thebulwark--2020-08-24--Five Major Speeches from Past Republican Conventions

What can we expect from this week ’ s Republican National Convention ?
Like last week ’ s Democratic convention , we know that it will be a strange affair , with solo livestreams , press barred from entry , few attendees other than delegates , and the whole production even more made-for-TV than party conventions already were .
As a matter of rhetoric , speeches will have to be crafted for communication solely via camera and screen rather than in the typical convention mode of appealing to a physically present audience .
( That is not entirely novel , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ addresses in American political history , like FDR ’ s acceptance speech at the 1940 Democratic convention , were delivered remotely , and many minor addresses have been prerecorded . )
For President Trump , the new mode could pose a particular challenge : He is most oratorically comfortable when mugging and ad libbing for adoring crowds .
How will he fare when reading from a script before a lifeless camera in what is usually the moment for a standout speech ?
To prepare for the weirdness of this year ’ s RNC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long history of Republican party rhetoric and its power to move and persuade , it ’ s worth revisiting some of the most memorable speeches of the last half-dozen Republican conventions .
Let ’ s take a tour of the speeches—good and bad—that made today ’ s Grand Old Party .
Arizona senator Barry Goldwater may have lost the 1964 presidential election in a landslide , but his speech at the Republican convention at the Cow Palace near San Francisco far outlived his presidential bid .
Goldwater ’ s emphasis on an ideological @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement and paved the way for future president Ronald Reagan ’ s ascent .
These famous lines led to much debate , and made it easier for critics to depict Goldwater as an extremist .
The intention behind them was very different .
Goldwater thought they echoed Cicero .
The man who penned them—the Straussian political scientist Harry Jaffa—was apparently inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. ’ s “ Letter from the Birmingham Jail.
” Jaffa explained in an interview with journalist Brain Gaffney : “ The important thing is not whether we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of extremist we should be .
I obviously picked up on that theme , but nobody wanted to hear it.
” Aside from those famous lines , there is much else in the speech to marvel at : Back in 1858 , Abraham Lincoln said this of the Republican party , and I quote him because he probably could have said it during the last week or so : “ It was composed of strained , discordant , and even hostile elements.
” .
.
.
Yet all of these elements agreed on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progress of slavery , and place it in the course of ultimate extinction .
Today , as then , but more urgently and more broadly than then , the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength .
Anyone who joins us , in all sincerity , we welcome .
Those , those who do not care for our cause , we don ’ t expect to enter our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels .
Goldwater sought to carve out a conservative tradition for the Republican party .
He was not afraid to face the party ’ s “ strained , discordant , and even hostile ” nature .
He was also unwilling to exchange his principles for votes .
To have the courage to stand at a party convention , typically brimming with pomp and catchphrases , and deplore “ unthinking and stupid labels ” is no small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the man who was himself catapulted into the national political spotlight during Goldwater ’ s unsuccessful presidential campaign .
Actor-turned-corporate-spokesman Ronald Reagan gave a televised speech ( “ A Time for Choosing ” ) in support of Goldwater just a few days before the 1964 election .
Reagan ’ s speech did little to help Goldwater , who had averaged more than 20 points below Lyndon Johnson in the polls since summer , but it did raise Reagan ’ s profile .
Two years later he ran for governor in California .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Reagan had an eye on a higher prize , and after his second term as governor ended , he began laying the groundwork for a presidential run .
In 1976 , though , he lost the nomination to incumbent President Gerald Ford .
The primaries were a much closer call , however , than Ford ’ s campaign had hoped .
Reagan ’ s popularity helped cement the split in the party between Northeastern “ establishment ” moderates and those in the American South and Southwest who tended to be more ideologically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a while like the Kansas City convention would be contested , Reagan did lose .
Graciously invited by Ford to address the hall , Reagan gave an impromptu speech that is regarded as his concession .
After some warmly greeted remarks of thanks to Ford and the convention , Reagan turns serious .
He recalls writing a letter for a time capsule to be opened in California a century later .
He uses this as a prompt to share a Burkean vision : the importance of safeguarding freedom not just for his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be born , and for their kids , and their grandkids , and so on .
If you watch the mesmerizing recording , the crowd is somber .
They take in every word of what Reagan says .
One moment where the crowd does cheer , though , is when Reagan speaks to “ all those millions of independents and Democrats ” who are “ looking for a cause to rally around.
” When Reagan finished delivering the so-called “ time capsule speech , ” the story goes that men from Ford ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , shaking their heads .
“ We picked the wrong guy !
” Of course , the next time around , in 1980 , the Republicans picked the right guy .
The whole country did .
And then , four years after that , as Ronald Reagan sought re-election , his 1984 speech to the Republican convention was a major boost to his campaign .
When Donald Trump started using the slogan “ Make America Great Again ” for his 2016 campaign , some commentators , noting that Reagan had sometimes used that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parallels between the two presidents .
Reagan ’ s acceptance speech to the 1984 convention in Dallas clearly shows the vast gulf between them .
Reagan emphasizes a lack of optimism as the problem plaguing the United States .
America is an inherently great country—by its founding system , its values , its people—it just needs to remember its greatness .
Reagan appeals to the American propensity for progress .
Trump ’ s 2016 convention speech—which we will get to later—does the opposite .
Reagan knew the rhetorical power of invoking an enemy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one another , as Trump does , Reagan pits Americans against tyranny—both at home and abroad .
Reagan spends a couple of minutes reaching out again to Democrats , discussing why he left their party—or rather , how the Democratic leadership took “ their party further and further away from its first principles.
” When he says of Democratic voters “ We welcome them to our side , ” the crowd goes wild .
Contrast this sincere outreach with Brad Parscale ’ s measly “ Democrats for Trump ” bumper sticker .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speech is masterly .
Using as a device the Olympic torch that , just weeks earlier , had been carried by runners across the country , Reagan takes his listeners on a tour of the United States that is also a tour of the applauding delegations around the convention hall .
He celebrates the beauty of the country and the diversity of its people , weaving together American stories and ideals .
Then , switching to another torch , that of the Statue of Liberty , he ends on a note of pride @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Her heart is full ; her door is still golden , her future bright.
” Make time to watch or listen to those last eight minutes of the speech .
Next , a man who attempted to take the Republican party in a radically different direction .
Unsuccessful presidential candidate Pat Buchanan ’ s speech to the 1992 Republican convention in Houston is known as the “ culture war speech.
” Buchanan presented Democratic nominee and future president Bill Clinton ’ s candidacy as a death knell for America , focusing on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as abortion , gay marriage , and feminism .
Quoting a Democrat who said that “ Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history , ” Buchanan agrees : “ And so they do.
” After referring to the “ radical feminism ” of Hillary Clinton—and her husband ’ s line about how , in electing him , voters would be getting her , too : “ two for the price of one ” —Buchanan mocks their plans for the country .
“ The agenda that Clinton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demand , a litmus test for the Supreme Court , homosexual rights , discrimination against religious schools , women in combat units—that ’ s change , all right.
” Buchanan tries to appeal to people in America ’ s heartland—people who “ don ’ t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke , but they come from the same schoolyards and the same playgrounds and towns as we come from.
” But rather than instilling optimism about the future of these communities , he stokes the flames of war .
Recognize this formulation ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ from some Republicans in the 2016 election about the importance of defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 .
“ Charge the cockpit or you die , ” went the infamous “ Flight 93 ” essay by Trump-booster-turned-administration-official Michael Anton .
