“Movements like this, with toxic and nasty stuff, have existed in one form or another, but they’ve been kept on the outer fringes of American political life. Now it’s command and control at headquarters,” said Peter Wehner, who was director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under George W. Bush.

“If the GOP fully becomes the home to the Breitbart and alt-right movement, it’ll cease to be the Republican Party as we’ve known it,” Wehner added. “There will be a huge crack-up beyond anything we’ve seen.”…

And there are some who believe that the current turmoil may be healthy for the party in the long run.

“The positive is that some blue-collar issues that needed to be talked about have come up. That trope that the GOP is the party of Wall Street has been exposed as pretty accurate,” said J.D. Vance, author of the new book “Hillbilly Elegy,” about white Americans living in or near poverty.

“How it all plays out depends on political leadership,” Vance said. “Will it get less racialized and more populist and appealing? Or will it become more like Breitbart? It all depends on how leaders adapt, and what’s ahead is really murky.”