The GOP’s Crump Cancer

[kpete]

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are two faces of the same phenomenon—the rise of conservative populism with a mean streak—empowered by the GOP’s purge of the center-right.

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Because Cruz and Trump do not represent different visions of the Republican Party so much as different manifestations of the same kind of conservative populism that gets weak-kneed watching a strongman preach with fact-free certainty from the right side of the “us vs. them” divide.

These Crump voters see incivility and inexperience as political assets. Their candidates are proudly dividers rather than uniters, channeling white populist anger at undocumented immigrants and Muslims as well as President Obama. Amid the emotional blurring of church and state, social-issue litmus tests have moved so far right that libertarians need not apply. The Crump coalition constitutes a majority of the Republican field right now. And they can’t win a general election.

The rise of Cruz and Trump are symptoms of a larger problem in the GOP, a problem of their own making. Because the Republican Party systematically purged its center-right, it doesn’t have the ballast to withstand Wingnuts anymore.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/03/the-gop-s-crump-cancer.html?via=desktop&source=twitter