Kristin Olsen, who until 2016 led the Republican caucus in California’s state assembly, surveyed the wreckage of the recent midterms in her state and came to a bitter conclusion: “The Grand Old Party is dead,” she wrote in an op-ed.
Olsen, 44, told NBC News that Republicans had already struggled to adapt to a changing state, but the “division, hostility, vindictiveness, and lies” coming from President Donald Trump’s White House was a knockout punch. …
“It was the revenge of the Never Trumpers in the House,” said David Wasserman, an elections analyst for Cook Political Report and an NBC News contributor and senior analyst with the NBC Election Unit. CONT.
Benjy Sarlin, NBC News