For many on the right and left, the question has been “what’s happening to the GOP?”

• Free Trade? Gone.

I think a more fair – and probably more relevant question: What is the GOP?

And frankly, the question comes more from the right than the left. Bob Corker basically asked it this week on the Senate floor. Conservative writers ask it in columns and tweets. GOP voters ask it, particularly as they primary established conservatives like South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and, perhaps, Alabama’s Martha Roby.

Today I’ll ask it.