Radical Republicanism

The Republican party has disappeared. It has been replaced with Radical Republicanism.
To be sure, the GOP has been slowly withering away but the process became more noticeable in 2008, when presidential candidate Sen. John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

That historically ill advised and catastrophic choice heralded the promotion of ignorance as a means of political advancement. Years later, GOP presidential primary candidate Rick Santorum would accuse Barack Obama of "elitist snobbery" and "hubris" for promoting higher education.

On the backs of people like Palin, the Tea Party radicals took over Congress with a simplistic, uninformed message: government is wrong. All government. No compromise.

Nevertheless, they thrived.

They changed the GOP. More, they kicked John Boehner out and became the GOP.
The "small government" party is now the "anti-government" party. It came in with a clear plan: paralyze government, make sure it doesn’t work. Then turn around and say ‘See, I told you government doesn’t work’. It worked.

The GOP was not able to defeat Barack Obama at the polls, but opposed him at every step of the way, every initiative large and small. Governing the country was no longer the goal. Opposing Obama became their only defining and uniting characteristic. They successfully paralyzed government, blamed Obama, and wildly took over in 2016.

To the establishment Tea-publicans chagrin, those tactics enabled Donald Trump, not one of their own, but for now they're allies. The idea that being ignorant and against everything was a viable path to power proved itself right.

So, we are now in the hands of radical Republicans and a intellectually null President who have no idea what governing is. They only know how to rail against things, be it Obamacare or the immigrants. Their solutions solve nothing and screw most. Once the poor lower middle class that voted them in gets tired of being screwed over, these heralds of radical Republicanism will be kicked out. Until then, brace yourself for a nasty, scary ride.