Jack Balkin has a long piece on what he sees as the inevitable destruction of the Republican Party, now being played out.
As a political regime grinds to its conclusion, the dominant party turns to heterodox outsiders who promise to restore past greatness, but instead find themselves overmatched by circumstance. They unravel the regime and create an opening for a new regime led by another political party.
Trump brings his own set of problems, but those problems and the fact that the Republicans chose such a flawed candidate are part of the destruction.
By this point in his Presidency, Trump’s political strategy has been reduced to radical gestures that please his populist base, no matter how much they may outrage the rest of the country. Indeed, he welcomes the scorn and calumny of his political opponents: the more outrageous his speech and actions, the more he signals that he is standing up to the globalists and the elites—and that he is on the side of the real Americans. In this sense, the Arpaio pardon was less a dog whistle than an air raid siren.
It isn’t going to get better.
Coalitions decline and fall when their constituent parts factionalize and turn on each other, and when their agenda becomes irrelevant to the problems that the country faces. In some cases, the coalition may be the victim of its own success. Its solutions—and its ideological agenda) may be a cause of the problems the country faces. The New Deal coalition unraveled in the tumult of the late 1960s and 1970s; something structurally similar is happening to the Reagan coalition today.
As they say, read the whole thing!
And open thread!
JCJ
This is my first wish. What should the other two be?
Major Major Major Major
@JCJ: I would like a bigger drawing tablet. Maybe we can each have one.
p.a.
If correct, it can’t happen fast enough.
Caveat 1: how many get hurt in the process?
C 2: what if the new party is as viscious but more competent at policy implementation?
Culture of Truth
But how does this help Trump unify the country?
Steeplejack (tablet)
@JCJ:
Maybe something along the lines that they don’t take the rest of the country down with them.
Patricia Kayden
@JCJ: Given how many times we have rhapsodized about the destruction of the Republican Party, your three wishes should be “the soon to come inevitable destruction of the Republican Party”. I want to see it destroyed. It needs to happen in my lifetime and long before it can do any more damage domestically or abroad.
different-church-lady
That’s a lot of words to say, “The monster got out of the laboratory.”
JCJ
@Major Major Major Major:
For all the drawing you do you should get a bigger one. I bought my daughter the medium Wacom tablet a year and a half ago. She has an alienware computer for gaming she uses it with so she can really draw and design a lot.
rikyrah
I dunno…they seem awfully determined to cling to the Whiteness.
different-church-lady
@Patricia Kayden: Indeed, I shudder to think what they’re going to come up with next, and what they’re going to resort to in order to get him/her/it into office.
rikyrah
In all honesty…I’m hoping for sweeping indictments of huge swaths of the GOP for RICO statutes. Seeing them do the perp walk and being able to label them as crooks wouldn’t hurt.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: There’s always the Surface Studio(28″), if you have 3 or 4 grand to drop.
trollhattan
In the world of pranks, this ranks pretty darn high.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Culture of Truth: He’ll pivot, you just wait.
TriassicSands
I don’t see any sign yet that Republican voters are even close to voting for someone other than a Republican. They seem to really hate McConnell, except on election day. The best bet for Trump to destroy or cripple the GOP is for him to split from the Republicans and create his own party.
For now, gerrymandering and the SCOTUS will keep the GOP from “failing.”
(Quotes employed to signify the double meaning of failing. If not failing means being in power, then the Republicans are not failing. If succeeding means accomplishing something worthwhile, then the GOP is failing miserably.)
jeffreyw
@JCJ: The plowing, then the salt.
Bex
Kroger is offering to donate $5 to the Houston Food Bank for every share of their announcement on Facebook. Check your News Feed/Kroger website.
Major Major Major Major
@JCJ:
What, is something wrong with my drawing?
Betty Cracker
My favorite response to the mini-uproar over the third lady’s stilettos:
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady: DING DING DING DING DING!
“It’s alive! It’s alive!”
“And…uh oh…it doesn’t obey my commands!”
Villago Delenda Est
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Maggie and Glenn are sure of it!
