News item dated May 13, 2016: “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Fox News Friday that all of his policies were just ‘suggestions’ that were subject to change once he actually became president.” Trump’s comment came in response to a question from a Fox reporter about an apparent backtracking on his proposed ban on Muslim immigration. “It was a suggestion,” Trump said in reply. “Look, anything I say right now – I’m not the president. Everything is a suggestion, no matter what you say, it’s a suggestion.”

If I were a Trump voter, or potential voter, I would be concerned – very concerned.

A lot of Trump enthusiasts, probably the majority, were drawn to the stump Trump they saw on TV, or heard in person in raucous rallies across the country. He was bombastic, he was politically incorrect and he was proud of it. He told it straight and to blazes if some found him objectionable. Sure, there might be a few covert racists, closet nativists, or underground isolationists in the crowd, but most were energized by someone who, finally, in their minds, spoke to their sense of patriotism and their fears and aspirations. Someone unsullied by the cesspool they believed Washington had become.

They wanted that “in your face” Donald Trump to become president, and turned out in their millions to make it so.

The question is whether or not they can be satisfied with “Trump Lite,” because the signs are that’s what’s coming down the pike.

The opening moves in the great pivot from primaries and caucuses to the general election have begun. Of all the moving pieces, the most important is the incorporation of the Trump forces into the Republican Party, or vice versa.

There may be some holdouts in the GOP for whom Trump is anathema, but the likelihood is the marriage, shotgun or otherwise, will take place sooner rather than later for the simple reason that Trump and party desperately need each other.

Trump needs the legitimacy and respectability of the Republican brand. As importantly, he needs to shore up what was a weakness in the spring campaign, the absence of a nationwide ground game. The Republican national organization can provide that.

The party desperately wants to hold on to control of the House and Senate. For that to happen, they need to have a competitive race at the top of the ticket, with a reasonably close outcome. A landslide would be a disaster, so you can expect the party to go all out. Should Trump happen to win, so much the better. A calculation has been made that the party of Lincoln will survive Donald Trump, and the country probably will as well.

There will be a price to be paid by the candidate, however, and the reckoning has already begun. Paul Ryan, speaker of the House, as well as other GOP luminaries, have dangled promises of eventual support if only The Donald would tone things down a bit, and reassure them that he is on board with more mainstream Republican positions on the issues.

Publicly floating the idea that everything he has said to date is only a “suggestion” and subject to change once elected is toning things down on a grand scale.

Sad to say, this isn’t the Donald Trump with whom the Trump folks fell in love. Anyone who attended any of the those rallies knows that building the wall, deporting the illegals, keeping out the Muslims – making America great again – were not “suggestions.” They were promises – a binding pact between the candidate and the faithful, not points subject to negotiation.

Moreover, how long can The Donald preserve his outsider status if he has to enter into a partnership with the very insiders he so excoriated during the primaries as the crowds cheered?

Bottom line, the President Trump you get will not be the Candidate Trump you love.

Can Trump supporters handle this, or are they going to feel like they have been had? Perhaps they should follow the advice given by The Who many years ago: “Get down on (your) knees and pray … we don’t get fooled again” because there is a fair to middling chance the closing lyric could also be apropos: “Meet the new Boss. Same as the old Boss.”

Might be worth giving it some thought now, or run the risk of buyer’s remorse later.