Suddenly, there are three strands of the Republicanism, each entrenched and vying for supremacy in 2016. Ted Cruz is the leader of the traditional conservative purists. Marco Rubio is emerging from the mud of a multi-candidate brawl to lead the once-dominant, now diminished, mainstream lane of the GOP.
But it is Trump’s new alliance of angry populists that is ascendant — and on the precipice of dominance.
Built on the backs of working-class men and women who feel abandoned, economically and culturally, Trump’s coalition has both brought in new voters and carved out support from the other two. Trump won over evangelicals from Cruz in South Carolina, and even more resoundingly again in Nevada. He then took moderates from the mainstream in New Hampshire and Nevada en route to landslide victories in three consecutive states.
“What Trump is consolidating is the people who are unhappy being in either camp — those who don’t see themselves as conservative insurgents or as mainstream Republicans,” said Yuval Levin, an influential Republican thinker and editor of the quarterly conservative journal, National Affairs. “They’re insurgents but they’re not conservatives. And they’re not happy with the system that gave us that binary choice.”
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