The pundits and political professionals of Washington, DC have never had a very good understanding of the Republican party. They hate its conservative and populist elements, and they only know how to evaluate the prospects of those elements using irrelevant criteria, like a chess club judging a basketball team – only it’s the political right that’s more cerebral than the dead center.

It doesn’t matter how many times the conventional opinion is dead wrong. The Republican right was supposed to be humiliated, broken and vanquished for good after Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964. And then again after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace a decade later. Donald Trump, of course, was totally unelected in 2016. And after the way he left office in 2021, there was no chance he’d ever come back.

The story permanent Washington is telling itself now is that MAGA is over. Trump is a lame duck and the congressional GOP is headed for a wipeout in November. Trump’s coalition is shattered by the Iran war. J.D. Vance is obviously going to lose in 2028 –he probably won’t even win the Republican nomination. If the party had any brains, it would get behind Marco Rubio right now. He’d still have no chance in a general election, but at least Republicans would lose intelligently.

The GOP is much more unified and focused than the Democrats are, with a clearer sense of its agenda

The GOP is much more........

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