Kylroy
The end of the Reagan coalition doesn’t have to mean the end of the GOP anymore than the end of the New Deal coalition ended the Democrats. But man, the GOP really wants to go down on this ship. No better place for me to list these facile parallels that have been bouncing around my head for awhile:
FDR/Reagan – Assemble electoral coalition that will dominate US politics for a generation.
Truman/Bush I – VP and heir to the founder, unable to secure re-election due to poor economy.
Eisenhower/Clinton – Capable opposite-party president, but mostly implemented the coalition’s policy.
JFK&LBJ/Bush II – Coalition gets it’s man elected, advances policy, public starting to turn on them
Nixon/Obama – New opposition party president assembles new coalition, implements different policy.
Carter/Trump – Backlash to new coalition gets old coalition the presidency, but POTUS is overwhelmed and party is divided.
Like I said, overly facile, but I like to think this means the Dems are due for someone who ties up the Obama coalition and makes a legacy of it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est: Yup, any day now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
JCJ
@Major Major Major Major:
No! I just mean that since you seem to have it as a cool hobby/side line you should treat yourself if you are able!
I am so sorry if you took that as a criticism. I like your drawing!
Major Major Major Major
@Kylroy:
Better than anything McArdle would churn out and you haven’t even taken her class!
@JCJ: I was joking :P thanks!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kylroy: Truman did win re-election in 1948. Now he wouldn’t have won in 1952, even though he’d been President for nearly 8 years he was still eligible.
Aleta
Short piece:
Trump’s Hoodlums (by Masha Gessen)
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/08/29/trumps-hoodlums/
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh My Gawd.
Kylroy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, I sanded off a *lot* of rough edges to make this work. I’m going for less “behold my searing insight”, more “makes you think, huh?”
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: Perfect!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, I don’t know how to link to what looks like the pooler’s rough notes and real time reaction to trump’s ‘impromptu rally’
randy khan
I’m always wary of this kind of analysis. The truth is that it’s rarely clear when a political era ends until well after it’s over. But I still hope it’s true.
Roger Moore
@JCJ:
If your wish is that powerful, I’d think World Peace would probably be next.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s saying that he brought the fans with him.
Barbara
@?BillinGlendaleCA: According to Reuters, Trump’s message to hurricane victims in Corpus Christi, TX was “Thank you everybody. What a crowd, what a turnout.” Glenn Thrush should dress up as Charlie Brown for Halloween, and Maggie Haberman should go as Lucy. I don’t think it matters which one carries the football.
jl
Previous worst president art appreciation blogging (need a tag for that)
Hopper and Freud are obvious. Need to see more Dub ‘scapes of various sorts to figure out Hopper and Porter.
Never been a big fan of Porter. His work inspires me to get some paint by the numbers sets to see what I could do if I didn’t follow instructions in a constructive sort of way.
Terry Teachout
@terryteachout
“Asked what painters he was “in awe of,” George W. Bush cited Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, and Fairfield Porter. ”
https://twitter.com/terryteachout/status/902544367122034690
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fuckin’ Potemkin Presidency.
Cacti
The last election showed that the Reagan coalition is already a numerical minority. But one that can still control the government at all levels as long as our side remains divided against itself.
mike in dc
Third wish should be for an Avengers/JLA movie. I recognize this is a more miraculous accomplishment than the death of the modern GOP and the advent of World Peace, though.
JC
It took nearly 30 years for California to arrest the Orange County and Central CA Republicans.
Only when Brown got in, and CA had super-majorities, was the democratic majority in CA not hamstrung.
If CA is any guide, the Rethugs won’t go away quietly.
Mike E
@randy khan: Wingnut Event Horizon
Patricia Kayden
It’s all about Trump because Trump is all that matters to Trump. He’s squawking about huge turnouts in a disaster zone. This is what you get when you elect a man without a jot of shame.
Patricia Kayden
@Cacti: And as long as voter suppression prevents minority voters from exercising their right to vote.
lapassionara
Having just received a very rude call purportedly on behalf of the DNC, I am not sure our side will be equipped to step up to the plate when (and if) the GOP implosion happens. I wish I could explain to people who call on behalf of democrats that it does not help to argue with the person you called, and it also does not help to hang up in an angry huff.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
By my recollection, the Republican Party was doomed to extinction in ’92, ’96, ’98, ’06, ’08 and 2016 up until election day.