The difference is that when Buchanan gave this speech , it was viewed by Republican operatives as disastrous .
Not so when Trump issued a clarion call against Hillary Clinton in a similar , if less erudite , formulation at the 2016 Republican convention .
In his acceptance speech at the 2016 RNC in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ class that , he said , was running and ruining the country .
He frames his opponent as an embodiment—a “ puppet ” —of this “ rigged system.
” Hillary Clinton is the ultimate insider ; Donald Trump is the ultimate outsider .
And , he says , it is politicians like Hillary Clinton who have sold out America : Today , in 2020 , Donald Trump still tries to blame Democrats , the deep state , and others for the country ’ s problems .
But he can no longer lay claim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the incumbent president .
And he is unquestionably in control of the Republican party .
It will be interesting to see , when the party nominates him again this week , how he tries to avoid responsibility for massive problems—not least a terrible pandemic—that have happened on his watch .

What can we expect from this week’s Republican National Convention? Like last week’s Democratic convention, we know that it will be a strange affair, with solo livestreams, press barred from entry, few attendees other than delegates, and the whole production even more made-for-TV than party conventions already were.
As a matter of rhetoric, speeches will have to be crafted for communication solely via camera and screen rather than in the typical convention mode of appealing to a physically present audience. (That is not entirely novel, of course; some other important convention addresses in American political history, like FDR’s acceptance speech at the 1940 Democratic convention, were delivered remotely, and many minor addresses have been prerecorded.)
For President Trump, the new mode could pose a particular challenge: He is most oratorically comfortable when mugging and ad libbing for adoring crowds. How will he fare when reading from a script before a lifeless camera in what is usually the moment for a standout speech?
To prepare for the weirdness of this year’s RNC, and to remind ourselves of the long history of Republican party rhetoric and its power to move and persuade, it’s worth revisiting some of the most memorable speeches of the last half-dozen Republican conventions. Let’s take a tour of the speeches—good and bad—that made today’s Grand Old Party.
Barry Goldwater, July 16, 1964.
Arizona senator Barry Goldwater may have lost the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, but his speech at the Republican convention at the Cow Palace near San Francisco far outlived his presidential bid. Goldwater’s emphasis on an ideological commitment to liberty galvanized the still-new conservative movement and paved the way for future president Ronald Reagan’s ascent.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
These famous lines led to much debate, and made it easier for critics to depict Goldwater as an extremist. The intention behind them was very different. Goldwater thought they echoed Cicero. The man who penned them—the Straussian political scientist Harry Jaffa—was apparently inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” Jaffa explained in an interview with journalist Brain Gaffney: “The important thing is not whether we should be extremist, but what kind of extremist we should be. I obviously picked up on that theme, but nobody wanted to hear it.”
Barry Goldwater 1964 RNC Acceptance Speech
Watch this video on YouTube
Aside from those famous lines, there is much else in the speech to marvel at:
Back in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said this of the Republican party, and I quote him because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: “It was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.” . . . Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount objective: to arrest the progress of slavery, and place it in the course of ultimate extinction. Today, as then, but more urgently and more broadly than then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength. Anyone who joins us, in all sincerity, we welcome. Those, those who do not care for our cause, we don’t expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.
Goldwater sought to carve out a conservative tradition for the Republican party. He was not afraid to face the party’s “strained, discordant, and even hostile” nature. He was also unwilling to exchange his principles for votes. To have the courage to stand at a party convention, typically brimming with pomp and catchphrases, and deplore “unthinking and stupid labels” is no small feat.
Ronald Reagan, August 19, 1976.
Let us turn next to the man who was himself catapulted into the national political spotlight during Goldwater’s unsuccessful presidential campaign.
Actor-turned-corporate-spokesman Ronald Reagan gave a televised speech (“A Time for Choosing”) in support of Goldwater just a few days before the 1964 election. Reagan’s speech did little to help Goldwater, who had averaged more than 20 points below Lyndon Johnson in the polls since summer, but it did raise Reagan’s profile. Two years later he ran for governor in California. He won, then won re-election in 1970.
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Reagan had an eye on a higher prize, and after his second term as governor ended, he began laying the groundwork for a presidential run. In 1976, though, he lost the nomination to incumbent President Gerald Ford. The primaries were a much closer call, however, than Ford’s campaign had hoped. Reagan’s popularity helped cement the split in the party between Northeastern “establishment” moderates and those in the American South and Southwest who tended to be more ideologically committed to conservativism.
Although it looked for a while like the Kansas City convention would be contested, Reagan did lose. Graciously invited by Ford to address the hall, Reagan gave an impromptu speech that is regarded as his concession. After some warmly greeted remarks of thanks to Ford and the convention, Reagan turns serious. He recalls writing a letter for a time capsule to be opened in California a century later. He uses this as a prompt to share a Burkean vision: the importance of safeguarding freedom not just for his generation, but for those yet to be born, and for their kids, and their grandkids, and so on.
And suddenly it dawned on me; those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they will have the freedom that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here. Will they look back with appreciation and say, Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? Who kept us now a hundred years later free? Who kept our world from nuclear destruction?
If you watch the mesmerizing recording, the crowd is somber. They take in every word of what Reagan says. One moment where the crowd does cheer, though, is when Reagan speaks to “all those millions of independents and Democrats” who are “looking for a cause to rally around.”
Ronald Reagan's Remarks at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri — 8/19/76
Watch this video on YouTube
When Reagan finished delivering the so-called “time capsule speech,” the story goes that men from Ford’s campaign team turned to one another, shaking their heads. “We picked the wrong guy!”
Ronald Reagan, August 23, 1984.
Of course, the next time around, in 1980, the Republicans picked the right guy. The whole country did. And then, four years after that, as Ronald Reagan sought re-election, his 1984 speech to the Republican convention was a major boost to his campaign.
When Donald Trump started using the slogan “Make America Great Again” for his 2016 campaign, some commentators, noting that Reagan had sometimes used that phrase in 1980, tried to draw parallels between the two presidents. Reagan’s acceptance speech to the 1984 convention in Dallas clearly shows the vast gulf between them.
Reagan emphasizes a lack of optimism as the problem plaguing the United States. America is an inherently great country—by its founding system, its values, its people—it just needs to remember its greatness.
But worst of all, worst of all Americans were losing the confidence and optimism about the future that has made us unique in the world. Parents were beginning to doubt that their children would have the better life that has been the dream of every American generation. We can all be proud this pessimism is ended. America is coming back and is more confident than ever about the future.
Reagan appeals to the American propensity for progress. Trump’s 2016 convention speech—which we will get to later—does the opposite. Reagan knew the rhetorical power of invoking an enemy. But instead of pitting Americans against one another, as Trump does, Reagan pits Americans against tyranny—both at home and abroad.
Isn’t our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down: down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse, accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty and ultimately totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.
President Reagan's Acceptance Speech at the Republican National Convention, August 23, 1984
Watch this video on YouTube
Reagan spends a couple of minutes reaching out again to Democrats, discussing why he left their party—or rather, how the Democratic leadership took “their party further and further away from its first principles.” When he says of Democratic voters “We welcome them to our side,” the crowd goes wild. Contrast this sincere outreach with Brad Parscale’s measly “Democrats for Trump” bumper sticker.
