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The (New) New Politics of Extremism
Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and resident scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authors of It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism (Basic Books; Revised and Expanded, 2016), offered an updated take on their 2012 book for this election season.
Ornstein said the new generation of conservative leaders really began with Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the group that called themselves "The Young Guns."
But somehow it turned into a revolt against the party leaders.
Mann explained that we're seeing the results of that today. As the Republican party shifted ideologically to the right, it "led a condemnation of all government" and "created a market for not just anti-establishment but sort've anti-politics, anti-government."
Mann also commented on the Republican nominating battle so far. The fact that an outsider, anti-establishment candidate has garnered the lion's share of the votes and forced the party to put their faith in Ted Cruz - "the man that's the most unsuited candidate for that office in American history - is striking, he said.