When populism exploded again with the 2008 financial collapse and TARP bailout, the next generation of Republican leaders — led by Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan, the self-named Young Guns — took the Gingrich playbook and ran with it, exploiting and fueling populist anger at the political establishment and the new black president to take back power.
The theory was that a deliberate strategy to make all government action in Washington look disastrous, whether by stopping legislation or delegitimizing the process and its products, would work against the party in power: the Democrats. Scandal politics, which vaulted Gingrich to prominence in the first place, could be hyped and exploited; see Benghazi. The “birther” movement was not explicitly embraced by party leaders, but it was encouraged; it was an indirect way to criticize the “African” president while also, incidentally, vaulting Donald Trump to prominence in the political realm.[…]
At first, the assault on government worked, at least electorally. Just as the Gingrich strategy brought, in 1994, the first Republican majority in the House in 40 years, the Young Guns and establishment leaders’ strategy resulted in a huge Republican majority in the House in 2010 and then a Republican majority in the Senate, and gains to solidify the House majority in 2014.
But the risks of the cynical game were becoming apparent. To the populist Tea Party voters whose anger had carried the GOP to those majorities, the promises made to them by these leaders — that Republican majorities in the House and Senate could bring Barack Obama to his knees, repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and blow up government as we knew it — were starting to appear hollow. Whether through weakness or perfidy, the Republican establishment, by stirring up the base and fomenting rage among its voters, did betray the trust given it by those voters.
At the same time, having worked to demonize the president as illegitimate and not loyal to America or American values, every subsequent compromise made by GOP leaders to keep the government open or to pass policy was by definition working with the enemy.
All these forces created a massive backlash against the Republican Party leadership. From the beginning stages of the presidential nomination process for 2016, 60 to 70 percent of Republicans in polls opted for insurgent or outsider candidates, with 20 percent or less for insiders and establishment figures. In the end, the only two viable contenders were Ted Cruz, whose calling card was calling his own leader, Mitch McConnell, a liar on the Senate floor — and Donald Trump.