The peroration and conclusion of Reagan’s speech is masterly. Using as a device the Olympic torch that, just weeks earlier, had been carried by runners across the country, Reagan takes his listeners on a tour of the United States that is also a tour of the applauding delegations around the convention hall. He celebrates the beauty of the country and the diversity of its people, weaving together American stories and ideals. Then, switching to another torch, that of the Statue of Liberty, he ends on a note of pride and hope for the United States: “Her heart is full; her door is still golden, her future bright.” Make time to watch or listen to those last eight minutes of the speech.
Pat Buchanan, August 17, 1992.
Next, a man who attempted to take the Republican party in a radically different direction. Unsuccessful presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s speech to the 1992 Republican convention in Houston is known as the “culture war speech.” Buchanan presented Democratic nominee and future president Bill Clinton’s candidacy as a death knell for America, focusing on cultural issues important to conservatives, such as abortion, gay marriage, and feminism.
Quoting a Democrat who said that “Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history,” Buchanan agrees: “And so they do.”
After referring to the “radical feminism” of Hillary Clinton—and her husband’s line about how, in electing him, voters would be getting her, too: “two for the price of one”—Buchanan mocks their plans for the country. “The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that’s change, all right.”
Buchanan tries to appeal to people in America’s heartland—people who “don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they come from the same schoolyards and the same playgrounds and towns as we come from.” But rather than instilling optimism about the future of these communities, he stokes the flames of war.
There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, to the Buchanan Brigades out there, we have to come home and stand beside George Bush.
Recognize this formulation? It is not dissimilar to the rhetoric from some Republicans in the 2016 election about the importance of defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016. “Charge the cockpit or you die,” went the infamous “Flight 93” essay by Trump-booster-turned-administration-official Michael Anton.
The difference is that when Buchanan gave this speech, it was viewed by Republican operatives as disastrous. Not so when Trump issued a clarion call against Hillary Clinton in a similar, if less erudite, formulation at the 2016 Republican convention.
Donald Trump, July 21, 2016.
In his acceptance speech at the 2016 RNC in Cleveland, Trump railed against an elite class that, he said, was running and ruining the country.
America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics and cynics. Remember: All of the people telling you “You can’t have the country you want” are the same people that wouldn’t stand—I mean they said “Trump doesn’t have a chance of being here tonight, not a chance”—the same people. Ah, we love defeating those people don’t we? Don’t we love defeating those people? Love it, love it, love it. No longer can we rely on those same people in the media, and politics, who will say anything to keep a rigged system in place.
He frames his opponent as an embodiment—a “puppet”—of this “rigged system.” Hillary Clinton is the ultimate insider; Donald Trump is the ultimate outsider. And, he says, it is politicians like Hillary Clinton who have sold out America:
The problems we face now—poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad—will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created themin the first place. . . . The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponent, is that our plan will put America first. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America first, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect—the respect that we deserve.
Today, in 2020, Donald Trump still tries to blame Democrats, the deep state, and others for the country’s problems. But he can no longer lay claim to being an outsider. He is the incumbent president. And he is unquestionably in control of the Republican party. It will be interesting to see, when the party nominates him again this week, how he tries to avoid responsibility for massive problems—not least a terrible pandemic—that have happened on his watch.


thebulwark--2020-08-24--How the Republican Party We’ll See This Week Became Donald Trump’s

As Donald Trump heads into his virtual convention gravely wounded , hopeful souls envision salvaging something finer from a post-Trump GOP .
Well they might .
The party ’ s current incarnation is intellectually and morally bankrupt—inimical to democracy ; contemptuous of reason ; and corrosive to our comity and capacity to govern .
But the idealists err in imagining these pathologies transient , for they are woven into the party ’ s DNA .
The GOP ’ s squalor is not the product of a single man .
It stems from a compound of anger , greed , myopia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for years , nurtured in a fever swamp where disinformation and hysteria proliferate unimpeded .
Trump is the result , not the cause .
Start with the pre-existing gulf between the now-enfeebled Republican establishment and its modern base : evangelicals resentful of secular elites ; moderately educated whites threatened by globalism and economic marginalization ; zealots distrustful of government and fearful of the cultural and racial other .
Feeling themselves besieged by hostile forces , they found refuge in identity , not ideas—including the nostrums of traditional Republicanism .
Until 2016 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own smugness , certain that it could unite its restive primary electorate behind the most “ electable conservative ” congenial to donors , officeholders , and party professionals .
To propitiate the base , Republican leaders and candidates increasingly pandered to racial , religious , and ethno-nationalist grievance rather than addressing the economic interests of ordinary people beset by accelerating income disparity .
Central to this cynical stratagem was the devolution of the GOP ’ s governing classes from guardians of party principle into servants of the wealthy .
Beginning in the 1980s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ free-market ” agenda laser-focused on diminishing regulation , reducing taxes , gelding unions , slashing employee benefits , promoting corporate consolidation , gutting antitrust law , and maximizing shareholder value by offshoring jobs , suppressing wages , and firing workers .
Once tax cuts and cosseting corporations became the GOP ’ s raison d ’ être , to preserve its electoral viability the establishment increasingly jettisoned the party ’ s traditional agenda to accommodate fundamentalism , economic nationalism , xenophobia , white identity politics , cultural resentment , anti-elitism and an undifferentiated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its longtime stalwarts—the internationalists ; the free traders ; the deficit hawks ; the social moderates ; the pro-immigration reformers ; the advocates of compromise and prudent stewardship—were marginalized to placate the ever-more-volatile base .
Instead of looking forward , the party marinated in visceral nostalgia for an imaginary white folks ’ paradise .
Soon enough , the GOP was germinating a race-based birtherism directed at our first black president , giving Trump a political foothold .
It trafficked in conspiracy theories .
It embraced Tea Party dead-enders who believed that shutting down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It promoted climate denial and shunned scientific expertise .
It swapped reason for hysteria ; fact for disinformation ; ideology for the incitements of talk radio ; civility for the charlatanism of Fox News .
Yet the party ’ s myopic mandarins foolishly imagined that they could yet maintain control .
What they failed to perceive was that Trump , their Frankenstein monster , would escape the lab to sweep Republican primaries and capture the party .
The base had overcome them .
Of the former governing class , only the donors—like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in exchange for fiscally calamitous tax cuts .
The party pros and officeholders simply chose survival .
So here it is , Trump ’ s GOP .
Instead of honoring the law enforcement and intelligence agencies the party once revered , it attacks them .
Instead of upholding the international agreements it once crafted , it demeans them .
Instead of protecting limited government and upholding checks and balances , it countenances an unprecedented expansion of executive power unaccountable to Congress or the courts .
Its business is selling public policy , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unity , but reprisal .
Its officeholders bray approval of an ignorant and unstable demagogue , or cower in fear of his wrath .
Those who imagine recapturing some pre-Trump state of grace misapprehend its descent .
This is the Republican party its donors pay for—and its base voters crave .
But perhaps the greatest casualty is respect for constitutional democracy itself .
Increasingly , the GOP relies on voters who prize authority over diversity or dissent .
For them , Trump ’ s wall is not merely a thing , but a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s hold on the base .
In 2016 , a doctoral student at UMass Amherst , Matthew McWilliams , asked a survey group of Republicans four questions about which traits were most important in child raising : independence or respect for elders ; curiosity or good manners ; self-reliance or obedience ; being considerate or being well behaved .
His purpose was to identify those inclined to favor hierarchy and direction from the top , characterized by psychologists as “ authoritarians.
” The results were striking .
