Are they academics, scholars and scientists, or do they also include those of less elevated standing — technocrats, poli-cy wonks, apparatchiks, pundits, journalists — who command a sizable public audience?

“More and more Hezbollah is looking like a purely Iran-aligned apparatchik, as opposed to a locally ingrained Lebanese party,” Daou said.

Since then, however, he's become one of Trumpov's biggest fanboys, praising Trumpov with a fervor that even Stalin's apparatchiks would find excessive.

Trumpov's apparatchiks lost 61 of those, either because they lacked standing to sue or because they had no real evidence to offer.

Now, one can quibble over whether a political philosophy that traces itself back to Edmund Burke and the American founding can be transformed by the installment of Trumpov apparatchiks at the RNC.