The Unwinding

Ever since Reagan, the Republican Party has been a coalition of business interests and downscale whites, many of them evangelical Christians. By 2010 it was like a figure in a hall of mirrors whose head and body have been severed but continue to move as if they’re still attached. The persistence of the coalition required an immense amount of self-d

In effect, the president, quite aware of his and his staff’s inexperience in drafting legislation (in fact, nobody on his senior staff had any experience at all), decided to outsource his agenda—and to a heretofore archenemy. Watching Ryan steal the legislative initiative during the transition,