Is This the End of the GOP?

Rick Perlstein, who has written groundbreaking books on the rise modern conservatism, told Slate that Donald Trump may be remaking the Republican party.

Said Perlstein: “If there’s one thing that I thought I knew, it is that basically the ideas and the institutions that were born through the Goldwater movement were a backbone of this conservative takeover of the Republican Party. Donald Trump is perhaps most interesting in his lack of connections to that entire world. The first sign that something very different was happening was when he basically rejected Fox News, threw them over the side, and had no interest in kowtowing to them.”

Ron Brownstein: “Like a previously undiscovered earthquake fault, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is threatening to fracture the Republican electoral coalition along new lines. In the process he could disrupt both the demographic and geographic alignments that have defined previous races for the GOP nomination—and scramble the assumptions of his rivals about the coalitions they believed could power them to victory.”