Chad Brown resigned from his position as co-chairman of the Polk County Republican Party in Iowa, telling the Des Moines Register “the GOP has become too conservative and is condoning “hateful” rhetoric”. He believes the Christian Right and the NRA have undue influence in the party and is disappointed that too few Republicans are expressing public disapproval of Steve King’s recent comments on immigrants.

This is not a high level member of the party jumping ship. It’s not a massive movement of large numbers of people out of the GOP. But when you combine the ongoing changes in party identification, the demographic changes that don’t seem to bode well for them and this incident it just might define a pattern. If the Republican Party can’t hang on to a conservative young man in Iowa who has always thought of himself as a Republican and in fact was active in the party it’s not exactly a positive sign for their future.