Half the Republicans who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supported Trump .
The shorthand explanation is that Trump ’ s persona meets a deep need for authority which is particularly strong among evangelicals and others who feel economically and socially threatened—especially white Republicans of limited education .
These folks respond to promises of direct action to impose clear and simple solutions .
Authoritarian by psychology and instinct , Trump salves their anxieties by promising to repel their enemies and restore their primacy by whatever means , whoever these enemies may be—or Trump chooses them to be .
In 2016 , journalist Amanda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s appeal : This mindset licenses not only undemocratic abuses of executive power but also systematic attacks on the conduct of free and fair elections .
Writes Ezra Klein : “ The fear that [ Trump ] would entrench himself as an individual strongman has distracted from the reality that his party is insulating itself from democracy.
” Republicans , Klein argues , have become “ minoritarian authoritarians.
” He quotes Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in Winner-Take-All-Politics : “ How , ” Klein asks , “ does a party that represents the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a democracy ?
” Hacker and Pierson offer three potential answers : Well before Trump , Republicans chose options two and three .
The party ’ s addiction to white identity politics that appeal to a demographic minority explains the lynchpin of its war on democracy : stringent voter ID laws which disproportionately disenfranchise people of color .
There is no statistically significant evidence of in-person voter fraud to justify these laws .
Nevertheless , immediately after the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices in 2013 gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Republicans—enacted strict voter ID laws which have been consistently shown to depress minority voting .
That ’ s how the GOP can turn its overwhelmingly white base voters from a minority to a majority in crucial states and districts—democracy be damned .
As Klein writes , “ this is a point of true convergence between the identitarians and the plutocrats : Both have lost confidence that they can win elections democratically , so they have sought to rewrite the rules in their favor.
” Another Republican method for thwarting democratic elections is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bipartisan phenomenon .
But in the last two decades , the GOP has perfected the art of crafting congressional and legislative districts to disproportionately elect Republicans and , thereby , effectively disenfranchise Democrats .
Last year , another 5-4 majority of Republican appointees to the Supreme Court placed its thumb on the scales of representative democracy .
While reaffirming prior decisions that deemed that partisan gerrymandering was “ incompatible with democratic principles , ” Chief Justice Roberts held in Rucho v. Common Cause that determining when it became too egregious was beyond the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authoritarianism .
A party for which rigging elections becomes a demographic imperative can only double down .
In 2020 , despite the public health risks of the pandemic the GOP opposes voting by mail—which , Trump states openly , would “ LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.
” Hence the efforts of Trump and his postmaster general to underfund the postal service , and otherwise hamstring the prompt delivery of mail-in ballots , creating the likelihood that millions of votes received after Election Day will be deemed invalid .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for suppressing votes which heretofore chiefly affected minorities is now impacting voters at large .
By attacking the postal service , the GOP has exposed its aversion to democracy itself .
Can a party dedicated to shrinking the electorate reverse course ?
That would require abandoning the divisive themes which arouse the passions of the base .
As Mitt Romney ’ s former campaign strategist Stuart Stevens told the Guardian : “ Trumpism itself has been deeply unleashed in the party and I think history tells us , darkly , that when a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican party has , it ’ s very difficult to get it undone .
.
.
.
It takes time , often a lot of blood.
” Indeed , as a former aide to John Boehner , Michael Steel , recently argued , the people most likely to suffer from defeat are anti-Trump Republicans .
Trump supporters , he opined , “ need to be able to blame anyone and anything other than President Trump himself , so they are creating a straw man argument that he is being stabbed in the back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather than by his own words and actions.
” Worse , political scientist Thomas Patterson suggested to the Guardian , “ even if [ Republicans ] take a real beating in 2020 , I think it ’ s probably going to take two or three of those beatings .
They can talk all they want about reinvention but , as long as the primary nominating process keeps coughing up these conservatives , it ’ s going to be really hard for them to make the change.
” Instead , the leading prospects for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Guardian offers this disheartening observation : So let ’ s review the obvious contenders .
Start with the leftovers of 2016 .
Ted Cruz is a malicious , fundamentalist , climate-denying , demagogic reactionary .
Mike Pence is a craven sycophant who embodies his party ’ s obeisance to Trump .
Marco Rubio is a human wind sock : When the wind stops blowing , the sock is empty .
There was no Rubio constituency save wealthy donors , it turned out in 2016 , because there is no real Rubio .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ newcomers : Tom Cotton , Josh Hawley , and Ben Sasse .
Salon captured Cotton in a nutshell : “ Ted Cruz with a war record , Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree , Chris Christie with a Southern accent.
” In other words , the beau ideal of the Republican base .
Hawley , Brooks writes , believes that “ middle-class Americans have been betrayed by elites on every level—political elites , cultural elites , financial elites.
” Which sounds a lot like Trump warmed over .
As for Sasse , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are arsonists .
.
.
.
The main thing the G.O.P .
does is try to light the Democrats on fire , and the main thing the Democrats do is light the Republicans on fire .
That ’ s why there ’ s so little trust in politics.
” Then why did he say so little about Trump ’ s pyromania when it mattered ?
Because he couldn ’ t , and hope to survive .
In the end , Brooks expresses little hope that these aspirants can materially change the party ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ renders his own unsparing verdict : Ditto for Pompeo and Haley .
In short , the leading aspirants bowed to the same primary voters who will pick the party ’ s nominee in 2024 , wishing it could still be Donald Trump .
That brings us to QAnon , newly insinuated in the Republican base .
In the New York Times , Kevin Roose does his damnedest to explain sheer lunacy : QAnon is rapidly proliferating through Facebook .
Now Republican primary voters in a bright-red Georgia congressional district have elected QAnon adherent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congresswoman .
Here ’ s a sampling of her worldview : • The anonymous Q is “ a patriot ” who “ seems to be very close to President Trump.
” • QAnon offers “ 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.
” • Soros is a “ piece of crap that turned in—he ’ s a Jew—he turned in his own people over to the Nazis.
” • Further , “ there is an Islamic invasion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • “ Guess what ?
Slavery is over ” —which means that white males are “ the most mistreated group ” in America .
• Nancy Pelosi “ is anti-American & we ’ re going to kick that bitch out of Congress.
” Upon her victory , Trump tweeted his support : Certainly , Greene does not represent the Republican base .
But she may come closer than any of the idealists who imagine reforming the GOP from within .
As Max Boot observes : “ Under Trump , the GOP has become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
.
The Republican Party .
.
.
isn ’ t just catering to extremists—it ’ s led by one.
” Who ’ s also a stone-cold racist .
Replicating his birther slur , Trump tried to give oxygen to fresh idiocy popular among the base : that as the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants , Kamala Harris is ineligible to become vice president .
InfoWars and QAnon recycled the preposterous Pizzagate conspiracy , asserting that Harris is linked to a child sex-trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton .
Ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s supposed plan to despoil the suburbs with low-income housing would be run by Cory Booker .
Despite all this , David Brooks cracks open the door of hope : No doubt America needs a responsible center-right party that addresses our real problems .
But it won ’ t be this GOP .
As a force for reason , or even for democracy , it ’ s finished .

As Donald Trump heads into his virtual convention gravely wounded, hopeful souls envision salvaging something finer from a post-Trump GOP.
Well they might. The party’s current incarnation is intellectually and morally bankrupt—inimical to democracy; contemptuous of reason; and corrosive to our comity and capacity to govern. But the idealists err in imagining these pathologies transient, for they are woven into the party’s DNA.
