As primaries roll by and the midterms approach, it’s worth remembering that for Republicans 2016 represented an opportunity more than a victory. It was a chance for them to help the country break the 30-year-spell the Clintons and the Bushes cast, President Barack Obama notwithstanding.
It was also a chance for rank-and-file Republicans to replace an insulated, often feckless, party leadership that had elevated its own interests over everyone else’s. With their fixation on the person of President Trump, most Democrats don’t understand that for Republicans, taking the party back is part of a larger intellectual and political project. It’s also a big part of what’s at stake in this year’s midterms . . . Read the rest in the New York Times.