Thomas Patterson has been studying the Democratic and Republican Parties his entire career. He is the author of college textbooks as well as political books like this one that are made for all of us to read and learn from. The subtitle is "And why it needs to reclaim its conservative ideals." Patterson has identified how the Republican Party is facing traps on all sides that threaten its very existence more than ever before after 160 years.  Those traps are the Demographic, the Ideological, the Moral, the Media and the Money Trap. Patterson sees ways for the Party to avoid them and survive, but the evidence they will avoid them is open for debate -- for listeners of the Bigger Tent Podcast and anyone watching what some would call a a political train wreck of possibly epic proportions.  In this podcast we'll hear why Patterson feels this book was so important at this point in time.  We ask the author who he thinks is the conservative party today -- the answer may surprise you. Hear what Professor Patterson thinks about a day of reckoning for the Party of Lincoln.  Previously on the Bigger Tent Podcast we mentioned the Federalist Party and more deeply examined the Whig Party. Does the author feel today's Republican Party will mirror one or both of them? Well listen, of course. Ronald Reagan successfully built and invited likeminded people into his bigger tent of a party using a three legged stool of social issues, military strength and fiscal restraint.  Does Dr. Patterson think the GOP can again build such a big tent?  Republicans today have cast aside civic norms installed and required by the Founding Fathers and used to the benefit of the nation throughout our history, such as compromise, negotiation and forbearance. Patterson has some opinions about this for sure.  No discussion of the landscape of the current Republican Party would be complete without addressing how Donald Trump's intentions following his loss may "freeze" the Party and prevent it from learning, growing and finding its way to a Bigger Tent Party of like-minded conservatives and others reinventing itself by standing on a solid foundation of core values, but poised to address our challenges with new and creative conservative solutions.