"Essentially leaderless, lacking a cohesive message and fighting among themselves, Republicans appear to be in disarray," writes Jay Newton-Small in Time. And I agree! But when did "disarray" become the standard adjective for describing a troubled political party? That sentence, if written about anything else, could have used the word "chaos" or "trouble" or "breakdown." But it's always "disarray." Was there some tremendously influential article one time that kicked off the tradition? Or did it just evolve slowly?
