The Cultural Contradictions of Conservatism and the Death of the GOP

The GOP was cracking up well before Trump came on the scene; this is of a piece with the fact that the GOP was well into the process of becoming an Authoritarian Faction, well before the Demagogue showed up.

Trump's elevation to the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2016 was a fatal blow to the GOP (it would have eventually been fatal, even if he had lost the election).

Disunity on the Right will spell the end of the GOP as a national party. They will not regain the presidency, for the foreseeable future. The only question is, how much havoc can their Authoritarianism wreak in the Legislature, how dysfunctional can they continue to make American politics.

Trump’s conspiratorial reaction to his election loss is causing the GOP to fissure. On one side is the “Stop the Steal” movement and the majority of Republican voters who say they don’t believe the results. On the other side is a group that largely supports the president but considers the Stop the Steal movement theatrical, at best, and brain-wormed, at worst. Moving forward, Hochschild says, many Republicans will have to choose where they place the balance of their allegiance: Fall-in-Line Trumpism or Fall-Apart Trumpism.

What Was Trumpism? - The Atlantic

 

Yeah... I wonder how much of this is overstating the value of Trump and how much is actually going to do something about it. There's more value in staying together with a party than breaking apart, so I don't think the factions will do much more than posture around.

 

Every election cycle, there is a winner. And inevitably, writers on the winning side write about the demise of the opposite party and why they will never gain popularity/power again.

It's a ritual every 4 years.

I guess you have to write about something, or else you don't have a job.

 

With Trump gone from the scene, there will be a knives-out competition to replace him that will tear the party apart. Some will repudiate him utterly, seeking go to back to the GOP of Reagan; most others will go even more-all in on American Fascism. There will be deep disagreements over trade, immigration, government spending etc. and I reckon that the same ol' cultural Ressentiment directed at the Left is just not going to continue to work. Instead, new cultural fissures will emerge within the party. The key is the Legislature. One the Dems get united gov't, they can demonstrate how government can actually work for people. The Fascist Faction's Culture War will never be able to compete, the GOP will die and be replaced with two or more parties on the Right.

 

I have never seen that when Democrats lose. But it does seem to be a recurring theme when Republicans lose. I think it's because analysts understand that the GOP has become the anti-people party. And they've been expecting voters to realize that fact for a long time.

I believe they'll return some day, though. But this time they'll have to shed the Trump wing to do that. So it might take a bigger effort. Relying on fake scandals has worked for them in the past. But that alone might not accomplish the job this time. They might have to take "revolutionary" steps... They might even have to actually .... (gasp!)... govern, for a change!

 

The Atlantic has been going on a tear since the election pumping out these anti-Republican hit pieces, but I wonder if the multiple posters who start threads with them actually think Atlantic writers have any real clue as to what goes on in the GOP? What's their predicative track record? It seems to me that they are half wish fulfillment and half anger, with no real investigative journalism to try to find out what's really going on with the GOP/Trump supporters.

 

The R Party is really not much different than the D Party in the sense that they both have their factions and they don't always agree.

The R's don't have to shed the Trump wing. The Trump policies just need to be represented by someone whose personality is different from Trump's.

Trump lost because of his personality which energized the opposition and lost too many independents.

But his policy positions were not the problem. You put those policy positions into a likable candidate and watch what happens.

 

Govern with more failed social programs that aren't working? We live in a largely liberal society that's what the Obama coalition bragged about from 2008-2016. And now we have 2020-2024 of Biden. How do democrats keep finding ways to escape accountability for their own failures?

 

Well, you should read the article. The Atlantic (like some other liberal/Progressive opinion journals, like Harper's and Vanity Fair) does a good job of trying to do the anthropological case studies of Red State America, to understand what is actually motivating these people. This article discusses the anthropological work of one of these researchers, Arlie Russell Hochschild. From the article: "UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild believes that Trumpism is intimately tied—for now at least—to its namesake, because it exists beyond the logic of policy. It exists in the dreampolitik realm of feelings. “If there’s one thing I think the mainstream press still gets wrong about Trump, it’s that they are comfortable talking about economics and personality, but they don’t give a primacy to feelings,” Hochschild told me."

The article (and Hochschild) backs up such conclusions with on-the-ground fieldwork.

We could say that The Atlantic has miscalculated (when they have) when it comes to predicting how the Trumpified electorate would behave early on (e.g. how they would respond to the Access Hollywood tape), but more often their failure to grasp the depth of Trumpism comes in their miscalculations about how the Washington GOP would respond to Trump. In that case, they seem to have given them the benefit of the doubt, that there would be limits to how much they would kowtow to the Demagogue. But the Washington GOP has blown away all prestige-media assumptions about the extent of the Washington GOP's bootlickery.

 

To accuse Republicans of authoritarianism you have to be finding fly specks in the pepper. It it the Democrats who are seriously, openly, actively, and incessantly striving for authoritarianism. Plus, i read nothing about the title's conservatism in your OP....??? Besides that the analysis of the future of the GOP isn't bad.

