Republicans not self destructing. This is who they are, and they're not done yet.

It's been pretty unmistakable; Republicans oppose almost everything - science; K-12; higher education; the environment; labor; the New Deal; the opposition party; even the Constitution, demanding a rewrite via a constitutional convention.

And while pundits predict the collapse of the Republican Party, especially if Trump is the nominee, I think its just the opposite. The chaos of "every man for himself" is the desired end game for Republicans. 

Thomas E. Mann, of the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute, have had to add to their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.” Back in 2012, they prophetically wrote:

“The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Here's some of what Mann and Ornstein have added. Kind of what we've been thinking. WaPo:

Fast forward to 2016. Incredibly, Republican destructiveness is even worse than it was four years ago — and the party is paying for it with a surge of anti-establishment populism that is tearing apart its coalitional base.

It is the radicalization of the Republican party — not just in terms of ideology but also in an utter rejection of the norms and civic culture underlying our constitutional system — that has been the most significant and consequential change in American politics in recent decades. Tribal politics fueled by partisan and social media leaves us with a good vs. evil view of democracy and a visceral hatred of the opposition party.

Republicans in Congress — from the day of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 — pursued a strategy of unified opposition to every Obama policy and initiative, including those they had recently supported, such as investment in infrastructure, health care reform and climate change. They also worked with their counterparts in cable television and talk radio to demonize every victory and to delegitimize the president.

Today, incredibly, it’s even worse than it was. Continuing to fan the flames of hatred of Obama, Republican leaders openly acknowledged that little if anything of consequence would be considered by Congress during the last year of President Obama’s term, then trashed long-standing precedents by refusing to schedule the traditional hearings at which the Administration presents its budget or to even consider any presidential nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.

Donald Drumpf, America’s equivalent of European right-wing populists and possibly the most miscast presidential front-runner for a major party in American history, makes a mockery of the Republican establishment agenda and presages the GOP’s possible break-up. It is a self-inflicted wound, but one with disastrous consequences for us all.