John Boehner is exactly right about the Republican Party

"There is no Republican Party," Boehner said during an appearance at the annual GOP gathering at Mackinac Island in Michigan earlier this week. "There's a Trump Party. The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere."

He is exactly right.

All parties evolve over time. This is a matter of survival rather than political expediency. The Republican Party is no different. The GOP as envisioned by Gerald Ford was different than the one Ronald Reagan wanted. George W. Bush's vision was not the same as his father's. Times change. Parties need to as well.

But that natural shifting over time is radically different than what has happened within the Republican Party since Donald Trump began running for the GOP nomination in June 2015. In those three-ish years, the Republican Party has undergone a total and complete overhaul of policy and priorities -- all directed by Trump and capitulated to by GOP congressional leaders unwilling to break with him for fear of retribution and in hopes that they could attach some of their own priorities to the fast-moving Trump train.

Trump ran directly in opposition to the establishment of the Republican Party -- and all it believed in. These people have failed you, Trump told crowds. They lied to you. They abandoned their principles. They aren't who they said they were.

And it was more than just tonal differences. Trump expressed little concerns for deficits -- a core principle of the most recent iteration of the GOP, best represented by Speaker Paul Ryan. His views on immigration -- from his desire to build a wall along the country's southern border to his so-called travel ban -- represented a clear break from efforts led Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Marco Rubio, R-Florida, among others, to shepherd a comprehensive immigration reform bill to passage in Congress.

The belief prevalent among many establishment Republicans -- most of whom backed Trump somewhat unwillingly -- was that he would abandon or, at the very least, scale back some of his more radical proposals. That a Republican president -- even one as loosely affiliated with the party and its principles as Trump -- would be better than a Hillary Clinton presidency.

What became clear almost immediately upon Trump's victory was that he had meant what he said -- from the travel ban to a tax cut plan that added more than $1 trillion to the deficit.

And rather than stand up to Trump and fight, congressional Republicans largely went along for the ride. Sure, at times they complained about his methods. Sure, they have some background quotes about how he wasn't terribly concerned with first principles of conservatism. But they went along. They voted for the tax cut. They didn't, really, fight the travel ban. And so on and so on.

Ryan's surprise retirement -- announced earlier this spring -- was sort of an acknowledgment that his vision of the GOP -- smaller government, lower deficits, etc. -- had lost. Ryan knew -- and probably had known for a while -- that the war was over. Trump won.

The fact is the Republican Party, as currently constituted, bears only a slight resemblance to the party Boehner led -- or even left when he resigned in 2015. What was once a rump group of ardent conservatives -- loosely organized as the House Freedom Caucus -- is now a primary arm of the party, elevated by the Trump victory. The so-called establishment of the GOP has moved to accommodate Trump and, in so doing, lost any of the strategic high ground they might have maintained.

The party's fate -- in 2018, 2020 and perhaps beyond -- will rise and fall on the policies Trump embraces, the fights he chooses to pick and, yes, the tweets he chooses to send. This is his party now. And it looks very little like the party of Boehner, Ryan, Bush and Bush.

In short: Boehner is right.