Even before Trump, GOP was going feral
There have always been people like DonaldTrump: self-centered, self-aggrandizing, believing that the rules apply only to the little people and that what happens to the little people doesn’tmatter.
The modernGOP, however, isn’t like anythingwe’ve seen before, at least in American history. If there’s anyonewho wasn’t already persuaded that one of our twomajor political parties has become an enemy, not just of democracy, but of truth, events since the election should have ended their doubts.
It’s not just that amajority ofHouse Republicans and many Republican senators are backing Trump’ s efforts to overturn hi selection loss, even though there is no evidence of fraud orwidespread irregularities. Look at thewayDavid Perdue andKelly Loeffler are campaigning in the Senate runoffs in Georgia.
They aren’t running on issues or even on real aspects of their opponents’ personal history. Instead they’re claiming, with no basis in fact, that their opponents are Marxists or “involved in child abuse.” That is, the campaigns to retainRepublican control of the Senate are based on lies.
OnSunday, MittRomney excoriated
Ted Cruz and other congressional Republicans’ attempts to undo the presidential election, asking ,“Has ambition so eclipsed principle?” Butwhat principle doesRomney think theGOPhas stood for in recent years? It’s hard to see anything underlying recentRepublican behavior beyond the pursuit of power by any means available.
So howdidwe get here? What happened to theRepublican Party?
It didn’t start withTrump. Onthe contrary, the party’s degradation has been obvious, for thosewilling to see it, for many years.
Way back in 2003 Iwrote thatRepublicans had become a radical force hostile to America as it is, potentially aiming for a one-party state in which “elections are only a formality.” In 2012ThomasMann andNorman Ornsteinwarned that the GOPwas “unmoved by conventional understanding of facts” and “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
If you’re surprised by the eagerness of many in the party to overturn an election based on specious claims of fraud, you weren’t paying attention.
Butwhat is driving theRepublican descent into darkness?
Is it a populist backlash against elites? It’s true that there’s resentment over a changing economy that has boosted highly educated metropolitan areas at the expense of rural and small-townAmerica; Trumpreceived46% of the vote, but the counties hewon represented only 29% of America’s economic output. There’s also a lot of white backlash over the nation’s growing racial diversity.
The past twomonths have, however, been an object lesson in the extent to which “grassroots” anger is actually being orchestrated fromthe top. If a large part of theRepublican base believes, groundlessly, that the electionwas stolen, it’s because that’s what leading figures in the party have been saying. Nowpoliticians are citing widespread skepticism about the election results as a reason to reject the outcome— but they themselves conjured that skepticism out of thin air.
And what’s striking if you look into the background of the politicians stoking resentment against elites is howprivileged many of themare. JoshHawley, the first senator to declare that hewould object to certification of the election results, rails against elites but is himself a graduate of
Stanford andYale LawSchool. Cruz, now leading the effort, has degrees fromPrinceton andHarvard.
The point isn’t that they’re hypocrites; it is that these aren’t peoplewhohave been mistreated by the system. Sowhy are they so eager to bring the system down?
I don’t think it’s just cynical calculation, amatter of playing to the base. As I said, the base is in large part taking its cues from the party elite. And the craziness of that elite doesn’t seem to be purely an act.
My best guess is thatwe’re looking at a party that has gone feral— that has been cut off fromthe rest of society.
People have compared the modernGOP to organized crime or a cult, but tome, Republicans look more like the lost boys in “Lord of the Flies.” They don’t get news fromthe outsideworld because they get their information frompartisan sources that simply don’t report inconvenient facts. They don’t face adult supervision because in a polarized political environment there are few competitive races.
So they’re increasingly inward-looking, engaged in evermore outlandish efforts to demonstrate their loyalty to the tribe. Their partisanship isn’t about issues, although the party remains committed to cutting taxes on the rich and punishing the poor; it’s about asserting the dominance of the in group and punishing outsiders.
The big question is howlongAmerica as we knowit can survive in the face of this malevolent tribalism.
The current attempt to undo the presidential electionwon’t succeed, but it has gone on far longer and attracted muchmore support than almost anyone predicted. And unless something happens to break the grip of anti-democratic, antitruth forces on theGOP, one day theywill succeed in killing the American experiment.