The Dems were finished in ’94, 2000-05, 2010, 2014 and 2016 after election day.
We’ll see.
laura
@rikyrah: Count me in, that’s what I want too!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lapassionara: Sounds like really poor training, or ratfucking.
Roger Moore
@Kylroy:
Especially the part where Truman couldn’t get reelected.
SatanicPanic
@JC: the other big takeaway from that is that without white supremacy as a selling point, they’re unable to compete, because their ideas are stupid
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore:
Have you not seen that X-Files?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Don’t forget the demographic reckoning and brown tidal wave that’s due any decade now. Texas is gonna flip! Republicans will be extinct!
Brachiator
Wishful thinking. The Age of Trump is pushing the country to extremes, but Trump’s voters are happy with him, and we have yet to see the GOP reap any negative political consequences to backing him. Some commenter here may have noted that Kentucky Republicans still strongly love Trump, even though he is doing all he can to pull the health care rug out from under them (these are dopes who do not realize that Obamacare is saving their butts).
Come back after the 2018 elections and let’s see if there is any damage to the GOP. And even here, smart commenters and pundits know that the electoral college and gerrymandering is a strong bulwark protecting the GOP from being kicked to the curb. That and voter suppression and other dirty tricks.
Wrong again. Trump is a primitive reactionary. But he is not trying to please his base. He uses them to please himself, and to feed his addictive need for constant adulation. This is why he basks in the empty glory of the frequent rallies, why he preens and postures at doing presidential stuff at his clubs and resorts while slack jawed members look on.
And apart from this, Trump is exactly as venal, stupid and incompetent as his base. He does exactly what they would do had one of them been elected president. He is the drunken conservative know-it-all in the back of the bar who slobbers while he tells you what he would do if he were commander-in-chief. Only this time, dumber than Homer Simpson doofus actually got elevated to the highest office in the land.
lapassionara
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The thought of ratfucking occurred to me. Did not sound like any other fundraising call I have ever received.
jl
@Roger Moore: Depends on what is meant by a Truman re-election. He wasn’t elected president for his first term, he ascended from veep. Tried for second full term, but couldn’t get Dem Party support, his approval in dumpster due to Korean War and (what looks like in retrospect) fairly petty administration corruption scandals. Forty-eight was first election he actually won running for pres.
Skippy-san
We hear this over and over again. I agree it is wishful thinking. Americans ( a portion of them anyway) are just too selfish and stupid to kill the GOP. As long as the Wingnut Wurlitzer plays, led by Fox, new people will be recruited to the vengeance brigade. A lot of people are going to have to suffer before real change happens.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This almost sounds like a terrorist threat
Roger Moore
@jl:
I thought it was an interesting list, and a sign that he’s taking his painting seriously. The comparisons to Freud are obvious, but just because he says he’s in awe of those painters doesn’t necessarily mean he is trying to imitate them stylistically. I am in awe of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography, but that doesn’t mean I try to emulate it.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
The media is having an extremely difficult time letting go of the idea that Trump somehow duped people into supporting him. That’s why there is an endless fascination with interviewing the Trump voter — they keep thinking they’re going to capture the moment the scales fall from their eyes. They are unable to comprehend that he is EXACTLY what they wanted, even if they won’t admit it to a reporter.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: I almost always emulate people entirely by accident. Which I end up doing often enough that if I did it intentionally, people would call it plagiarism!
bystander
Just saw twitler and melanoma both wearing ball caps in a conference roomful of people who weren’t wearing ball caps. So stupid. Is she really wearing a FLOTUS hat?
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t remember that X-Files, but I did read The Lathe of Heaven.
