Considering the GOP

I wonder if any of you students/enthusiasts of politics can explain the disconnect between the dysfunctional National Republican Party and Federal Government -
and the grassroots Republican Party (with their equally crazy reactionary doctrines) taking over state government throughout our country?

The stakes in the November election are higher for Democrats than Republicans. Democrats currently hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s, and the Obama years have decimated the party's bench. http://www.npr.org/2016/03/03/469083152/democrats-face-real-political-crisis-ahead-of-november-election The Democratic Party Got Crushed During The Obama Presidency. Here's Why March 4, 2016 http://www.npr.org/2016/03/04/469052020/the-democratic-party-got-crushed-during-the-obama-presidency-heres-why

… a related after-thought,
Obama seems to have been a bit of a poison pill.
How should the apathetic liberal types deal with it ?

Exerting control in our quasi-democratic system requires focused intensive effort or less intensive but continual focused effort. The backers of the Repub ideology have what it takes to apply continual focused effort (and sometimes intensive effort as well). The masses cannot apply continual intensive focused effort. They have their lives to try to live.
Protections from those with the means to apply continual focused efforts to exert control, have been eroded. A conservative ideological Supreme Court helped with that erosion.
We had damn well better get a progressively oriented POTUS and some supporting cast elected, or we will have nothing. Many hard won progressive gains are subject to being rolled back.
The Repub dominated states will continue to rig the rules to suppress the will of the masses. They have made gains in voter suppression and gerrymandering and union busting that will help maintain their control. “Conservative” interests such as the Koch bros can easily buy grass roots elections on a continual basis.