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    How Donald Trump canceled the Republican party | Sidney Blumenthal

    The Republican convention that nominates Donald Trump for a second term will be the greatest event in the political history of cancel culture. What Trump is cancelling is nothing less than the Republican party as it has existed before him. He ran in 2016 in the primaries on cancelling the GOP and in 2020 he ratifies his triumph. After the election, political scientists and historians will study his obliteration of the Republican party as his greatest and most enduring political achievement.The Republican party has been on a long journey away from being the party of Abraham Lincoln, accelerating since Barry Goldwater and rightwing cadres captured it in 1964 in reaction to the civil rights movement. After Richard Nixon embraced the southern strategy and won the nomination in 1968 with the help of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the Dixiecrat segregationist presidential candidate in 1948, the party increasingly radicalized in every election cycle and became gradually unmoored. In 1980, Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair, the place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. Surrounded by Confederate flags, he hailed “states’ rights”. As brazen an appeal as it was, Reagan felt he had to resort to the old code words.Central to Trump’s unique selling proposition is that he dispenses with the dog whistles. His vulgarity gives a vicarious thrill to those who revel in his taunting of perceived enemies or scapegoats. He made them feel dominant at no social price, until his catastrophic mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis. Flouting a mask is the magical act of defiance to signal that nothing has really changed and that in any case, Trump bears no responsibility.But there has also been a political cost to Trump’s louche comic lounge act that still transfixes a diehard audience lingering like late-night gamblers for the last show. Trump is the only president since the advent of modern polling never to reach 50% approval. Despite decisively losing the popular vote in 2016, he said he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. This time, fearing an even more overwhelming popular rejection, he says the outcome will be “rigged” and he has pre-emptively tried to cancel the US Postal Service, to undermine voting by mail.From Reagan onward, even as the fringe moved to the center and took it over, the party did not anticipate that it was slouching toward Trump. Conservatives have consistently failed to grasp the unintended consequences of conservatism. Even when Reagan fostered the evangelical right, George HW Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to the supreme court, George W Bush invaded Iraq and neglected oversight of financial markets that collapsed, and John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republicans believed they were expanding the attraction of the conservative project. When Newt Gingrich, Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh methodically degraded language, it seemed a propaganda technique to herd supporters. When the dark money of the Koch family and the wealthy reactionaries of the cloaked Donors Trust bankrolled the lumpen dress-up Tea Party to do their bidding on deregulation of finance and industry, the munificently funded conservative candidates did their bidding as retainers of privilege.In the wasteland, only cockroaches and Mitch McConnell may surviveAt the presidential level there still remained residual elements contrary to what metastasized into Trumpism. Reagan represented free trade and western firmness against Russia. George HW Bush was a paragon of public service. George W Bush was an advocate for immigrants. John McCain was the embodiment of patriotic sacrifice.After Trump, all that has been cancelled. Since he first rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, to declare his candidacy against Mexican “rapists”, there has always been a new escalator downward. After overcoming his initial hesitation, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, welcomed the election of a QAnon conspiracy-spouting candidate from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then McCarthy condemned QAnon and stated that Greene wasn’t part of a movement she continued to defend.Trump hailed her as a “future Republican star”. For months, he has been tweeting messages to encourage the racist, antisemitic cult. “There’s a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it,” Greene proclaimed. “I’ve heard these are people that love our country,” Trump said. In the wasteland, only cockroaches and Mitch McConnell may survive.Stuart Stevens, a prominent Republican political consultant, eyes startled wide open, has entitled his exposé of the party It Was All A Lie. He describes the conservative Trump apologists, the adults in the room, as latter-day versions of Franz von Papen, the German chancellor who enabled the rise of Hitler in the complacent belief that he could be controlled and the conservatives would maintain power.On 4 July, at the mammoth stage set of Mount Rushmore, Trump mugged for his photo op by posing his face next in line to the carving of Abraham Lincoln. He had earlier told the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, “‘Did you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’” “And I started laughing,” she recounted. “And he wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.” (Trump tweeted that it was “fake news” that he had ordered an aide to inquire about immortalizing his face on the mountain.)Ostensibly, Trump came to deliver his ideological message. He denounced “cancel culture”, which he said was “the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America”. He attributed it to “a new far-left fascism”. And he spelled out its punitive nature: “If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished.” Thus, he offered a concise description of his own cancel culture’s methods.Trump’s cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshipped. Before, during and after the death of McCain, Trump unleashed tirades of insult. He finally complained that the McCain family never thanked him for approving the senator’s funeral arrangements, even though it was Congress that gave approval. For years, Trump has disparaged the Bush family. At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when George W Bush called for setting aside partisanship and embracing national unity, Trump tweeted, “but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside”.Trump’s cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshippedTrump has invoked Reagan only as a stepping stone of his own monumental pedestal. At a rally in 2019, Trump mused: “I was watching the other night the great Lou Dobbs [of Fox News], and he said, ‘When Trump took over, President Trump,’ he used to say, ‘Trump is a great president.’ Then he said, ‘Trump is the greatest president since Ronald Reagan.’ Then he said, ‘No, no, Trump is an even better president than Ronald Reagan.’ And now he’s got me down as the greatest president in the history of our country, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Thank you. We love you too.”When Trump sought to profit for his 2020 campaign by selling a gold-colored Trump-Reagan commemorative coin set, the Reagan Foundation sent him a curt letter, telling him to cease and desist. Trump has constantly retailed a false story about Reagan supposedly remarking after meeting him, “For the life of me, and I’ll never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with the president.” The chief administrative officer of the Reagan Foundation felt compelled to note that Reagan “did not ever say that about Donald Trump”. More

