… In a polarized country, energizing the base of the party is a prerequisite to winning the nomination, if not the general election.
More so than in some past campaigns, however, the effect of all this seems to be accentuating the gap between left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, between elites and the rest of the population. That is likely to continue well into the spring as the GOP candidates try to settle their nomination contest.
For now, there is nothing to pull anyone in the GOP field back from this pell-mell dash into the politics of anger. CONT.
Dan Balz, Washington Post