 

Emerson and Twain would laugh at the masturbatory gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex Beltway rag that The Atlantic became. Not surprising to see its penny ante, head-patting political metaphysics cited in an OP that includes strained fabrications such as "Authoritarian Faction."

Would rather take my tea leaves from the Weekly World News or any other grocery store tabloid than searching for anything of any predictive worth in The Atlantic.

To the actual "topic," as always thinly-veiled Orangemanbad, is Orangeman just bad? or is he double-bad? Is the double-badness of Orangemanbad able to cause heart attacks from afar like the CIA heart attack gun?

Will "Cruzmanbad" or "Randmanbad," "NoemWOMANbad" (I have a hunch NoemwomanBAD could end up winning the BAD crown from Trump due to hatred of conservative women) other prospective "authoritarian demagogues," be AS bad as Orangemanbad? Somehow they will be worse, and Atlantic will shift to "as bad as Trumpbad was, this next BAD is even more epistemologically bad, DOOMS the GOP... we dub them ULTRABAD!"

 

For you to claim that the Democrats are the Authoritarian party in America today, is simply to reveal yourself to be disconnected from reality. It is the GOP that, in the years prior to Trump, began taking radical actions (the attempted coup d'état of Bill Clinton, deliberately defying Congressional oversight and railroading the country into the disastrous Iraq War, embracing a racist conspiracy theory meant to de-legitimize the first African American president, the attempt to blackmail that same President through violation of the 14th Amendment, further attempts to blackmail the Executive all through this period - with repeated government Shutdowns, the violation of the Separation of Powers to arrogate to itself greater control over the Judiciary) - all before we get to Trump, who is a Fascist Demagogue straight out of central casting! A man whose cartoonish, open derision of our democratic traditions of accountability under the law and to the public, and equally open aspiration to be a dictator, can be doubted only by embracing The Big LIE.

Against this, against this actual attempt (especially throughout 2020) of the Demagogue and his Quisling-partisans to overthrow the foundations of our Liberal state, you will range accusations against the Left that - What? The Left is calling for cultural reform? Not for any top-down censorship policies (aside from the consistent enforcement of already-existing law), but for the organic change of the culture through competition in the marketplace of ideas? Competitions which "Conservatives" have lost, and as a result they resort to Authoritarianism to try to rig a new game that they can win, by force and fraud!!

Frankly I'm not sure what it really is with you people - whether it is more bone-deep cynicism, or a willful blindness, that always gives tyrants their opportunity. But I guess it just has to be: American history has its villains in every era, people who are - decidedly - on the wrong side of history, people who will be rightly condemned by Posterity. You are helpfully volunteering for the role.

 

There appears to me to be as much unity on in the GOP, at least, as in the Democratic caucus. My apologies to whoever wrote the Atlantic article, but could you actually give examples, that is, make a supporting case for the first sentence I quoted? Without doing so, you have nothing behind your pronouncement which follows it.

Two problems just with that short part of your post. First, regardless of how you, or I, or "analysts," view the Republican Party, I think it is self-evident that the only opinion of import in this determination, is that of our citizens on the political right. For this election, while I haven't seen an analytic breakdown, it's clear that the Democratic Presidential candidate (thankfully) peeled off some support, specifically for Trump, from at least the center of our political spectrum. I see no justification for believing Republican voters, in general, have given up on their Party or its leaders. Witness how close a contest the Georgia Senate runoff elections are still going to be (it may be a waste, but I'm sending Osoff a contribution).

Then we get to the second part of your prediction, about Republicans needing to shed the Trump wing to once again be viable. As much as I would like that to be a true statement, the facts seem to contradict you. I'm linking the thread by @Libby , quoting a new, Rasmussen poll that finds 72% of Republicans see TRUMP as a model for their Party's future.

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/72-of-republicans-see-trump-as-model-for-party’s-future.582954/

 

Utter nonsense. Still searching for fly specks I see.

 

Your listed of examples of 'authoritarianism' depict an undermining of the political establishment.

...usually when I think of authoritarianism, its taking rights away from the individual.

Perhaps we're experiencing a fundamental difference in the perception of the legitimacy of power...?

 

What I'm depicting is a direct attack by Conservatives on crucial political norms - and it some cases on the Basic Law itself - which keep the parties acting with the restraint necessary for peaceful political competition. It is by throwing off those informal & formal constraints on the exercise of power, that puts the county on the road to zero-sum, revolutionary politics. It's exactly the sort of thing that brought down the Roman Republic, and it's why the founders feared and loathed political parties ('Factions') the way that they did.

 

Those political norms, and indeed the Parties themselves, decidedly and increasingly undermine individual rights in favor of the group. What do you think those that value their individual rights over the desires of the collective should do instead?

 

All that unifies the GOP anymore is cultural animus towards the Left. When Ressentiment is all a party has going for it, it is running on ideological fumes and sooner or later it will start to cannibalize itself. Already with Trump we see a party whose fault-lines are clear and which is in clear danger of splitting. The next step will be for the fights over culture to migrate within the GOP - not at all difficult to see happening, as the party continues to radicalize. Sooner or later, there will be a backlash against Trump and Trumpism; things cannot go on as they have indefinitely. It's just what happens to radicalizing political parties. It happened with the Left during the French Revolution, and it will happen with the GOP in our own time.

