What’s a party for?

What is a political party? By the intensity of internecine conflict among Republicans, you might conclude that it's a church. Sen. Ted Cruz is among the leading voices of a faction that wants to treat the Republican Party as a confession — singing to the choir, denouncing heretics and damning sinners to hell.

This appears to be part conviction and part political calculation on Sen. Cruz's part. He's fully convinced that a Republican can win in 2016 by energizing the base. "The evangelical vote," a Cruz strategist told The Cook Political Report, "is the largest unfished pond of voters — it's a frickin' ocean." Convinced that dispirited white, evangelical voters stayed home in recent elections but can be roused by a sectarian candidate, Cruz barreled into Washington, D.C., in 2013 spitting fire not just at Democrats but at his own party, too. They were all part of the "Washington cartel," he thundered. Republican leaders were not just weak or ineffective — they were treacherous.