Matt Lewis: “I grew up with (and signed on for) Reagan’s version of conservatism. In recent years, I have become disenchanted—not with the intellectual philosophy of Edmund Burke or the governing philosophy of Ronald Reagan—but with what passes for conservatism today.”

“The 1980s, for a set of historical reasons, was a time when conservatism had real intellectual credibility. Not only was Reagan a decent man, his conservatism was (without having to market it as such) compassionate. I thought this was a culmination, that conservatism had outgrown the earlier extremism and kookiness that existed before I came of age. But what if it was an aberration?”

“If I were coming of age today and my example for conservatism was based on Donald Trump, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, would I sign up? I can’t imagine that I would join that cause. Should this trend continue, it’s going to be increasingly hard for Republicans to attract thoughtful, compassionate, and even sane supporters. If that happens, not only will the GOP become progressively whiter, older, more rural, and more male, it will also become…weirder.”

“It’s like a fire. Fires are a part of the ecosystem, part of the natural progress. And when the forest burns, it’s purified. There can be new growth. For there to be new growth of a conservative movement, of a right center party, the one that I joined in 1988, it needs to burn to the ground.”

— Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, talking about the Republican party on MSNBC.

Peter Enns, Jonathon Schuldt and Adrienne Scott: “The key to our analysis was to divide Republicans into three groups: those who say they identify strongly with the Republican Party; those who identify as Republicans but not strongly; and those who call themselves independents but say they lean toward the Republican Party. These distinctions, often obscured in media coverage, are important because research shows that the strength of a voter’s partisan identity has an important effect on their political attitudes.”

“Among strong Republicans, Trump’s overall approval rating is 93%, with 78% ‘strongly’ approving of the president. The problem for Trump, however, is that these voters make up less than half of the Republican electorate — and 18% of likely voters.”

“Among the larger number of Republicans who identify less strongly with their party, Trump is much less popular. For example, Trump’s overall approval rating among not-so-strong Republicans is 72%, with 38% saying they strongly approve. Thirty-four percent say they only ‘somewhat’ approve of Trump. Those numbers are similar among independent-leaning Republicans.”

“To be sure, having reservations about the president doesn’t mean Republican voters will abandon their party and vote for Democrats in the autumn. But it does raise the question of how much Republican congressional candidates can count on those who ‘somewhat approve’ of Trump.”

“The RNC is sending a warning shot to major GOP donors not to play ball with the powerful Koch political network, escalating a fight between President Trump’s allies and the Kochs,” Politico reports.

“The move follows a weekend retreat in Colorado at which Koch network officials criticized the Trump administration, hinted they would work with Democrats, and announced they would not help a Republican candidate in a key 2018 Senate race.”

“President Trump’s tight grip on the Republican Party is being openly challenged by the powerful network of ideological conservatives linked to billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, splaying out long-simmering tensions over the party’s future just months before the midterm elections,” the Washington Post reports.

”The Koch network pointedly declined to endorse Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016. But this latest feud — following last weekend’s gathering at which Koch-affiliated officials sought to distance their operation from Trump — has exposed the rift between a president pushing his party toward populism, and establishment Republicans espousing the long-standing policy of free trade.”

Playbook: “The Koch network is getting a lot of ink for standing up to Trump and saying it won’t dole out big campaign checks in certain races this cycle. But, it’s not like they are going to support a bunch of Democrats and really put any effort into changing the political makeup of Congress.”

First Read: “Two things can be true: More Republican voters than ever approve of Trump’s job performance, according to the latest NBC/WSJ poll. And on a variety of issues — tariffs, immigration, Trump’s dealings with Russia — we are seeing Republican lawmakers breaking from the president on key policies and issues. And that’s no small thing.”

“Of course, in the summer and fall of 2016, Republicans were busy distancing themselves from Trump (over the ‘Access Hollywood’ video, the attacks on the Khan family, the attacks on Judge Curiel). And it all worked out for Trump and the GOP.”

“But you always want to be more unified — rather than less unified — heading into an election.”

A new CBS News poll finds that 49% of Republicans say that hearing criticisms of President Trump on the Russia investigation only makes them want to defend him more. Another 42% say they want to wait to see what the facts show.

Seventy percent of Republicans call the Russia investigation a “witch hunt,” while 77% of Democrats call it a “critical” matter of national security.

With 101 days left before the midterm elections, the Republican National Committee wants to test the strength of its ground game with a “national week of action,” Roll Call reports.

“The committee expects 4,000 volunteers to make 2 million contacts over the week.”

“We’ve gone from being the party of Jeb Bush Republicans who can win everywhere and over perform in Democratic areas to the party of red hat Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel and QAnon. Who thinks this is going to end well?”

— A Republican political operative, quoted by the Tampa Bay Times.

Charlie Sykes: “As Donald Trump extends his control over the Republican party, American conservatism has entered a pseudo-Orwellian stage where weakness is strength, appeasement is toughness, lies are truth, and ‘America first’ means ‘blame America first.’”

”The fiasco in Helsinki, where the president openly sided with Vladimir Putin over his own country’s intelligence agencies, was not a one-off for this president but rather an exclamation point on what has happened to the American right.”

”For me, as an outspoken conservative for the last four decades, the experience has been vertiginous. On one issue after another – from Russia and free trade to corruption and the rule of law – Republicans have adjusted their principles to conform with Trumpism, which often means with Trump’s latest glandular impulse.”