NYT: G.O.P. Gave Voters a Greater Say, and They Said Donald Trump.
The closer Donald J. Trump draws to winning the Republican presidential nomination over opposition from party leaders, the more his detractors ask: How can this happen? There’s no singular answer. One part of the explanation lies in the modern evolution of presidential competition, another in the special talents of Mr. Trump, and a third in the contours of the 21st-centuryRepublican Party. Today, voters across the United States take their influence over presidential nominations for granted. As recently as 1968, however, just 15 nominating contests were held, in which the rank-and-file selected convention delegates.
The Atlantic: The Great Republican Revolt: The GOP planned a dynastic restoration in 2016. Instead, it triggered an internal class war. Can the party reconcile the demands of its donors with the interests of its rank and file?
White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for—the Republican Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts. They are pissed off. And when Donald Trump came along, they were the people who told the pollsters, “That’s my guy.” They aren’t necessarily superconservative. They often don’t think in ideological terms at all. But they do strongly feel that life in this country used to be better for people like them—and they want that older country back.
Politico: Trump shatters the Republican Party: How the 2016 primary will define the GOP for years to come.
. . . it is Trump’s new alliance of angry populists that is ascendant — and on the precipice of dominance. Built on the backs of working-class men and women who feel abandoned, economically and culturally, Trump’s coalition has both brought in new voters and carved out support from the other two. Trump won over evangelicals from Cruz in South Carolina, and even more resoundingly again in Nevada. He then took moderates from the mainstream in New Hampshire and Nevada en route to landslide victories in three consecutive states.
“What Trump is consolidating is the people who are unhappy being in either camp — those who don’t see themselves as conservative insurgents or as mainstream Republicans,” said Yuval Levin, an influential Republican thinker and editor of the quarterly conservative journal National Affairs. “They’re insurgents but they’re not conservatives. And they’re not happy with the system that gave us that binary choice.”
The New Republic: The Republican Party After Donald Trump: Conservatism is only doomed if its leaders insist on being radicals.
One way or another, the Republican Party is about to rupture—the only question is from which side. If Donald Trump wins the GOP presidential primary, as he’s heavily favored to do, he will drive some unknown, but large, number of regulars from the party. If Republican officials manage to wrest the nomination from him for nearing but failing to reach the threshold required to win outright, he will bolt, and take some unknown, but large, number of supporters with him—either into a third party, or into a protest movement that haunts the actual GOP nominee and creates an air of illegitimacy around him.
