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Paths to power and winning elections inside the GOP are changing rapidly and radically, spawning a new generation of kingmakers while diminishing the clout of many who lorded over the party for years.

Why it matters: Fourteen of the Republican Party's top consultants and operatives across the country spoke in detail with Axios about how profoundly primary races have changed since 2014 the last pre-Donald Trump midterm election and the last midterms in which a Democrat occupied the White House.

What we found: Those sources whose clients range from as Trumpy as they come to establishment Republicans described a clear shift in the party's power brokers. They spoke of changes to the ecosystem across four categories: institutional upheaval, endorsements, conservative media and donors.

Who had the power:

Who has power now:

Between the lines: Most of these changes weren't gradual. They were triggered by the shockwave of 2016.

INSTITUTIONAL UPHEAVAL: Several GOP institutional titans in the 2014 cycle have since receded.

The Koch network: The vast operation established by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch was almost a parallel Republican Party. Candidates and their consultants regularly pitched themselves at Koch donor retreats and worried how the Kochs viewed them.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: In 2014, the Chamber was heavily involved in Republican primaries. "Chamber Republicans" competed against "Tea Party Republicans," claiming greater appeal to the business community than insurgent conservatives and better prospects in the general election.

Conservative movement groups: Some of the most sought-after brands on the right pre-Trump are no longer considered as important.

SCF's executive director, Mary Vought, rejected this analysis, saying, "Our endorsement is sought after now more than ever because candidates know we do the hard work of raising money for their campaigns. Some groups only give them a press release, but SCF actually raises and transfers hundreds of thousands of dollars directly to their campaigns."

The NRA: In his campaign to become governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin declined to even fill out the NRA's candidate questionnaire. As a result, the NRA didnt endorse him. Nobody seemed to care, and he won the race.

Institutions that still matter: The relationships between many candidates and groups are now explicitly transactional. A prominent consultant who's working for candidates in several GOP primaries this cycle advises clients when they meet with conservative groups to ask specifically what their endorsement comes with.

The bottom line: Many movement conservative brands are shadows of what they used to be. Many of the major conservative think tanks supported policy positions such as reforming Social Security or free trade that Trump obliterated and proved elderly GOP voters didnt actually support.

2. ENDORSEMENTS: Every operative said the only endorsement that really matters is Trump's. But there are nuances. His endorsement alone is not enough; what he actually does for a candidate matters, too.

Some recent polls pointed to those limits. A recent poll by Cygnal, an analytics firm for GOP candidates, found just one in four North Carolina likely primary voters said they'd definitely vote for a Trump-endorsed candidate. A January poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found less than half of Georgia Republicans say a Trump endorsement would make them more likely to vote for that candidate.

Operatives also said endorsements can matter in conferring ideological credibility. If you need to convince voters your establishment-seeming candidate is genuinely hardline on immigration, having an endorsement from Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton or praise from Tucker Carlson or Stephen Miller can help.

The bottom line: The GOP operatives we interviewed unanimously said that after Trump, they don't put a ton of stock in the power of endorsements to shape a primary race in 2022.

3. CONSERVATIVE MEDIA: As the news media fragmented overall, traditional conservative media was usurped in GOP primaries by New Wave populist-nationalist media and some once-influential institutions have died or faded. The Weekly Standard shuttered.

Fox still dominates. GOP operatives work as hard as ever to book their candidates on Fox. Getting on the evening prime time shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle nets low-dollar donations and visibility with primary voters and Trump himself.

Tucker Carlson is the king of the GOP's media wing the person whose support GOP primary candidates most want and whose opposition is to be desperately avoided because it can "move numbers," in the words of one operative who has seen the Tucker effect up close.

An important shift is accelerating online. Many GOP primary voters now get their information directly from influencers including Candace Owens, Dan Bongino, Joe Rogan, Dave Portnoy, Charlie Kirk, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and websites like Ben Shapiros Daily Wire and Breitbart, which dominate Facebook.

Between the lines: Several operatives said they could easily go a whole primary without needing to engage at all with the mainstream media. When they do, they're often trying to provoke outlets the GOP base despises such as CNN to gain street cred with primary voters.

The bottom line: The media landscape is so diffuse now "fragmented, severely sliced and diced," as one operative put it that GOP operatives aren't leaning on one source overall, or the mainstream media at all, in primaries.

4. THE DONOR LANDSCAPE: The recent passing of Republican mega-donors Sheldon Adelson and Foster Freiss were significant in their own right. At the same time, newer donors are cutting the big checks, with people like tech investor Peter Thiel and industrial supply magnate Richard Uihlein single-handedly underwriting high-dollar super PACs.

The rest is here:
The making of a modern Republican - Axios