It was around the middle of July 2015 that the Republican Party’s slowly roiling identity crisis suddenly boiled over.
Donald Trump had leveraged fervent anti-immigrant rhetoric to surge to the lead of the field vying for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination. After the party’s 2008 nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), attacked Trump for having “fired up the crazies” on the immigration issue, Trump fired back, disparaging the war hero’s service. Many party leaders (and Trump’s primary opponents) rubbed their hands giddily: at last Trump had gone too far! In short order, they assumed, they’d be rid of Trump and his noxious efforts to reshape their party.
