ABSTRACT
The Republican Party has been categorized as a mainstream, conservative political party for decades. But many of the frontrunners in its 2016 primaries are pushing conservatism to its extremes, making the question of whether the party itself might be(come) far right increasingly relevant. The real problem of the GOP today is that Donald Trump is not just a far right outsider, who has infiltrated a mainstream right-wing party, as the establishment is desperately trying to tell you and most mainstream media continue to confirm. The success of Trump is in many ways the product of a decade-long radicalization of the grassroots and cadres of the party and, consequently, Trump represents the party at least as much as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell or failed establishment candidate Jeb Bush. The problem for the GOP is that Trump is not the only major candidate whose core beliefs are at odds with liberal democracy, in particularly minority rights.
