National

State Senator and Congressional candidate Bryan Townsend released his 2015 fundraising totals for last year, bringing in over $212,000 in the last three months of 2015. According to the campaign, Delawareans made up more than 63% of their donors and more than half of their donations were for $250 or less.

Dan Balz: “The more the Republican candidates have amped up their rhetoric, the more they have triggered a sharp response from the Democrats. Hillary Clinton, who said last fall that she is proud to think of Republicans as enemies, never seems happier on the campaign trail than when she is denouncing the other party as one captured by extremists.”

David Corn on why this is the most unpredictable race for the Republican nomination in generations:

The reason for the chaos, though, is obvious. The party elite has become unmoored from the party's base—and that base has veered further into extreme territory. After years of being fed Obama hatred—death panels, gun-grabs, and secret socialism imported from Kenya by a terrorist-loving covert Muslim!—many die-hard GOP voters are alienated from elected Republicans who haven't been able to repeal Obamacare, impeach the president, or, better yet, lock him in shackles. Consequently, the wise men of the party can no longer easily direct its voters toward a preferred candidate. At least, not when self-financing, say-anything Donald Trump is in the race, brazenly exploiting the anger and frustration the party's leaders had previously fueled for their own purposes. So the GOP is in for weeks, if not months, of disorder, in what will likely be a historic break from its usually orderly past. For a party that has encouraged fear and loathing, this is what democracy looks like.

Perhaps if the GOP Establishment had not been so blinded by racism, and if they had not decided on a strategy of opposition that employed complete and total obstruction, and instead worked on compromises with the President and the Democrats, their base would been kept in line. But then again, plenty of GOP incumbents still lost to tea party crazies despite this total obstruction strategy (remember Mike Castle!). No, it is likely that this is all the end result of the base been more aligned with talk radio and Fox News that it is with the Party itself. If Rush Limbaugh et al stoking fear and loathing 24/7 since 1993, this was eventually bound to happen. And it could not happen to a better party.