The 112th Congress soon unfolded as a case study of what David Frum, an adviser to the former president George W. Bush, described as the growing and in his view destructive influence of the Republican Party’s “radical rich.” The “radicalization of the party’s donor base,” he observed, “propelled the party to advocate policies that were more extreme than anything seen since Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign.” It also “led Republicans in Congress to try tactics they would never have dared use before.”
