A week of tumult within the GOP signals a transformation, but to what?
The Republican Party came into 2015 in enviably good shape. Not since the Roaring Twenties had it elected so many members of Congress, and it had never controlled so many state legislatures. Its presidential field was the strongest in memory and the most racially diverse in history. Democrats, meanwhile, were led by a second-term president and his aging would-be successors.
Then came a topsy-turvy summer of presidential politics led by the unexpected popularity of Donald Trump. And rather than fading away as many predicted, the political climate has led to an even more tumultuous autumn: Just in the past week, onetime rising star Scott Walker dropped from the presidential race and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped down. Both were undone by forces from within.
Boehner’s final act was an attempt to stop conservatives from triggering a shutdown fight over the defunding of Planned Parenthood. That has been put off, but only for now. Approval of the GOP-led Congress is in the teens, even among the Republicans who voted for it. People who have never won elections — billionaire Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina — command higher support than the rest of the GOP presidential field put together and share an ability to force unwelcome topics into the news cycle.
All that is clear at this point is that the Republican Party is undergoing a volatile transformation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-week-of-tumult-within-the-gop-signals-a-transformation-but-to-what/2015/09/26/999384dc-63c2-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines
A party that does not know what it wants.
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