The 2013 autopsy was another example of what losing parties are supposed to do in democracies: adapt to changes in the electorate. Concerned about the GOP’s mounting electoral vulnerability in the face of a changing society, national leaders like Mehlman, Steele, and Priebus tried to steer the party off the racialized path it had embarked on in the 1960s. But much of the Republican base—the local leaders, activists, and reliable primary voters who dominate the party’s grassroots organization—was radicalizing, and it was pulling the party in another direction.
