A little over ten years ago, the same postmortem was being written for the Democrats. These things are cyclical, more often than not, saddled as we are with only two viable/relevant parties at any given time. Moreover: the Democrats certainly haven't recently shown themselves to be very good at "circling the wagons" in mid-term years or in gubernatorial elections, nor of organizing a lot down-ticket support outside of 2008.
I nonetheless do agree with Julio that folks like Boehner and Graham represent a better "path to viability" than uber-obstructionists like Ted Cruz, who'd rather blow up the government than govern. It's an act that gets old, I think, even with voters and legislators whose convictions are similar (but who can hear the word "compromise" without recoiling in abject antipathy). I'd argue that, in no small part, Trump's ascendancy is a suppuration of that fetid boil of frustration—though obviously I think a calming salve would've been a better course of treatment than Mr Drumpf's violent, polemical lance.
Again, I'm old and have somewhat of an historical perspective on this and I've seen more political party postmortems than the Sunday obituary pages. Republicans in 1964, 1974, 1992, and 2008. Democrats in 1968, 1980, and 2000. The press always plays this card and they are playing it now with the Republicans, which is kind of odd because Trump could win. Democrats are obviously having some of the same internal issues about the direction of the party and if Hillary (or Sanders) were to lose to Trump, the press would have to do a 180 and explain why six months later, the postmortem meme leaped to the other side of the spectrum.
The problem that has continued apace is that the vast middle in the American electorate has lost interest--nay become cynical--in and about the political process. Politics isn't a product. It's not like going to Starbucks and ordering a venti vanilla half shot latte with sprinkles. You don't go into the voting booth and say "I'm only voting for pro-choice, anti-gay, fair play for Cuba, anti-animal testing, cut the capital gains tax candidate and if he or she isn't there, I'm not voting."
The genius of Trump is that he has rejected all of that and is painting with a very broad brush. Political correctness isn't a domain of just the left. Every tribe has its definition of what is and what isn't in the accepted nomenclature and judges participants within that realm. Trump said "Eff that" and won. I think that is partially due to the Republicans' overweening laser focus on social and cultural issues. Right or wrong, I think most Americans see a majority of those issues as something to be handled within the confines of each individual household. The people Trump brought to the party are concerned about bread-and-butter issues and we can argue long and hard as whether their concerns are legitimate or unfounded, but Trump saw early that the middle class's current view of the world centers on the economy.
In a normal political year, the Republican race would have probably boiled down to Bush v. Cruz. Bush was Trump's first casualty. For not being surrounded by political insiders, Trump's instincts have been solid from the get-go. He recognized Jeb as the guy who had to go for him to have any chance to ascend. Cruz' ground game was fantastic, but it really only dealt with those already in the sphere of the party. What Obama did in 2008 was expand Democratic participation with his ground game. Cruz solidified (and I mean really solidified) what was already there in terms of Republicans that were zeroed in on social and cultural issues. What is odd is that in this era of slicing and dicing the population into pigeon-hole-sized particulates to be swayed by micro-messages, Trump's large (I mean YUGE) theme worked.
weso, first, I agree that Hillary also has a water pistol in trying to deal with the Donald. I was using an analogy that I believe was complimentary of Cruz' organizational skills, but how those skills didn't apply in a paradigm different than the one they were designed for. I could have used, "Cruz was playing checkers while the Donald was playing chess" or "Cruz brought a knife to a gunfight" or something on that order. Sorry if that offended.
As per the question of who ruined things, Cruz or those who detest him, one could argue, and I believe persuasively, that Cruz defined himself in such a way that it was bound to offend a ton of influential people and the way he went about it was going to generate blowback. For a guy who knows his Bible, I guess Cruz totally forgot the "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" verse. He should have listened to Wet Willie's "Everything that 'Cha Do (Will Come Back to You)" before hitting the campaign trail. It's kind of like this:
I don't want people to get me wrong. I'm not sanguine as November approaches. I think the country is still on the tracks (it's never really ON the right track, is it?). Challenges ahead both domestically and internationally. One can make arguments, some of them convincing, that we need major changes in how we handle a number of issues. As a committed incrementalist, I shy away from most-macro efforts. I have come to believe we are a center-right country that occasionally has center-left hiccups. I think the last thing the country needs right now is a President (and Congress) that deviates too much from that script. From the current crop, I think Jeb would have been a decent President. I had no real problem with Kasich. On the Dem side, I think Hillary will be a steady hand if elected. President Trump will run the country like a television show. The script will depend on the overnights. We have, until recently, been a country run on compromise. The Constitution itself is a compromise document. Hopefully, we can regain that spirit.