Frankensteinbeck
The problem with the destruction of the Reagan coalition and the GOP slinking into for-the-forseeable-future irrelevance is that it is a SLOW process. Like, decades. This looks a lot like the process California went through, and people see California now and forget there was a good three decades of batshit insane Republicans having enough power to grind the state into miserable dysfunction.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: apparently two key items on the “tax reform” wishlist are eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and the federal deduction for state income taxes. I don’t think he can sell those to the upper and upper-aspiring middle class white people who voted for him
Gelfling 545
@jl: I find something to like in W’s painting. I can’t help thinking how much hsppier everyone would be, himself included, if he’d gone to art school instead of getting that business degree.
Frankensteinbeck
@different-church-lady:
The media have dedicated their entire professional lives and in most cases their personal sense of well-being to the belief that Republicanism is serious and absolutely not run by racism. The scales are falling from their eyes, but that is also a slow process, and who knows if Trump will last long enough to force it to a conclusion? Mind you, the base isn’t going to get any less racist. They’ll want another Trump, but more openly white power.
JCJ
@Roger Moore:
I tried that one. All I got was Whirled Peas
stinger
@Betty Cracker: I was hoping they said “FLOTUS”. Alas, not.
Gelfling 545
@lapassionara: It might be well to contact the DNC regarding the call. Whether it is an inept caller or rodent fornication they should be made aware.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Every artist is going to have people who influenced them, and that’s necessarily going to show up in the way their art looks. I think part of maturing as an artist is getting to the point where any resemblance to your influences is deliberate rather than accidental.
trollhattan
@Gelfling 545:
You know who else went to art school….
Jeffro
The piece is good, but needs a little work…
True…but fails to note that by 2008 and beyond, Congressional Republicans had become a much more radicalized version of their former selves/party. This is due to too much drinking of their own Kool-Aid, and the big $$$ doled out by the Kochs and others.
So incredibly untrue…President Rubio or Bush would have papered over the differences, marshaled the ‘troops’, and gotten something passed that would have hurt tens of millions of Americans. And the media would have helped them.
Say what now? That should read, “BECAUSE Barack Obama entered the White House…”, full stop.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: A writing teacher once told us that every story you write is just a combination of the last song you listened to, the last book you read, and the last fight you had.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think any proposal like that is going to be DOA in Congress. Trump may think he can get away with that shit, and he might even manage with the state income tax deduction, but eliminating the mortgage interest deduction is going to go over like a
leaddepleted uranium balloon.Chitown Kev
That is a very long read…my first thought is that it’s not so much ”the end” as the pendulum swing back in the other direction (Balkin cites the Hoover and Carter administrations, so even he seems to think that this type of thing occurs in cycles)…the other thing is that we’ve never dealt with foriegn interference in these cycles before…but I want to read over this again.
different-church-lady
@bystander:
She is really wearing a FLOTUS hat.
I can hardly wait to find out how this is some kind of brilliant signal to the deplorables that the rest of us just cannot comprehend.
Jeffro
@Brachiator: Exactly right on both points.
The Republican Party now is the Party of Trump, no matter how much the ‘establishment’ types pretend its the other way around. Flake knows it. Graham and McCain know it. It’s time for the last couple of sane elephants to come join the donkeys.
He’s happy to please his base, as long as they’ll reciprocate and feed his need for adulation, spot-on. He is every 70+ year old Fox News viewer, plus nuclear codes: reactionary, dumb as a rock, and eager to believe whatever reinforces his cycle of spite.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack (tablet): Way side note, but I feel like your nym is taunting 4^M.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jeffro:
This is due to racism. By and large, Republican congressmen reflect their base. Already getting extreme and hateful, they freaked the ever-living shit out when a black man became president. It deeply confused them when they got huge pushback against repealing Obamacare and gutting Medicaid. Unlike the base, THEY wouldn’t personally be affected, so they had no reason to change from seeing it as morally good. Only a few were willing to open their eyes, or at least see which way the political wind was blowing.
McConnell is massively racist, and the election of a black president was a call to civil war, from his perspective. He’d have been a shit to any Democrat, but a black man made him go as bug-fuck crazy as the base. He just did it without drooling on himself.
Roger Moore
@Gelfling 545:
You know who else would have made the world a better place by sticking to painting…
stinger
@Major Major Major Major: Clever — but I spent two years writing a novel. Which song and book were the “last”? (I have very few fights.). Might carry more weight for people who can crank out a short story in a matter of days — I hear such people exist.
