Scott Jennings: What's Happening to the Republican Party?

Chris Riback's Conversations

For many on the right and left, the question has been “what’s happening to the GOP?”

• Free Trade? Gone.
• Budget deficits? No problem
• Free movement of labor? Not so much.
• Military war exercises? Who needs’em?
• Russia as outlaw state? How about Russia in the G8?

I think a more fair – and probably more relevant question: What is the GOP?
And frankly, the question comes more from the right than the left. Bob Corker basically asked it this week on the Senate floor. Conservative writers ask it in columns and tweets. GOP voters ask it, particularly as they primary established conservatives like South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and, perhaps, Alabama’s Martha Roby.
Today I’ll ask it.
Scott Jennings is a political strategist and co-founder of RunSwitch Public Relations in Kentucky. You’ve seen him on CNN, where he is resolutely polite and Republican. Among many roles: He served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy White House Political Director. He worked for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush in the last election. He also has worked on numerous campaigns for his home state Senator, Mitch McConnell. Just this spring he was a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.