Since 1980, when Ronald Reagan said that "Government is the problem", nearly two generations of conservatives have been indoctrinated with that cynical, corrupt philosophy which the GOP gladly embraced.
Today, the Republican front-runner is a political neophyte running on a hate-based platform of demagoguery. The speaker of the house recently resigned from both the speakership and congress, apparently in order to prevent further chaos in his party by the extremists. And the Republican base is so distrustful of the party leadership that when they began to, rightly, call Donald Fucking Trump out as a fascist, his poll numbers actually increased.
Although Trump's candidacy may ultimately fizzle out, the divisions within the party will not. If Trump does find that he's gone too far for the party to tolerate and makes an independent run, as he's threatened, no one will be able to put Humpty back together again.
For all of Trump's immense and unjustified ego, he is no politician and has no chance to be president, and he doesn't have the inclination to build any real movement among his supporters. He will gladly leave the smoking remains of the party to return to business.
Ted Cruz, though, is angling for leadership of the extremists. His refusal to attack Trump, and the fact that he is currently number two in the polls, suggests that he is waiting for Trump to self-immolate so he can step in as the true leader of the extreme right.
Cruz may or may not realize that he is too extreme to be elected president, but if he's playing a long game for control of a party of his very own, he couldn't be better placed.
I have no sympathy for the Republican Party or its leadership. They gladly embraced the extremists in order to win elections. The tea party, birthers, racists, science-deniers, and right-wing scum of all pathologies have found a home in the GOP that they could never have had in moderate America.
The fact is that the Republican Party, in terms that they might possibly understand, has sown the wind. Harvest time is near.
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