David Brooks is, understandably, very unhappy with the state of the GOP. But how did things get to this point? What's the general theory of Republican rot? 1/ nyti.ms/2AG6xIi
Ezra Klein and I did a podcast the other day, not yet released, in which this came up. Both of us were well aware of political science about the difference in structure between the parties 2/ matthewg.org/papers/ideolog… 
But the days the GOP doesn't seem all that top-down and hierarchical; it's riddled with insurgencies -- except the insurgents are worse than the old corporate establishment. To put it bluntly: why do crazies rule on the right? 3/
Well, I have three theories, all or none of which may have some truth to them. All start from the premise that since the 1970s the GOP has indeed been a hierarchy ruled by big money, with a periphery of media organizations etc; but the top lost control. Then what? 4/
One story, which I identify with David Frum, focuses on the media machine the right created, which ended up supplanting the establishment: "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox" 5/ mediamatters.org/video/2010/03/…
A second story is "What's the matter with Kansas" gone wild. The old story was that big money ginned up popular support with cultural and racial issues, then used election wins to implement reverse Robin Hood. That's still happening -- but now the mob is running out of control 6/
Finally, there's an old line from John Stuart Mill, which is rude but arguably speaks to the nature of the Republican base. What sort of people watch Fox and think they're getting The Truth? What happens when such people lose adult supervision and get to set the agenda? 7/
What these stories have in common is that one way or another, the GOP cynically manufactured a monster, a base that is fundamentally at odds with rationality. It thought it could control that monster, but it couldn't. And it may end up destroying America. 8/
