The current moment in the Republican Party is summed up well by a quote from Teresa Cosby, a Furman University political science professor, on former governor (and current GOP presidential candidate) Nikki Haley’s role in removing the Confederate flag from South Carolina Capitol grounds: “It’s just going to score her points with people who want the Republican Party to return to some normalcy. But how many of those groups are left in the Republican Party?”
I’ve been thinking about this question for quite a while now. It’s relatively easy to see which elected officials and Republican elites are in the return-to-normal camp and which are not. It’s much less clear where the potential Republican electorate sits. I’ve been crunching loads of survey data over the last few months, and I’ve generally concluded that the potential Republican voters split roughly evenly into three camps: non-cons, normie-cons, and disaffected leaners. CONTINUED
Natalie Jackson, National Journal
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