-killing litmus test for any conservative candidate. If a president supports bad policies on eminent domain, or imposes stupid tariffs that raise the price of Androids, or is “too soft” on Putin’s Russia, such policies can be reversed, if not by him then by his successor.

But allowing in many thousands of orthodox Sunni Muslims, and millions of Latin Americans with no experience of honest democracy or the free market, and a cultural fondness for free-spending big government … that can’t be easily reversed. That changes the country, in a more fundamental way even than Barack Obama’s policies.

I once burned many bridges to nowhere in 2011 by writing that “Amnesty Equals Abortion,” since newly amnestied voters were very likely to follow the political preferences of their civic leaders, cousins and “community organizers” by voting for pro-abortion Democrats — whatever their personal opinions about abortion. So if you supported amnesty, for whatever high-minded abstract reasons, you were also supporting legal abortion and a long list of other left-wing causes in cold, political fact. I stand by that assessment.

You would also be supporting big government. We have a higher percentage of foreign-born residents in our country than we have since the 1890s. What we don’t have that we did have back then is large, empty states looking for homesteaders, exploding industries hungry for unskilled workers and a brashly self-confident culture that demands they assimilate. We do have a welfare state ready and eager to turn migrants into clients. As late as the 1920s, up to one-third of immigrants from places like Southern Italy found the sink-or-swim, free market system in America too uncongenial, and went back home.

That will not happen now, in an America with HUD housing, food stamps and affirmative action programs that privilege amnestied illegals over white male Gulf War veterans. A welfare check in America will be more attractive than a grunt job in Guatemala or Syria, so under the current system a lot of those folks aren’t going back. Ever. Do you want 5 or 10 percent of the electorate to favor sharia, while another 20 percent are enamored of Latin American socialism? If so, then support policies and candidates who have long supported loose immigration policy and even amnesty. There are plenty of options, from both of our major parties. Indeed, Donald Trump himself supports a “touchback” amnesty that rewards illegal immigrants and lets them cut the line to gain citizenship.

Meanwhile, I hope the field stays crowded with establishment candidates, splitting the establishment vote long enough to give voters time to weigh and compare anti-establishment Donald Trump to anti-establishment Ted Cruz, and consider which one is really in accord with timeless, truthful conservative principles, which one adheres to our Constitution and is sincerely public-spirited.

And while the commentariat watch and wait, in a year of insurgent politics, it is probably best not to dismiss as rubes, bigots or fools the large plurality of voters, in both parties, who are rejecting the status quo. In 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, the Republican party nominated “safe” establishment choices. The GOP lost all but two of those races — and its leaders learned from that experience … absolutely nothing.

This year, thanks to social media and freer political speech (in the wake of Citizens United), the peasants have found their pitchforks. Republicans had better stop posting memes from Idiocracy and laughing off Trump’s voters, whose anger is real and legitimate, if tragically misdirected. We need to understand and answer it, respectfully and responsibly. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Not Going Away – so Now What Do Conservatives Do?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.