I trust you all know what 'bootless' means in this context. If my trust is misplaced, 'bootless' has not to do with footwear or the lack thereof. It means useless, ineffectual.
Boot's column ends on a spiteful note:
That is why I join Will and other principled conservatives, both current and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in November. Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.
This is childish rage at not getting one's way. It is like biting off one's nose to spite one's face.
No principled conservative could want Democrats in power, especially now when it has been made abundantly clear what they have been aiming at all along.
One conservative principle here is that no nation can exist without enforceable and enforced borders.
Either Boot rejects this principle or he does not. If he does, then he is no conservative. If he does not, then we ought to conclude that he thinks that the principle is something to talk about and write about, but not act upon. For when a man comes along with the will to act on the principle, Boot and the Beltway Boys get their bow-ties in a knot and shrink back in horror at the man's boorishness and lack of class.
Suppose that the Republican Party is destroyed like postwar German and Japan. Who will rebuild it? Jeb! Bush? Boot, like George Will, has lost his mental balance.
Early in the piece, Boot characterizes the party under Trump as "white-nationalist."
What is the reasoning here?
Perhaps it goes like this. Trump stands for the rule of law and therefore a secure border. He opposes illegal immigration. Now most of the illegal immigrants are Hispanic. Therefore Trump is a racist. He has no Constitutionally-grounded reason to secure the border. He just hates Hispanics and considers them all to be criminals: rapists, drug smugglers, human traffickers, etc. Not only does he hate Hispanics; he hates all 'people of color.'
And so he is a "white-nationalist!"
The truth, however, is that Trump is an America-Firster. This has nothing to do with "white nationalism" or 'white supremacism' as I explain here.
Finally, there is the business of the Supreme Court. The bootless Boot presumably would have preferred Hillary nominations to the high bench.