Reince Priebus made a plan to grow the GOP, then planted the seeds for its destruction

In 2013, following the second consecutive failure of Republicans to capture the White House and growing evidence that demographic trends would make it harder and harder for Republicans to win in the future, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus commissioned an ”autopsy” of the party's failure in 2012 and a road map to future victory.

In the wake of two presidential defeats, the Republican National Committee chairman on Monday issued a scathing review of the party's performance in 2012 and called for a top-to-bottom retooling of the party.

Priebus’s solution called for matching the much-envied technical skill of the Obama campaign and creating a serious outreach to minority communities. It also encouraged changes to the GOP platform including broad acceptance of gay rights, a more positive approach in Washington, and a comprehensive immigration policy.

The autopsy also advocated for a streamlined Republican primary system that would make it easier for a candidate to capture the nomination early, make it harder to have a prolonged primary fight, and allow the convention to be moved up to July.

But even as Priebus’s autopsy report was being issued, Ted Cruz was reassuring the base that they only had to hold out a little longer for hard-right purity to burn away the last moderate stains, and the House Freedom Caucus was working daily to crash the party directly against ideas the report wanted them to embrace. Rather than taking a more flexible view of social issues, the GOP spent the next three years fighting over bathrooms, florists, fake documentaries, and imaginary organ-harvesting rings. Rather than expand the outreach to minorities, the party latched onto xenophobia of Hispanic invaders and worked to push Civil Rights back into fights of the 1960s. 

As the next presidential cycle rolled around, those few candidates who tried to implement any portion of Priebus’s plan found themselves cut off from a party lurching from the far-right to the simply fascist. Instead, winning Republican candidates were vying to run against the Priebus Plan in terms that would soon become clear: rapists, murders, wall.

But the revised primary system? That got implemented. To disastrous results.