Opinion
The G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro
But will it doom the rest of us, too?
By Paul
Krugman
Opinion
Columnist
Jan. 28,
2021, 7:00 p.m. ET
Here’s what
we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably
irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol
insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing
will.
What isn’t
clear yet is who, exactly, will end up facing doom. Will it be the G.O.P. as a
significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it?
Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful
Republicans will be in suppressing votes.
About the
bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might
try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.
On Tuesday
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump’s
role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that
would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he’s no longer in
office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)
On Thursday
Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader — who still hasn’t conceded that Joe
Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump “bears
responsibility” for the attack on Congress — visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to
make amends.
In other
words, the G.O.P.’s national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has
surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.
And the
fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. The Arizona state party
censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the
coronavirus. The Texas G.O.P. has adopted the slogan “We are the storm,” which
is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link.
Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by
the rioters themselves, that the attack on the Capitol was a left-wing false
flag operation.
How did
this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political
scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by
factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media,
notably Fox News.
This opens
the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something, by the way,
that I’ve seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As
hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates; what remains
of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates; and so
on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it
begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that
all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.
This
process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least
to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump’s reign of
corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to
overturn the election results, brought it to a head. And the cowardice of the
Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America’s two major
political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it’s not
coming back.
What
happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally
and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically.
And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon
Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the
way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to
impotence in the face of a Democratic supermajority.
But it’s not
at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans
have become more extreme they have lost broad support; the G.O.P. has won the
popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier
influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.
Given the
unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can
achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected
Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and he came fairly close to
pulling it out in 2020 despite a seven million vote deficit. The Senate is
evenly divided even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people
than Republicans.
And the
Republican response to electoral defeat isn’t to change policies to win over
voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for
systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort
by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the
state’s electoral votes and Senate seats. So the Republicans who control the
state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID
requirements and other measures to limit voting.
The bottom
line is that we don’t know whether we’ve earned more than a temporary reprieve.
A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been
foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the
legitimacy of its opposition isn’t getting saner, and still has a good chance
of taking complete power in four years.
Paul
Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished
Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade
and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
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