Well, it's premised on a couple ideas. First, that there's a vicious cycle between Republican radicalism and Republican success - the more persecuted they feel, the more effective they become, and the more persecuted they feel, the more persecution they perceive from the left. Second, that Trump in 2016 reminded me a lot of early Italian fascist Gabrielle D'Annuzio, particularly with his lack of ideological mooring and incorporation of performance art into politics. So, I wanted to do something that would put him in that role more directly, with a Mussolini figure taking his ideas and using them to guide the state. As a journalist who used to be a Democrat, Podhoretz fits Mussolini's background as well as any contemporary American. Lastly, that the less democratic government actions seem, the more helpless voters feel about it, so removal of Presidents from office for reasons other than election defeat or retirement seem illegitimate, no matter how grounded they are in the letter of the law.
All of that would come together horrifically in a situation where, sometime in 85-86, some smoking gun surrounding Iran and the Contras gets exposed. I don't think Reagan would be impeached - any thorough investigation into him at that time would likely reveal his dementia, which would be used as an excuse for him to step down and retain some modicum of dignity. However, the success would galvanize Congressional Democrats, who would make life difficult for Bush, particularly with his shady CIA background. It'd be pretty easy for them to then win back the White House in 88, particularly with Trump being Trump, attacking weakness and moral relativism in both parties and weakening the Republican brand even further. Meanwhile, Republicans are outraged, since between Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, this makes 3 of their last 4 Presidents removed from office through means they find illegitimate. They become increasingly disenchanted with due process and the rule of law, seeing these as barriers to the ultimate expression of the will of the people.
Enter Norman Podhoretz, who turned on the left over Vietnam and other 60's excesses of the New Left (as he saw it). During the 80's he was critical of Reagan for not being tough enough on the Soviets, and, like most neocons, despises moral relativism as sapping America's will to fight evil abroad. This is why I said this was only tangentially related, since he's clearly a neocon and not a paleocon, but those aren't necessarily an ocean apart, except on foreign policy. Anyways, he campaigns by railing against the fecklessness and weakness of the Democrats, and even those Republicans who went along with the Iran-Contra investigation, and with Watergate, as false conservatives who looked the other way while evil triumphed. That gets him into office with an implicit mandate from the party to do whatever's necessary to crush the country's foes. From there, democracy withers.