Roger Moore
@JCJ:
I guess you should have wished for enunciation lessons.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Frankensteinbeck:
Even so, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately the GOP will rule off and on for a long time, propped up by billionaire money and white grievance. Eventually they will collapse (“nothing ever lasts forever”, like that Tears for Fears song says), but not before they do some damage.
gorram
Sorry, this ended up going a bit long, but I’m worried people aren’t contending with the politics Trump has deeply enough. While I agree there’s some point to viewing this as a specific movement (or, as upthread comments have, an electoral coalition), I think it’s also hard not to view it through the lens of a more recurrent phenomenon in US history: White uprisings in the face of demographic or economic forces threatening (or complicated) White supremacy.
Setting aside the debates about the Framers for a moment, it appears to be part and parcel with the original push to forcibly resettle indigenous people further (and still further) west, and otherwise ethnically cleanse much of the Northeast, South, and ultimately Midwest. It’s possible to argue it’s the force that drove the antebellum (and Gilded Age era too) nativist riots which resulted in establishing a threat of violence against White ethnics to ensure their commitment to White supremacist settlement of the country. There’s also similar lingering anxieties around the Whiteness or non-Whiteness of Latin@ people, even as borders crossed them and their statuses (in terms of citizenship or race) were prone to perpetual negotiation.
More clearly, it’s what fueled more of the support for abolition than people want to admit – the fear that Black slaves would be brought to the West (and to a lesser extent, could be kept in the North). That prompted more general support for the nationwide abolition of slavery than any other individual force, under the presumption that Black slaves would be relocated, expelled, or largely reduced in population by any number of means. The fact that abolition occurred but reparations did not reveals how instrumental those politics were in that era.
In the wake of the Civil War, that same anxiety reared its head in the form of increasing restrictions on particularly Asian and Pacific Islander immigration in the West, the institution of anti-Black mass suppression in the South, and various other restrictions on immigration in the North and Midwest. Just as in the fight for abolition, this desire for a majority White or at least majority of enfranchised voters White state largely won those fights. Quotas largely prevented the formation of large areas where a specific non-White group was a majority of voters, aside from a few (easily terrorized by police!) enclaves.
Policies like internment disrupted some of the largest such populations in many areas. And integration, while rarely encouraged, in many ways served to dismantle Black community spaces, and thus was accepted begrudgingly much like internal immigration into various new areas (namely northern industrial cities). Nominal integration partnered with geographic segregation and internal displacement (from Jim Crow violence) ended Black majority spaces in much of the South without creating them in the many migratory destinations elsewhere in the country.
You can see where this is headed though, right? Black people were an increasing presence over a large part of the country. Displacement and land theft had created pockets of many targeted communities of color throughout it as well. Internment and systemic violence had largely spread Asian communities similarly far further east (hell, many Japanese people were interned as far east as possible). A globalizing economy and a world still full of (proxy and direct) wars started or conducted with White supremacist ideas means vast numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers of color. The notion of a ‘White America’ had long been tested and been “reestablished” through forcible redistribution of populations – the very process that has led to so many people of color being far-flung within the country, and politically connected to others but with similar experiences, reinforcing the meaningfulness of “person of color” even.
This has already become a very long summary of history I’m sure most of you already know, but it just seems that this coalition (begun under Goldwater, formalized under Nixon, and exalted under Reagan) tapped into another such episode of anxieties, specifically concerning Black populations, seeking to not be displaced so much as empowered by integration (and that that would mean decriminalization). Latin@ immigration, indigenous reclamations of sovereignty, and growing rejection of White expectations among Asian communities, have all become similar flashpoints of concern to be fair.
