In a recent NR, I argued that a lot of Republicans associated with either the tea party or the establishment (and yes, I understand these terms are imprecise and prone to abuse, but they’re still useful) are too invested in their fight with each other to understand or respond to Trump’s rise. Today’s Washington Examiner report from David Drucker, “Republican insiders plot post-election party overhaul,” is a depressing reinforcement of the thesis. The insiders depicted still think everything that has gone wrong for the party is a function of conservatives’ having had unrealistically high expectations and the party apparatus having stayed out of primaries.
On that second point, the insiders are being revisionist:
In 2010 and 2012, Republicans took a hands-off approach to their primaries, letting locals determine the candidate field and allowing the primary campaigns to play out naturally.
They were rewarded with flawed candidates in Nevada, Delaware, Missouri and Indiana that probably cost them a shot at winning the majority two to four years before they finally succeeding in doing so in 2014.
Oh really? I remember Republicans in D.C. during those cycles weighing in for Charlie Crist, David Dewhurst, Bob Bennett, Mike Castle, Richard Lugar, John McCain. In some of those races party leaders made the right calls, and in some of them they realized relatively quickly they were making a mistake and backed off. But this story where they had perfect instincts and were just too self-effacing to get involved is nonsense.
And there’s not a word here from any of the insiders about the fact that large numbers of Republican voters are indifferent at best to the party’s economic agenda. The storyline here is that what happened in 2016 is just a repetition of what happened in 2010 and 2012, and what happened then should be interpreted in the most establishment-friendly way possible.