Politics. How the Republican Elite lost its base...MUST READ.

via New York Times

Some conservative intellectuals warned that the party was headed for trouble. Republicans had become too identified with big business and the wealthy — their donor class. They urged Republican lawmakers to embrace policies that could have a more direct impact on pay and economic prospects for these voters: wage subsidies, relocation aid to the long-term unemployed, even targeted infrastructure spending. But much of the party’s agenda remained frozen.

“They figured, ‘These are conservative voters, anti-Obama voters. We’ll give them the same policies we’ve always given them,’” said James Pethokoukis, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “High-earner tax cuts, which people are skeptical of; business tax cuts, even though these businesses seem to be doing great. It didn’t resonate with the problems in their lives.”

And this.

While jobs in places like Buffalo were vanishing, Washington was coming to resemble a gilded city of lobbyists, contractors and lawmakers. In 2014, the median wealth of members of Congress reached $1 million, about 18 times that of the typical American household, according to disclosures tabulated by the Center for Responsive Politics. During the same year, real hourly wages remained flat or fell for nearly all American workers.

Ed McMullen, a public relations executive who worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation in the 1980s, watched the gulf widen between the Washington establishment and the working people in his home state, South Carolina.

“Thirty years later, the same people are sitting in Washington that I worked with, making a million a year, going to fancy dinner parties, and they’ve done nothing to move the ball,” said Mr. McMullen, who has joined the Trump campaign. “Therein lies the great chasm between the think tanks, the ideologues and the real world.”

This is a MUST READ article.

The concentration is on the White vote but I contend that the concerns extend across racial lines and that the biggest failure of Republican politics is to NOT understand those concerns (economic/security) AND allowing those concerns to be painted along racial lines.

Open borders hurts hispanics that are already here.  Free trade as its practiced hurts people of all colors.

The Republican party had a golden opportunity this election cycle but instead of bringing Trump into the fold along with his voters and then tilting toward reuniting with its base/expanding it, they're instead fighting to maintain the status quo.

This should have been an easy win.  Instead it will be a devastating loss.