The GOP’s squalor is not the product of a single man. It stems from a compound of anger, greed, myopia, and myth which has been metastasizing for years, nurtured in a fever swamp where disinformation and hysteria proliferate unimpeded. Trump is the result, not the cause.
Start with the pre-existing gulf between the now-enfeebled Republican establishment and its modern base: evangelicals resentful of secular elites; moderately educated whites threatened by globalism and economic marginalization; zealots distrustful of government and fearful of the cultural and racial other. Feeling themselves besieged by hostile forces, they found refuge in identity, not ideas—including the nostrums of traditional Republicanism.
Until 2016, the party’s establishment lived within its own smugness, certain that it could unite its restive primary electorate behind the most “electable conservative” congenial to donors, officeholders, and party professionals. To propitiate the base, Republican leaders and candidates increasingly pandered to racial, religious, and ethno-nationalist grievance rather than addressing the economic interests of ordinary people beset by accelerating income disparity.
Central to this cynical stratagem was the devolution of the GOP’s governing classes from guardians of party principle into servants of the wealthy. Beginning in the 1980s, the GOP was captured by a “free-market” agenda laser-focused on diminishing regulation, reducing taxes, gelding unions, slashing employee benefits, promoting corporate consolidation, gutting antitrust law, and maximizing shareholder value by offshoring jobs, suppressing wages, and firing workers.
Once tax cuts and cosseting corporations became the GOP’s raison d’être, to preserve its electoral viability the establishment increasingly jettisoned the party’s traditional agenda to accommodate fundamentalism, economic nationalism, xenophobia, white identity politics, cultural resentment, anti-elitism and an undifferentiated loathing of government. Slowly but inexorably its longtime stalwarts—the internationalists; the free traders; the deficit hawks; the social moderates; the pro-immigration reformers; the advocates of compromise and prudent stewardship—were marginalized to placate the ever-more-volatile base. Instead of looking forward, the party marinated in visceral nostalgia for an imaginary white folks’ paradise.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Soon enough, the GOP was germinating a race-based birtherism directed at our first black president, giving Trump a political foothold. It trafficked in conspiracy theories. It embraced Tea Party dead-enders who believed that shutting down the government was a substitute for governance. It promoted climate denial and shunned scientific expertise. It swapped reason for hysteria; fact for disinformation; ideology for the incitements of talk radio; civility for the charlatanism of Fox News.
Yet the party’s myopic mandarins foolishly imagined that they could yet maintain control. What they failed to perceive was that Trump, their Frankenstein monster, would escape the lab to sweep Republican primaries and capture the party. The base had overcome them.
Of the former governing class, only the donors—like overstuffed termites—preserved their primacy by bankrolling Trump in exchange for fiscally calamitous tax cuts. The party pros and officeholders simply chose survival.
So here it is, Trump’s GOP. Instead of honoring the law enforcement and intelligence agencies the party once revered, it attacks them. Instead of upholding the international agreements it once crafted, it demeans them. Instead of protecting limited government and upholding checks and balances, it countenances an unprecedented expansion of executive power unaccountable to Congress or the courts.
Its business is selling public policy, not renewing it; its message is not unity, but reprisal. Its officeholders bray approval of an ignorant and unstable demagogue, or cower in fear of his wrath.
Those who imagine recapturing some pre-Trump state of grace misapprehend its descent. This is the Republican party its donors pay for—and its base voters crave.
But perhaps the greatest casualty is respect for constitutional democracy itself. Increasingly, the GOP relies on voters who prize authority over diversity or dissent. For them, Trump’s wall is not merely a thing, but a metaphor.
This is central to understanding Trump’s hold on the base. In 2016, a doctoral student at UMass Amherst, Matthew McWilliams, asked a survey group of Republicans four questions about which traits were most important in child raising: independence or respect for elders; curiosity or good manners; self-reliance or obedience; being considerate or being well behaved. His purpose was to identify those inclined to favor hierarchy and direction from the top, characterized by psychologists as “authoritarians.”
The results were striking. Half the Republicans who chose the authoritarian answer to each question supported Trump. The shorthand explanation is that Trump’s persona meets a deep need for authority which is particularly strong among evangelicals and others who feel economically and socially threatened—especially white Republicans of limited education.
These folks respond to promises of direct action to impose clear and simple solutions. Authoritarian by psychology and instinct, Trump salves their anxieties by promising to repel their enemies and restore their primacy by whatever means, whoever these enemies may be—or Trump chooses them to be.
In 2016, journalist Amanda Taub captured this aspect of Trump’s appeal:
Trump’s specific policies aren’t the thing that most sets him apart. . . . Rather, it’s his rhetoric and style. The way he reduces everything to black-and-white extremes of strong versus weak, greatest versus worst. His simple, direct promises that he can solve problems that other politicians are too weak to manage. . . . And, perhaps most importantly, his willingness to flout all the conventions of civilized discourse when it comes to the minority groups that authoritarians find so threatening.
This mindset licenses not only undemocratic abuses of executive power but also systematic attacks on the conduct of free and fair elections. Writes Ezra Klein: “The fear that [Trump] would entrench himself as an individual strongman has distracted from the reality that his party is insulating itself from democracy.”
Republicans, Klein argues, have become “minoritarian authoritarians.” He quotes Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in Winner-Take-All-Politics:
As their goals have become more extreme, Republicans and their organized allies have increasingly exploited long-standing but worsening vulnerabilities in our political system to lock in narrow priorities, even in the face of majority opposition. The specter we face is not just a strongman bending a party and our political institutions to his will; it is also a minority faction entrenching itself in power, beyond the ambitions and careers of any individual leader.
“How,” Klein asks, “does a party that represents the interests of moneyed elites win elections in a democracy?” Hacker and Pierson offer three potential answers:
You can cease being a party built around tax cuts for the rich and try to develop an economic agenda that will appeal to the middle class. You can try to change the political topic, centering politics on racial, religious, and nationalist grievance. Or you can try to undermine democracy itself.
Well before Trump, Republicans chose options two and three. The party’s addiction to white identity politics that appeal to a demographic minority explains the lynchpin of its war on democracy: stringent voter ID laws which disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. There is no statistically significant evidence of in-person voter fraud to justify these laws. Nevertheless, immediately after the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices in 2013 gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, 14 states—all but one governed by Republicans—enacted strict voter ID laws which have been consistently shown to depress minority voting.
That’s how the GOP can turn its overwhelmingly white base voters from a minority to a majority in crucial states and districts—democracy be damned. As Klein writes, “this is a point of true convergence between the identitarians and the plutocrats: Both have lost confidence that they can win elections democratically, so they have sought to rewrite the rules in their favor.”
Another Republican method for thwarting democratic elections is gerrymandering. Historically, this is a bipartisan phenomenon. But in the last two decades, the GOP has perfected the art of crafting congressional and legislative districts to disproportionately elect Republicans and, thereby, effectively disenfranchise Democrats.
Hacker and Pierson cite “the leading Republican architect of extreme partisan gerrymanders, Thomas Hofeller”:
Hofeller liked to describe gerrymandering as “the only legalized form of vote-stealing left in the United States.” He once told an audience of state legislators, “redistricting is like an election in reverse. It’s a great event. Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters.”
