Most observers saw Trump as a radical break from the Republican Party’s traditions and narratives. Ornstein saw him as the logical next step for a party that was transforming itself, its institutions, and its leadership into vessels of revanchist rage. Conservatives were choosing, again and again, the path of maximum confrontation and disruption, rallying behind the voices that promised to go where their predecessors hadn’t, to speak the words that had previously been whispered, to embrace the tactics that had once been shunned. Trump wasn’t a break with this Republican Party. He was the most
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