When I say the GOP is dying as a national party, the main import of that is that they will not be able to win presidential elections, for the foreseeable future. They may still be competitive in Congress, as different candidates can tailor their message to local districts. But even there the party will come under pressure, particularly in primary fights.

Well, this is just it. That's nearly a third of the Republican electorate that doesn't feel at home in the Trumpified GOP. It's not difficult seeing a fair 5% of that electorate as either GOP-defecting, or as permanently discouraged for voting for Trumpists for president. Or, perhaps more likely, more than 20% of that electorate will never vote for a candidate that is perceived to be Establishment; they would rather see such a candidacy go down, in order to "teach Republicans a lesson." This could have happened already in 2016, if Trump had not won. All this intra-party weakness has been masked by the TrumpGOP's pantomime of power, while he has been in office (and especially in the last 18 months or so). Once Trump is out of power, I predict the knives will come out.

 

I've read several of these type of articles since election day ( for some reason, they keep showing up in the news feed of my phone) and initially I was intrigued on what the other side was thinking but it quickly became obvious that the "thinking" was really emoting; there wasn't much actual journalism. Of course, that's journalism 101, start with a premise ("Republicans are crazy!"), write your story, and then call around and try to get quotes that you can edit to fit your story premise.

Yawn.

The anthropological form of reporting on red states goes back a long way. NPR pioneered the form, but at least with NPR there was no natural malice involved. Red State religious customs, hunting and gun culture, and blue collar work were as alien to the average Connecticut living, hyphenated last name NPR reporter as a tribe in New Guinea. But my point is that you are not learning anything. You are having your prejudices confirmed by a writer who shares your prejudices.

Journalism.

 

Individual rights had been increasing, from the half-century from 1950-2000; with the security-obsessions sparked by 9/11 (and with the surveillance tech advancing to abet those obsessions), individual rights are gradually being suffocated. As Madison I believe put it, 'War is the health of the State.' This is a trans-party phenomenon, and it will be hard to stop. Speaking for my part as a Liberal, I think the behavior of the GOP in the last two decades has utterly disqualified them for being responsible for promoting individual liberty; by default we should entrust the Democrats with this. If Libertarians voted for Democrats instead of the GOP, they could be instrumental in cashiering an Authoritarian GOP as a political force, and they could push the Democrats in a more positive direction from within the party. One good way of persuading liberals of the importance of going back to their civil libertarian roots, is to use Trump as a foil: Trump as a type who promoted the desires of the 'collective' (in his case, collective White-identity), and Democrats who have the responsibility to undo that.

One thing of critical importance, for promoting civil liberties: America has got to lose its obsession with national security, its desire to be cosseted in complete safety; we need to slash our military and put an end to the Imperial Overstretch abroad that gives politicians at home an excuse for smothering our freedoms.

 

Well - Sez you. On the contrary I think these articles often go beyond the call in trying to make the hinterlanders' worldview comprehensible to, even sympathetic for, the citified. After those efforts are made, perhaps the extent to which these researches do confirm our prejudices, should actually come as a wake-up call for you. It is characteristic of Conservatives to have no counterpart curiosity about the mind(s) of the Left; all Conservatives have for us is knee-jerk anathematization. It is telling, how Conservatives have self-radicalized since the dawn of the Reagan-era, while Liberals have in response only begun to radicalize, in the last 10 years.

 

Heh another tell.

You are right that "It is characteristic of Conservatives to have no counterpart curiosity about the mind(s) of the Left" but the reason for that is that conservatives in general already know the mind of the left. You're saturated in it so, like a fish not noticing it's wet, you don't see it, but every single major institution in the country is left leaning. The news media, Hollywood, education, magazines like the Atlantic...I see what the left thinks and feels every time I cut on the national news, or watch a TV show, or read the paper. It's all around us.

So I don't need an anthropological tour of Berkley, San Francisco or Portland. Suffice to say, I know far more about how the left thinks than you and the typical left of center posters on this forum know about the right. This thread is a great example of that.

 

One of the things we know about the right is that most of what they think they know about the left isint so.

 

Yeah, well such presumption certainly is of the Dunning-Kruger variety.

Certainly we know that all these institutions are Left-leaning. Of course, Progressives see, with reason, much of the national media to be crypto-Right, since as "left-leaning" as they putatively are, they don't engage in any truly leftist fundamental critique of culture or institutions. Often it takes years for those kinds of critiques to migrate out of the universities and the muckraking-journals and onto CNN (in very abbreviated form). And when it comes to foreign policy, the center-Left national media is just about as pro-war as the Right is.

Anyway, the vast majority of Conservatives do not read the elite opinion journals of the Left - The Atlantic, the NYRB, Harper's, etc. If they did, they would learn a lot.

 

Im not sure how you see individual rights having increased pre-2000, nor how the GOP is any worse on crushing them, but I agree with rest.