Last year, another 5-4 majority of Republican appointees to the Supreme Court placed its thumb on the scales of representative democracy. While reaffirming prior decisions that deemed that partisan gerrymandering was “incompatible with democratic principles,” Chief Justice Roberts held in Rucho v. Common Cause that determining when it became too egregious was beyond the capacity of federal courts—another win for minoritarian authoritarianism.
A party for which rigging elections becomes a demographic imperative can only double down. In 2020, despite the public health risks of the pandemic the GOP opposes voting by mail—which, Trump states openly, would “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.” Hence the efforts of Trump and his postmaster general to underfund the postal service, and otherwise hamstring the prompt delivery of mail-in ballots, creating the likelihood that millions of votes received after Election Day will be deemed invalid.
The problem for Republicans is that a passion for suppressing votes which heretofore chiefly affected minorities is now impacting voters at large. By attacking the postal service, the GOP has exposed its aversion to democracy itself.
Can a party dedicated to shrinking the electorate reverse course? That would require abandoning the divisive themes which arouse the passions of the base. As Mitt Romney’s former campaign strategist Stuart Stevens told the Guardian: “Trumpism itself has been deeply unleashed in the party and I think history tells us, darkly, that when a major party legitimizes hate, which the Republican party has, it’s very difficult to get it undone. . . . It takes time, often a lot of blood.”
Indeed, as a former aide to John Boehner, Michael Steel, recently argued, the people most likely to suffer from defeat are anti-Trump Republicans. Trump supporters, he opined, “need to be able to blame anyone and anything other than President Trump himself, so they are creating a straw man argument that he is being stabbed in the back by a fifth column of disloyal Republicans rather than by his own words and actions.”
Worse, political scientist Thomas Patterson suggested to the Guardian, “even if [Republicans] take a real beating in 2020, I think it’s probably going to take two or three of those beatings. They can talk all they want about reinvention but, as long as the primary nominating process keeps coughing up these conservatives, it’s going to be really hard for them to make the change.”
Instead, the leading prospects for 2024 are faux Trumps—or actual Trumps. The Guardian offers this disheartening observation:
The end of Trump would not necessarily mean the end of Trumpism. Nine in 10 Republicans still approve of the job he is doing as president, according to Gallup. A SurveyMonkey poll for Axios last December showed Republican voters’ favourite picks for 2024 led by Mike Pence, with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr in second place, followed by Nikki Haley, Ivanka Trump, Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo.
So let’s review the obvious contenders. Start with the leftovers of 2016. Ted Cruz is a malicious, fundamentalist, climate-denying, demagogic reactionary. Mike Pence is a craven sycophant who embodies his party’s obeisance to Trump. Marco Rubio is a human wind sock: When the wind stops blowing, the sock is empty. There was no Rubio constituency save wealthy donors, it turned out in 2016, because there is no real Rubio.
David Brooks finds hope in three relative newcomers: Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, and Ben Sasse. Salon captured Cotton in a nutshell: “Ted Cruz with a war record, Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree, Chris Christie with a Southern accent.” In other words, the beau ideal of the Republican base.
Hawley, Brooks writes, believes that “middle-class Americans have been betrayed by elites on every level—political elites, cultural elites, financial elites.” Which sounds a lot like Trump warmed over.
As for Sasse, he told Brooks that “I think politicians are arsonists. . . . The main thing the G.O.P. does is try to light the Democrats on fire, and the main thing the Democrats do is light the Republicans on fire. That’s why there’s so little trust in politics.”
Then why did he say so little about Trump’s pyromania when it mattered? Because he couldn’t, and hope to survive.
In the end, Brooks expresses little hope that these aspirants can materially change the party’s Trumpian cast. But Max Boot renders his own unsparing verdict:
Brooks’s column accurately reflects what these senators are saying. But, I’m sorry, I can’t take any of their high-minded blather seriously. Not when they have spent the past four years acting as enablers for the worst president in U.S. history.
Ditto for Pompeo and Haley. In short, the leading aspirants bowed to the same primary voters who will pick the party’s nominee in 2024, wishing it could still be Donald Trump.
That brings us to QAnon, newly insinuated in the Republican base. In the New York Times, Kevin Roose does his damnedest to explain sheer lunacy:
QAnon, which draws its beliefs from the cryptic message board posts of an anonymous writer claiming to have access to high-level government intelligence . . . lacks realistic goals or anything resembling a coherent policy agenda. Its followers are Internet vigilantes gripped by paranoid and violent revenge fantasies, not lower-my-taxes conservatives or opponents of the Affordable Care Act. . . . QAnon adherents believe that Hillary Clinton and George Soros are drinking the blood of innocent children. While Tea Party supporters generally sought to oust their political opponents at the ballot box, QAnon supporters cheer for top Democrats to be either imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay or rounded up and executed.
QAnon is rapidly proliferating through Facebook. Now Republican primary voters in a bright-red Georgia congressional district have elected QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene to be their next Congresswoman. Here’s a sampling of her worldview:
Upon her victory, Trump tweeted his support:
Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent. Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2020
Certainly, Greene does not represent the Republican base. But she may come closer than any of the idealists who imagine reforming the GOP from within. As Max Boot observes: “Under Trump, the GOP has become a party of white nationalists and conspiracy-mongers. . . . The Republican Party . . . isn’t just catering to extremists—it’s led by one.”
Who’s also a stone-cold racist. Replicating his birther slur, Trump tried to give oxygen to fresh idiocy popular among the base: that as the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Kamala Harris is ineligible to become vice president. InfoWars and QAnon recycled the preposterous Pizzagate conspiracy, asserting that Harris is linked to a child sex-trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton. Ever the equal-opportunity bigot, Trump asserted that Biden’s supposed plan to despoil the suburbs with low-income housing would be run by Cory Booker.
From Republican officeholders, crickets.
Despite all this, David Brooks cracks open the door of hope:
To have any shot of surviving as a major party, the G.O.P. has to build a cross-racial alliance among working-class whites, working-class Hispanics and some working-class Blacks. . . . None of this works unless Republicans can deracialize their appeal—by which I mean they must stop pandering to the racists in the party and stop presenting themselves and seeing themselves as the party of white people.
Good luck with that.
No doubt America needs a responsible center-right party that addresses our real problems. But it won’t be this GOP. As a force for reason, or even for democracy, it’s finished.


thebulwark--2020-08-24--Box Office Data Is Back, Baby

Box Office Data Is Back, Baby

The weirdest thing about the coronavirus debacle , at least for me , isn ’ t having to avoid eating out or skipping trips to the mall .
It ’ s not the closure of schools and daycares , though that was probably the most annoying and mentally draining part .
It ’ s not having to wear a mask to buy groceries or go to the liquor store to acquire the essential fortifying nutrients needed to endure this mess .
It ’ s that I ’ ve had no box office data to wake up to every Saturday morning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biggest thing in the world , but it has caused me some minor distress .
In the before time , the long-long ago , I ’ d awake on Saturday and pull up Deadline ’ s box office category to see what numbers had come in from the Friday-night box office , to see if projections had increased or decreased from the Friday-night figures , to try to suss out whether word of mouth on the new releases was good or bad .
Obviously , this is not how most of you wake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and maybe—probably—it all sounds a bit silly .
Really , what I ’ m talking about here is the disruption of routine , the loss of normalcy .
The little things that work their way into your daily or weekly schedule that just kind of .
.
.
vanish when the world collapses .
But the numbers are back , baby !
With Unhinged hitting 1,800 or so screens across North America , we have box office data once again .
