Could Donald Trump Break the Republican Party?

Jeff Greenfield: “The most striking examples of party fissure in American politics have come when a party breaks with a long pattern of accommodating different factions, and moves decisively toward one side. It has happened with the Democrats twice, both over civil rights… In 1948, the party’s embrace of a stronger civil rights plank led Southern delegations to walk out of the convention… Twenty years later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace led a similar anti-civil rights third party movement that won five Southern states.”

“In two other cases, a dramatic shift in intra-party power led to significant defections on the losing side. In 1964, when Republican conservatives succeeded in nominating a divisive champion of their cause in Barry Goldwater, liberal Republicans (there were such things back then) like New York Gov. Rockefeller, Michigan Gov. (George) Romney, and others refused to endorse the nominee… Eight years later, when a deeply divided Democratic Party nominated anti-war hero George McGovern, George Meany led the AFL-CIO to a position of neutrality between McGovern and Nixon—the first time labor had refused to back a Democrat for President.”

“Would a Trump nomination be another example of such a power shift? Yes, although not a shift in an ideological sense. It would represent a more radical kind of shift, with power moving from party officials and office-holders to deeply alienated voters and to their media tribunes.”