Seib: Today's Republicans

Gerald Seib has written politics for The Wall Street Journal for two decades at least. Today he describes the changes that have happened to the Republican Party over the past half century. The wealthy have migrated to the Democratic Party and the less well off have moved to the GOP.

Seib has two charts, one showing the 100 poorest counties and the other the 100 wealthiest counties. The proportion of poor counties voting GOP went from darned few in '68 to most in 2012, and the proportion of wealthy counties voting GOP dropped from most to about half over the same period.

How did the party change? While the affluent went elsewhere, who came on board?

The GOP that carried Mr. Trump to the presidential nomination was formed by waves of new voters who washed onto Republican shores in the last four decades: George Wallace Southerners, Ronald Reagan Democrats, Pat Buchanan pitchfork populists and tea-party foot soldiers.

The Republican establishment was happy to have the votes of these newcomers, many from America’s working class, and accommodated their cultural preferences on social issues from guns to abortion to gay marriage. What the establishment didn’t do was adjust the GOP’s economic approach to match the populist impulses—or even seem to consider such a shift necessary.

“It really is the elitism,” says Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia. The attitude of many in the party was “we’re smart, and they’re stupid, and we’ll just feed them abortion and guns,” he says.

That elitism only worked as long as nobody spoke to their core interests. Trump took the new Republicans seriously and won the nomination handily.

Any attempt to return the party to its country club roots will fail spectacularly. Trump supporters have "seen the elephant" and are unlikely to vote for a latter-day Bush or Romney.

Meanwhile the elites are in denial and it's easy to understand why. There is currently no party where they'd be comfortable, or welcome.