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    One thing all sides agree on: the 2020 election is about the soul of America | Cas Mudde

    The 2020 Democratic convention is over and the Democratic party has just let out a sigh of relief. The Democrats and their “new” leader were center-stage for several days and nothing went wrong. In fact, not only did their presidential candidate, Joe Biden, not have any gaffes, his acceptance speech was praised by Republicans, and by Fox News, which seems to be the highest compliment for the Biden campaign team.If anyone was still wondering, the Democratic national convention made it crystal clear: Biden is going for the “moderate” Democrats and Republicans. Whereas Hillary Clinton still devoted one day to the Sanders base at the 2016 convention, the Biden camp gave Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just one minute, roughly one-quarter of the time they allotted to Republican ex-governor John Kasich.Biden’s campaign is going to be Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” but with pictures of Black Lives Matter, as was captured perfectly in the “Rise Up” video that was debuted, to great enthusiasm from Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, at the convention. Biden is going to be the feelgood president, the empathy president, the man who suffered and feels your pain. Most importantly, he is going to be the “not-Trump” president.Sure, there is going to be a lot of hinting at progressive change, but Biden will mostly assure so-called moderates – and Wall Street – that they have nothing to worry about. And why should they? As President Trump wryly pointed out: “In 47 years, Joe did none of the things of which he now speaks. He will never change, just words!”The Biden campaign has read the polls and the polls say that the November elections are going to be a referendum on Trump. Almost anyone who still self-identifies as Republican is now completely behind Trump – who still has an approval rating of 90% among Republicans – while 60% of Biden “supporters” say they mainly are backing him as a vote against Trump.But Trump is really just a placeholder, who fuels a much longer-standing polarization. At least since the 2000 Bush-Gore election, sections of the two camps have argued that the next election is about the fate of US democracy. Each election, these sections have become bigger. Trump has embraced this division, and amplified it, raising it to new levels. In today’s “conservative” narrative, Marco Rubio and Fox News are (potential) enemies. Similarly, on the left, a new radical social media infrastructure has emerged that sees Nancy Pelosi and the New York Times as “Trump enablers”.To be absolutely clear, the radicalization in both camps is not the same. Trump is a threat to US democracy. He has repeatedly shown his authoritarian instincts, openly fantasizes about an unconstitutional third term, and repeatedly praised domestic extremists and foreign dictators. And his party is now openly embracing QAnon conspiracy theorists like Marjorie Taylor Green and other white supremacists like Laura Loomer. Not to speak of the most influential gravedigger of US liberal democracy, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.You either see Trump as a danger to US democracy or you think Biden is. Nothing is going to change thatJoe Biden might be many things, but he is no radical. Nor is he a “dangerous pawn of the far left”, as the far-right outrage machine tries to portray him. In fact, despite Sanders’ remarkable runs in 2016 and 2020, the Democratic party is still well in the hands of centrists. And while the Democrats have been involved in several illiberal and undemocratic policies – from gerrymandering to the illegal surveillance of millions of Americans – their support for the liberal democratic system, in word and deed, is impeccable compared with that of the Republican party.What does this all mean for the coming months? The main consequence of this polarization is that the mind of the vast majority of potential voters is already fixed, at least on the question of which candidate to potentially vote for. For most Americans, this 2020 election is about “the soul of America”, whatever that “soul” exactly might be. You either see Trump as a danger to US democracy or you think Biden is. Nothing is going to change that.Consequently, the election is going to be won by whoever can make the most voters so afraid that they will come out to vote. Trump still has an easier task ahead, playing on longstanding racist fears, and profiting from most of the many deficiencies of the electoral system that work in his favor – such as the electoral college, the disproportionate weight for rural America and voter suppression. He is playing to a much smaller electorate, but one that votes more often.Biden has a larger potential electorate, but weaker support among them. Moreover, he does not want to rely on the non-white vote, which overwhelmingly prefers him over Trump, but is notoriously low (in part because of voter suppression!). Hence, Biden has decided to prioritize the “moderate” white vote (again). But whether his campaign will be able to frighten enough white centrists more about the state of US democracy than over the economic meltdown or “demographic change”, remains to be seen.Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the new podcast Radikaal More

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    After a repentant Trump voter's one-man protest, what happened next?

