Ross Douthat: Bret, David, I’ve been given a rare opportunity by an obliging genie: I get to describe to our past selves in the autumn of 2016 — when we were all sure Donald Trump would lose in a landslide — what the Republican Party and conservatism look like eight years in the future. Here’s what I’m going to tell them.

Bret Stephens: Assuming the brace position, Ross.

Douthat: The 2024 Republican nominee, is even in the national polls, is favored to win in betting markets and is poised to win a bigger share of the African American, the Latino and possibly the youth vote than the G.O.P. has at any point in our lifetimes. He’s assembled a team of future leaders that includes the author of a 2016 best-selling memoir about working-class dysfunction, the electric-car hero Elon Musk, a former rising-star Democratic congresswoman who switched parties to the G.O.P., a scion of the Kennedy family and more. He’s moved the Republican Party to the center on entitlements, same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization — and he is trusted more than his Democratic rival on the economy, immigration and foreign policy. The main issue where he isn’t trusted, abortion, is a big debate only because a conservative takeover of the Supreme Court was so successful that Roe v. Wade was overturned.

I expect our 2016 Never Trump selves may be relieved to hear all this. Is there anything else I should mention to them?

Stephens: That, in assembling this admittedly intriguing new coalition, this 2024 nominee was responsible for a string of electoral losses — the loss of the House in 2018, the loss of the White House in 2020, the loss of the Senate in 2021 and the strong showing of Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections, which historically should have swung strongly to the G.O.P., save for some atrocious Senate candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Blake Masters in Arizona.

Also, a Republican Party that has abandoned many of the positions that attracted so many principled conservatives to it in the first place. For instance, a commitment to NATO and the defense of embattled democratic allies abroad. Or a belief, rooted in empirical evidence, in the economic benefits of free trade. Or a moral conviction that immigrants are a net positive for the country. Or a sense that civic health requires examples of moral leadership at the top.

And one more thing: that in 2024 roughly half the country sees the Republican Party not only as a challenge to their preferred policy positions but also as a mortal threat to democracy itself. If our 2016 selves thought the country couldn’t possibly be more polarized, suspicious, conspiracy-minded and furious, they are in for a rude surprise.