Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
The fissures in the Democratic Party are on display for all to see, since it is the party in power, but the divisions in the Republican Party and the conservative movement are deeper, wider and far more threatening.
Matthew Continetti, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, describes the developments that have brought the conservative movement to a boil in his new book, “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.”
In Continetti’s telling, there was deepening frustration and anger on the right after Republicans took control of the House in 2011 but still could not block the seemingly inexorable move to the left. In 2011, the Department of Education declared that Title IX required universities to investigate charges of sexual harassment with few due-process protections for the accused — to the dismay of many conservatives (and plenty of liberals). In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services mandated that Obamacare cover the costs of contraception and abortifacients. In 2016, the Department of Education advised schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.
“These administration dictates made many conservatives question the efficacy of controlling Congress,” Continetti writes. “The legislative body seemed unable to prevent the Obama agenda in any fashion.”
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