January 19, 2016 --

Imagine that Donald J. Trump is not blocked from getting the Republican presidential nomination at the party's national convention in Cleveland, July 18 to 21. How will the country's elites -- formerly known by radical leftists as "the ruling class" -- respond?

Presently, the Democrat nominee is likely to be either Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernard Sanders. LPR would not be surprised -- should events cause Ms. Clinton to end her campaign-- if another Democrat candidate emerges to challenge Sanders (and Martin O'Malley, if the former Maryland governor stays in the race).

Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren come to mind. Biden is 73; Warren, at 66, is only 20 months younger than Clinton, 68. Trump is 69 and Sanders, at 74, is the oldest of the Democrat and Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination.

(LPR does not see California Gov. Jerry Brown as a presidential candidate if Ms. Clinton drops out.)

Perhaps an anti-Trump campaign will urge members of the electoral college to cast their ballots for SOTT (Someone Other Than Trump.) This would mean, probably, that the Twelfth Amendment would get considerable attention in the anti-Trump media. This amendment provides the procedure by which presidents are elected. As Vice President Gore learned in 2000, victory does not go to the candidate with the largest popular vote. It is the electoral college vote that counts.

Alternatively, a leading media voice -- a front page editorial in The New York Times? -- could urge House Speaker Paul Ryan to draw up articles of impeachment against Trump. LPR is not certain Ryan would object to this move.

(If Trump were impeached in the House of Representatives and convicted in the Senate, his vice president would become president. But will anyone agree to run as Trump's vice president? Is it unconstitutional for a president to campaign without a running mate?

Again, please see the Twelfth Amendment. If the electoral college cannot decide on a president, the matter goes to the House of Representatives. If the House does not elect the president, under the Twelfth Amendment, "the Vice-President shall act as President." This would suggest that the electoral college can independently elect a vice president. If the electoral college does not name a vice president, the matter goes to the Senate.

However far-fetched, it would be possible for the Senate to give the country a vice president who becomes president if we don't get action from the electoral college or the House of Representatives.

A radical -- literally -- scenario comes to mind. The likelihood of a President Donald J. Trump, deemed "illegitimate" by a host of media leftists, prompts critical comment by revisionists about the founding of the U.S.A. Op-ed columns suggest that what the Founders did on July 4, 1776 was, essentially, no different from what Rhodesia did, November 11, 1965, issuing a unilateral declaration of independence ( UDI) from Britain. The op-ed writers assert that the American Declaration of Independence was no less unilateral than Rhodesia's UDI and, therefore, equally impermissible.

President Obama is urged to send a message to the Her Majesty Elizabeth II to apologize for the actions of the anti-government populist malcontents on July 4, 1776, and to ask the Queen to resume her sovereignty over the Crown's former 13 American colonies, naming as governor-general of the renamed United Colonies of America such person as she deems appropriate(perhaps the former president, Barack H. Obama).

The Queen will also be asked to bring the matter before the United Nations to determine the disposition of the lands in the former United States that were outside the territory of the 13 colonies.

An op-ed column might suggest that the UN establish a Special Commission on the Disposition of the Former United States of America (UNSCODOFUSAS) consisting of Britain, Spain, France, Mexico, Japan, and Russia. The column would conclude by noting that such disposition, among other things, would resolve immigration issues in the former USA, if, regrettably, disposition would also mean the return of Putin-led Russia to the North American continent.