Is It About The Renegades Or The Regulars?

As the Republican Party tries to chart its direction into 2016 and beyond, the party's establishment (in Washington and beyond) is struggling to try to determine what all the rebellion is about.
Why is it happening?
What precipitated it?
And most of all, they wonder: How can it be stopped?

Peggy Noonan analyzes all this brilliantly in her current column in the Wall Street Journal. Here's part of what she has to say:

If the GOP breaks it will be bitter. The establishment thinks they are saving the party from the vandals—from Trumpian know-nothingism. But Republicans on the ground think those in the establishment were the vandals, with their open borders, donor-class interests and social liberalism.
The distance between the top of the party and the bottom has been growing for years, at least since 2008. The bonds between the two have stretched and stretched, and this year they began to snap. That’s the story of the year, that the snapping became obvious. Mr. Trump and the Trumps of the future are the result, not the cause. The establishment does not see this. They think it’s about him. It’s about them.

The entire column is worth reading at http://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-new-years-tumult-trump-the-old-1451603900