Normalcy : on the way .
Nature : healing .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do the numbers reveal ?
Well .
.
.
it kind of depends on how you want to look at it !
On an average weekend if you saw that the highest-grossing new picture took in just $ 4 million or so , you ’ d wonder if SMOD had finally fulfilled his campaign promise and destroyed all life on Earth .
That would be a disastrous figure .
A catastrophe .
But obviously we ’ re not in normal times !
These times , they are very abnormal .
A movie like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in theaters with 30-to-50-percent capacity , depending on locales , is more like opening it on 600 screens .
Fewer , really , since so many of the biggest markets—New York City and Los Angeles , most notably , but also the rest of New York and California , along with D.C. , Maryland , Arizona , the Pacific Northwest—are closed .
Indeed , according to Deadline , only “ 12 of the top 28 DMA markets are open.
” Looking at it through this lens , then , $ 4M is actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cumulative gross of $ 5M or so , including a $ 1M run in Canada last weekend , combined with the fact that grosses rose from Friday to Saturday—suggesting either word of mouth on the movie is good or word of mouth on the cleanliness of theaters is good ; it ’ s hard to say which factor is more important to people right now—is all good news for Solstice , the studio behind Unhinged .
The real question is how frontloaded all of this is .
Is the demand for movies—for any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What sort of drop are we going to see on this movie weekend-to-weekend ?
How well will it hold ?
The folks at Solstice seem to believe this sort of opening is what they needed to get to $ 30M domestic , suggesting a multiple* of six or seven—at least double what a movie like Unhinged would normally see .
All of which is to say that this is a strangely exciting time to be a box office observer .
We ’ re seeing something we ’ ve never really seen before , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time as we try to settle on a new normal .
The only thing we really know for sure : We ’ ve seen the last $ 100M opening weekend in America for a long time .
The real question is whether or not we ’ ve seen the last $ 200M domestic grosser for a while as well .
*Remedial box office lesson : the “ multiple ” refers to the total gross vs. the opening weekend .
Movies with large multiples are movies that have held very well ; movies with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hold very well .
They are sort of like a proxy for word of mouth : if a movie is popular , the box office will grow over time ; if it ’ s unpopular , the multiple will be be closer to two .
Titanic , for instance , had a multiple of 23 .
Suicide Squad , on the other hand , had a multiple of 2.4 .

The weirdest thing about the coronavirus debacle, at least for me, isn’t having to avoid eating out or skipping trips to the mall. It’s not the closure of schools and daycares, though that was probably the most annoying and mentally draining part. It’s not having to wear a mask to buy groceries or go to the liquor store to acquire the essential fortifying nutrients needed to endure this mess.
It’s that I’ve had no box office data to wake up to every Saturday morning.
I realize this is not the biggest thing in the world, but it has caused me some minor distress. In the before time, the long-long ago, I’d awake on Saturday and pull up Deadline’s box office category to see what numbers had come in from the Friday-night box office, to see if projections had increased or decreased from the Friday-night figures, to try to suss out whether word of mouth on the new releases was good or bad.
Obviously, this is not how most of you wake up and get ready for the weekend, and maybe—probably—it all sounds a bit silly. Really, what I’m talking about here is the disruption of routine, the loss of normalcy. The little things that work their way into your daily or weekly schedule that just kind of . . . vanish when the world collapses.
But the numbers are back, baby! With Unhinged hitting 1,800 or so screens across North America, we have box office data once again. Normalcy: on the way. Nature: healing. The balance: being restored.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
So what do the numbers reveal? Well . . . it kind of depends on how you want to look at it! On an average weekend if you saw that the highest-grossing new picture took in just $4 million or so, you’d wonder if SMOD had finally fulfilled his campaign promise and destroyed all life on Earth. That would be a disastrous figure. A catastrophe.
But obviously we’re not in normal times! These times, they are very abnormal. A movie like this debuting on just 1,800 screens, in theaters with 30-to-50-percent capacity, depending on locales, is more like opening it on 600 screens. Fewer, really, since so many of the biggest markets—New York City and Los Angeles, most notably, but also the rest of New York and California, along with D.C., Maryland, Arizona, the Pacific Northwest—are closed. Indeed, according to Deadline, only “12 of the top 28 DMA markets are open.”
Looking at it through this lens, then, $4M is actually . . . pretty good! A cumulative gross of $5M or so, including a $1M run in Canada last weekend, combined with the fact that grosses rose from Friday to Saturday—suggesting either word of mouth on the movie is good or word of mouth on the cleanliness of theaters is good; it’s hard to say which factor is more important to people right now—is all good news for Solstice, the studio behind Unhinged.
The real question is how frontloaded all of this is. Is the demand for movies—for any movie—a deep or a shallow phenomenon? What sort of drop are we going to see on this movie weekend-to-weekend? How well will it hold? The folks at Solstice seem to believe this sort of opening is what they needed to get to $30M domestic, suggesting a multiple* of six or seven—at least double what a movie like Unhinged would normally see.
All of which is to say that this is a strangely exciting time to be a box office observer. We’re seeing something we’ve never really seen before, working through all the kinks in real time as we try to settle on a new normal. The only thing we really know for sure: We’ve seen the last $100M opening weekend in America for a long time. The real question is whether or not we’ve seen the last $200M domestic grosser for a while as well.
Only time—and Tenet—will tell.
*Remedial box office lesson: the “multiple” refers to the total gross vs. the opening weekend. Movies with large multiples are movies that have held very well; movies with bad multiples are movies that did not hold very well. They are sort of like a proxy for word of mouth: if a movie is popular, the box office will grow over time; if it’s unpopular, the multiple will be be closer to two. Titanic, for instance, had a multiple of 23. Suicide Squad, on the other hand, had a multiple of 2.4.


thebulwark--2020-08-25--Behind the Cynical Stunt to Impeach Ohio’s Governor

John Becker , a Republican state representative in Ohio , introduced articles of impeachment Monday against the state ’ s Republican governor , Mike DeWine .
The articles have two other cosponsors , state representatives Paul Zeltwanger and Nino Vitale .
The three have launched a website that will both track other Ohio House members ’ support of the articles and serve as a one-stop shop to mobilize support from citizens .
The three have drawn up 10 specific articles of impeachment ; the most absurd and dangerous is Article IX .
Here is just a short excerpt : WHEREAS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ covering mandate promotes fear , turns neighbors against neighbors , and contracts the economy by making people fearful to leave their homes , to the detriment of every Ohioan ; and WHEREAS , Healthcare professionals have stated that , for the general population wearing face coverings , people are more likely to infect themselves with COVID-19 because they will touch their face more often to adjust the covering , and that face coverings retain moisture , bacteria , and other viruses , in addition to re-breathing carbon dioxide , making them potentially dangerous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
Other articles claim that DeWine restricted the civil liberties of Ohioans by issuing a “ stay-at-home ” order , impeded their First Amendment rights by forcing worshipers to wear facemasks , and has shown “ incompetence by providing wildly inaccurate forecasts and repeatedly misleading COVID-19 data ; and committed misfeasance and malfeasance with his policy prescriptions , which have proven to be far worse than the virus itself.
” No other member of the Ohio House ( so far ) has signaled support for the impeachment effort , so it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it raises a sadly common question : How did Ohio get here and what does this mean for the future of the Republican party ?
At the beginning of the pandemic , Governor DeWine received praise for his early action to help prevent the spread of the virus in the Buckeye State .