Just, as much as there is a specific electoral coalition that is worrisome here, there’s a long history in this country of something very much so like it emerging when Whiteness as an institution is threatened. We have to do something about that, beyond hoping for demographic transitions or electoral cycles to reach their conclusions. White supremacy is a historied and intrinsic practice in this country, and unmaking or remaking that is a task we have to take on now, against a specific history that, so far, has won every war of survival against it. Basically, let’s not rest on our laurels.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@stinger:
Maybe that’ll be me. I only have to go to classes two days a week. ?
stinger
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: So you’re limited to 2 songs a week, 2 books a week, and 2 fights a week. Hope you don’t find that too constraining! ;-)
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
So, I guess the moral of this story is listen to good music, read great literature and win your fights, or at least have a hell of a battle worth remembering.
ruemara
My only problem with that is they’ve decided on a murder/suicide pact between them and us. And that “Us” could expand past our borders and out into the rest of the world with minimal effort.
TriassicSands
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, finally some sensible female footwear!
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck:
Racism and Randian-ism (and where they overlap, too).
Right, which is why I noted the author needs to rethink his “by the time Barack Obama entered the White House” and make it “because Barack Obama entered the White House”. Good point about ‘without drooling’ – more media enabling there.
Jeffro
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Racists and Randians, all the way down, unfortunately…
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@gorram:
A positive thing to remember is that there are a lot more white people who disagree with white supremacy and want to see it disbanded today than in any time in American history. You can see a fairly straight line of white supremacy gradually losing ground (or at least non-white minorities gaining more rights and being more accepted in the culture at large) over the last 200 years, the rate of change accelerating with time.
Peale
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: My guess is that what we are going to get is New York City II – Democratic voter base, but GOP Mayors for 20 years. So what if their coalition dissolves. Until our coalition gains dissaffected members, or our own voters decide that getting rid of the GOP is more important than staying home to watch reruns of survivor on Tuesdays in November, it won’t really matter. Or, the story could be California II – nominally a state full of Democratic voters. Belief that the GOP had pissed off hispanics so much that they’d never win again – and 20 years later, after a recall of their Democratic governor and two terms of Arnold, they finally decide to go Democrat full time.
I think we’re singing “you’ll be back” like King George if we think the GOP is going to just fall apart and people will flock back to the party. Millions of Obama voters haven’t come back since 2008 and until they do, I look forward to President Arnold Bloomberg.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@stinger: Holy shit I couldn’t imagine writing one book let alone two! I’ll stick to short stories for now.
Major Major Major Major
@stinger: I’m on year two-ish of a novel and the first draft is definitely marked by a series of such influences based on where I was in life when I was writing it. The teacher meant more for the drafting process anyway.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Yep. Gerrymandering and the promise of truckloads of oligarch cash from the Kochs and others immunizes the GOP from actually having to care about anything other than their re-election dreams. This also keeps the Tea Party and the conservative extreme in business.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack (tablet):
I’ve phrased this as desiring a soft landing for the US.
(Oh, and be careful what you wish for. Just saying. )
The article linked in the OP is a nice read. Model too lightweight for the problem IMO, but interesting.
Cheryl Rofer
@gorram: Thanks. I agree that this is a recurrent issue and that we haven’t fully dealt with it yet. One of the things I was thinking when I read Balkin’s piece was that it makes it almost too easy: just wait for the Republican crackup. But we need to be presenting positive alternatives. The Democratic Party hasn’t been doing that well. Yes, the media doesn’t cover the Democrats well either, but those of us who believe in democracy and human rights have to be more creative and assertive.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@ruemara:
Which makes me think of the not so remote possibility of the GOP becoming increasingly fascist and overtly white supremacist as time goes on. Such an insane regime could think itself invincible and attempt to use our bloated military to invade all over the place and steal natural resources. Republicans don’t give a shit now about international treaties.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
I don’t think the media believe that people were duped. Seduced, maybe, by empty promises of a greater and whiter America. But not duped.
And people are having a difficult time letting go of the idea that the media has any influence anymore. The mob has dismissed much of the media and happily wallows in propaganda echo chambers.
I see Trump supporters getting bolder. They tell reporters exactly what they want, because they think that Trump, unlike all other mainstream politicians, is going to deliver on his promises.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
And so far he is, at least the ones that they thought he meant. They say so in interviews.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Peale:
The Republicans are incurious, incompetent authoritarians. Something will have to give. I just hope it’s the GOP and not the country, Weimar-style.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
And when he ultimately fails to do so and actively harms them?
