… One of the strongest pieces of evidence we have that Trump is facing a politics of disjunction is that the Republican Party was already in the midst of a civil war when he emerged on the scene. The fight between Tea Party and establishment Republicans eventually led to a debt ceiling crisis, a government shutdown, the defeat of the House Majority Leader and the resignation of the Speaker of the House. Trump’s entry into Republican politics didn’t seem to resolve that conflict; rather, it simply added a new group of combatants to the mix. The Republican Party’s civil war seems to have mutated, not ended, as a result of his candidacy. CONT.
Jack M. Balkin (Yale Law School), Balkinization