    Regrets, he’s had a few, but then again, there’s one he’d like to mention.James Walker voted for Donald Trump in 2016. That fateful decision, and a subsequent act of public of repentance, rippled through his family and friendships, his dating life, his career, where he makes his home and countless thousands of posts on social media.Walker’s story is a parable of the times, a glimpse of how the Trump era has awakened ordinary citizens, who might otherwise sit on the sidelines as presidents come and go, and how the internet has become a turbocharged amplifier of division and hatred, healing and redemption.It was March 2017 when Trump, still in the foothills of his presidency, held a rally in Nashville, Tennessee. As usual, there was a small group of protesters outside the venue, the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. Unmissable among them stood Walker wearing beard, sunglasses, black North Face jacket, khaki trousers. Most strikingly, he wore a red “Make America great again” (Maga) cap on his head and a sign in his hands that announced to the world: “I’ve made a huge mistake.”As a picture it was worth a thousand tweets. It soon went viral on social media, featured on the Guardian and Reddit websites and was cited by the comedian Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time. A Twitter post from this Guardian reporter that day has now accumulated 42,000 retweets and 82,000 likes. Among the earliest comments: “no worries man. Join the #resistance”; “Wow – James Walker – takes guts to do that – no matter who you voted for. Most people wouldn’t do that.”I felt frustrated and didn’t know which way to go and then immediately felt like I had made the wrong callMany wanted to know: why did he vote for Trump? And why did he change his mind? Walker grew up in a conservative family in northern California and spent two years in the military but, by 2016, had begun to question the direction of the Republican party; nevertheless, he plumped for Trump over Hillary Clinton.“I was mid-transition when that election came up and I felt frustrated with both candidates that were put up and didn’t know which way to go and then immediately felt like I had made the wrong call,” he explained by phone from Los Angeles, where he now lives. “Within a few months I had become so frustrated that I felt it was necessary to stand up and do something.”Walker, 35, did not own a Maga hat but ordered one when “a random, crazy” idea took hold in his mind. When the president came to town, he put the red cap on and took along his sign expressing repentance. He was “scared” what reaction he might get as thousands of Trump supporters poured into Nashville, he admits, and had two friends standing nearby as “bodyguards”.“I intended to stand there for like five minutes and get a photo that I could post as my own private protest, but within two minutes you [Guardian reporter] walked up to me and I didn’t even entirely know how to react to that. I thought if someone came up to me, I would probably need to start running for the exit.“Immediately after that, more people started coming up to me and I ended up staying for hours. I marched all around with the protesters and so many of them came up to me and gave me hugs and thanked me and said me taking a stand like that was inspiring. It really moved people.“People were crying and it just felt like a really healing moment which was not what I expected. It reinforced my hope that I could find a way to be an activist, even in my own kind of quirky way of standing there in a red hat and holding up a sign as a regretful Trump voter.”But when Walker approached people attending the Trump rally, the reception was rather less warm. “It felt like there was a lot of toxicity and I didn’t even feel safe over there.”He went home and assumed that would be the end of it.But that evening he started getting text messages from friends and family members saying he was going viral on Twitter. “That kind of freaked me out,” he admits. “Most of the responses from people who were sending me screenshots were positive, but my family was not happy and were rather upset with me doing that.That was the point at which I almost felt like I might have made a mistake because the comments turned very nasty“They said, ‘Why would you do something to hurt Trump?’ I was surprised by that because I thought, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that I could do something that hurt Trump’, so that was rather exciting but, at the same time, it started a longstanding rift down party lines in the family, which is kind of the thing that the whole protest was about, hoping to break down those walls.”The morning after his protest, Walker received more text messages telling him he had made it to the front page of Reddit.“That was the point at which I almost felt like I might have made a mistake because the comments turned very nasty and started to attack every aspect of my character and all these unknowable things. I became a target for a lot of people’s frustration, and that’s when I felt like I need to shut down and just regroup and think through whether or not I would take another interview.“I only read the comments for a couple hours and I never went back but I remember that they targeted my physical appearance. Of course they attacked me as someone who would admit to voting for Trump and therefore a fool, and then they homed in on other details from the picture like me wearing my military-issue pants, and so they attacked by military service record.”The reaction among friends in the liberal bastion of East Nashville was mixed. “I had a surprising amount of friends on my side but then there were those who just didn’t understand why I would do something like that. To an extent, I didn’t either. I just felt compelled because it seemed like such a critical moment that, in any way I could, I needed to do something and it seemed to work.”He recalls: “I started dating someone and she had to tell all of her friends that she was dating the guy who went viral in the Maga hat in Nashville a week or two ago.” More