Bill Arnold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump Greets Corpus Christi Crowd, Waves Texas Flag in Support
Dang. At about 20 seconds. I dare not even comment.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: The only promises they actually believed are that he’d make life shittier for immigrants and Muslims. Really, they say this.
gene108
@p.a.:
When your policies are bad for most people, it will catch up with you eventually. There’s no way to competently take healthcare away Fromm millions, or funnel money from the 99.9% to the 0.1%, for too long, without people getting pissed off at you.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
They will blame Obama, the deep state, and mainstream Republicans.
Especially if Trump is impeached and removed from office. His people will never see his crimes. Some even laugh about it and say, “of course a master businessman would be crooked. But he won’t betray us, because he is one of us.”
Kathleen
@Frankensteinbeck: And less over Nazi love.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
I don’t care if they do. As long as they give up on politics forever, that’s all that matters. What would be even more more catastrophic than if Trump won a clear majority in 2020 would be if he won by the same slim margins he did last year. A second EC win by an unpopular president in four years would be, I believe, distabalizing.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: I don’t care a whit what they think or do. We need to get outvote them. T won by slim majorities in those crucial mid western states. He is not the beloved of everyone. His die-hard supporters love him, let them. To win an election you don’t have to win 100% of the vote.
Frank Wilhoit
Jack Balkin has not earned our (or anyone’s) respect, and proves it here again by engaging in a particularly vile piece of both-sideserism. Reagan did not have a coalition. Everyone who joined Reagan did so because he campaigned on the promise to turn a blind eye to direct action (i.e., headbreaking, including lynching). The promise was delivered via deniable channels and was revoked when Reagan won. That is the Great Betrayal that Steve Bannon and his predecessors are always on about. When they say the “Republican Establishment” can’t be trusted, they are talking about the fact that they weren’t allowed to start breaking heads in 1981. There is nothing more to it and never has been. Clinton and Obama won because the Republican base was demoralized. Bush 43 let the base down by his response to 9/11, which was strictly top-down. Now, at last, Trump seems to be on the very point of giving them only thing they have ever wanted. If segments of the Republican Party cannot, in the event, follow him that far, then they will be left behind; but that would not be the collapse of a coalition.
Sly
Not sure I buy the unraveling coalition argument. The New Deal / Great Society coalitions unraveled because large numbers of white voters were not interested in maintaining their loyalty to a political coalition that did not make major concessions to white supremacists interests, and the result was a hollowed out alliance that could not withstand Reaganism’s onslaught. Carter’s presidency was marked by pronounced inaction and infighting because of this. The conservative alliance shows signs of shrinking (relative to the body politic as a whole), not fracture. It’s main fonts of organizational power – white evangelical churches, business lobbies, and various and sundry anti-government extremist groups – are as enmeshed with one another as they’ve ever been, even as they slowly decay.
I’m more inclined toward Scott Lemiuex’s “post-regime” argument; in which political coalitions and the parties attentive to them have largely hardened, political battles are won and lost at the organizational margins, and the results of those battles lead to wild swings in policy outcomes. The failures of the party in power are, as was recently demonstrated with healthcare repeal, failures at the margins. Failures by a few votes over minor ideological differences, heightened by the limitations of majoritarian and semi-majoritarian institutions, not by major conflicts borne out of structural weaknesses within the coalition. Victories are similarly defined, as with the passage of healthcare reform and pretty much everything else gained under the Obama administration.
Citizen Alan
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I remember almost 20 years ago give or take when that book The Coming Democratic Majority came out. As I’m sure most of you know, its premise was that demographic changes due to immigration and other factors would inevitably lead to the growth and eventual domination of the Democratic party over the Republicans. And literally the first thought I had when I read articles about the book in question with that the GOP could put that coming Democratic majority off for quite a while if they were willing and able to bring back Jim Crow and apply it to Hispanics the way they used to towards blacks. And they could put it off for a very very long time if they were willing to make America into an apartheid state.
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
I do remember that episode and its title in French: Je Souhaite (I Wish). It turned out that Mulder’s fondest wish was to sit at home and drink beer with his work partner/girlfriend. Aww …