His daily news conferences led to “ Wine with DeWine , ” a social-media movement that even spawned its own merchandise .
Dr. Amy Acton , the director of the Ohio health department , became a household name for her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s swift actions helped Ohio control COVID ’ s spread in the beginning of the pandemic but he was not the only government official Ohioans were watching every day .
President Trump was also giving daily briefings from the White House , often shortly after DeWine ’ s ended .
The contrast between the two leaders was , and remains , overwhelming .
While DeWine used his airtime to enact and explain strict guidelines meant to save lives , Donald Trump did the exact opposite , showing disdain for governors like DeWine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shutdown policies .
A mixture of lockdown fatigue and the president ’ s rhetoric has contributed to Ohio ’ s own culture war .
Dr. Acton—Ohio ’ s equivalent of Dr. Fauci , who found herself under fire from Rep. Zeltwagner , one of the house members calling for DeWine ’ s impeachment—stepped down from her position following attacks on her efforts to contain the virus .
Yard signs like this are not far off in tone or content from the Facebook posts of many disgruntled Ohioans : There are two possible reasons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ DeWine : Either the three representatives truly believe the accusations they have raised—meaning they are vastly unfit for office—or they believe that accusing Gov .
DeWine of these charges will be politically and professionally advantageous .
Either premise is damning for the “ save the GOP ” crowd .
If the former is correct , this means that the party establishment in Ohio is filled with those who can not comprehend the simple medical fact that wearing a mask reduces the chances of transmission of the virus , ignorance that should disqualify them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is correct , this means that the Republican rank and file they ’ re appealing to have abandoned all reason .
A confusing hodgepodge of “ all of the above ” is most likely the answer .
While I can not speak to the true beliefs of Representatives Becker , Zeltwanger , and Vitale , what is abundantly clear is this does seem to be a political move on behalf of the three—that is , an effort to curry favor with voters by rejecting commonsense safeguards designed to slow the spread of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a health crisis will always lead to tough decisions that will upset some people .
But any rational person operating outside of pure nihilistic self-interest can see that Gov .
DeWine ’ s actions do not warrant impeachment , but rather , praise .
But , to be fair , these state Republicans learned it from higher-ups in their party .
Many GOP elites , including Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Brian Kemp of Georgia , have continued to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 to appeal to their constituencies .
And beyond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four years have shown that the GOP establishment ( with rare exceptions like Mitt Romney ) will let Donald Trump get away with anything and everything out of fear of electoral consequence .
A Biden victory does not automatically remedy the problems of governance that the coronavirus has exposed or the problems of political judgment that this cynical Ohio impeachment ploy exposes .
Even after removing Trump from the equation , there will still be state representatives like John Becker who either have no understanding of science or are willing to ignore it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s defeat would do nothing to address the Republican voters themselves : voters who will support politicians in favor of removing a governor from their own party because he made them wear a piece of cloth over their face to try and save lives .
There will not be a sudden mindset shift the second Biden takes his oath .
These voters will look back on Donald Trump the way so many previously viewed Ronald Reagan .
Whether that ’ s pushing for Donald Trump Jr. to run ( or , God help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or electing other candidates who mirror Trump ’ s policies , the GOP has been exposed as rotten to its core .

John Becker, a Republican state representative in Ohio, introduced articles of impeachment Monday against the state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine. The articles have two other cosponsors, state representatives Paul Zeltwanger and Nino Vitale. The three have launched a website that will both track other Ohio House members’ support of the articles and serve as a one-stop shop to mobilize support from citizens.
The three have drawn up 10 specific articles of impeachment; the most absurd and dangerous is Article IX. Here is just a short excerpt:
WHEREAS, Richard Michael DeWine’s face covering mandate promotes fear, turns neighbors against neighbors, and contracts the economy by making people fearful to leave their homes, to the detriment of every Ohioan; and WHEREAS, Healthcare professionals have stated that, for the general population wearing face coverings, people are more likely to infect themselves with COVID-19 because they will touch their face more often to adjust the covering, and that face coverings retain moisture, bacteria, and other viruses, in addition to re-breathing carbon dioxide, making them potentially dangerous for the general public to wear. . . .
Other articles claim that DeWine restricted the civil liberties of Ohioans by issuing a “stay-at-home” order, impeded their First Amendment rights by forcing worshipers to wear facemasks, and has shown “incompetence by providing wildly inaccurate forecasts and repeatedly misleading COVID-19 data; and committed misfeasance and malfeasance with his policy prescriptions, which have proven to be far worse than the virus itself.”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
No other member of the Ohio House (so far) has signaled support for the impeachment effort, so it is likely to go nowhere. But it raises a sadly common question: How did Ohio get here and what does this mean for the future of the Republican party?
At the beginning of the pandemic, Governor DeWine received praise for his early action to help prevent the spread of the virus in the Buckeye State. His daily news conferences led to “Wine with DeWine,” a social-media movement that even spawned its own merchandise. Dr. Amy Acton, the director of the Ohio health department, became a household name for her frequent appearances alongside the governor.
DeWine’s swift actions helped Ohio control COVID’s spread in the beginning of the pandemic but he was not the only government official Ohioans were watching every day. President Trump was also giving daily briefings from the White House, often shortly after DeWine’s ended. The contrast between the two leaders was, and remains, overwhelming. While DeWine used his airtime to enact and explain strict guidelines meant to save lives, Donald Trump did the exact opposite, showing disdain for governors like DeWine whom he deemed too strict in their shutdown policies.
A mixture of lockdown fatigue and the president’s rhetoric has contributed to Ohio’s own culture war. Dr. Acton—Ohio’s equivalent of Dr. Fauci, who found herself under fire from Rep. Zeltwagner, one of the house members calling for DeWine’s impeachment—stepped down from her position following attacks on her efforts to contain the virus. Yard signs like this are not far off in tone or content from the Facebook posts of many disgruntled Ohioans:
Bigger Jack Windsor shoutout this weekend: the @benyt story or this yard sign in Parma (via Reddit) pic.twitter.com/4br4nh4ZSX — Vince Grzegorek (@vincethepolack) July 20, 2020
There are two possible reasons that could explain the move to impeach DeWine: Either the three representatives truly believe the accusations they have raised—meaning they are vastly unfit for office—or they believe that accusing Gov. DeWine of these charges will be politically and professionally advantageous.
Either premise is damning for the “save the GOP” crowd. If the former is correct, this means that the party establishment in Ohio is filled with those who cannot comprehend the simple medical fact that wearing a mask reduces the chances of transmission of the virus, ignorance that should disqualify them from holding office. If the second is correct, this means that the Republican rank and file they’re appealing to have abandoned all reason.
A confusing hodgepodge of “all of the above” is most likely the answer.
While I cannot speak to the true beliefs of Representatives Becker, Zeltwanger, and Vitale, what is abundantly clear is this does seem to be a political move on behalf of the three—that is, an effort to curry favor with voters by rejecting commonsense safeguards designed to slow the spread of this disease.
The complexities of dealing with a health crisis will always lead to tough decisions that will upset some people. But any rational person operating outside of pure nihilistic self-interest can see that Gov. DeWine’s actions do not warrant impeachment, but rather, praise.
But, to be fair, these state Republicans learned it from higher-ups in their party. Many GOP elites, including Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Brian Kemp of Georgia, have continued to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 to appeal to their constituencies. And beyond just the current pandemic, the last four years have shown that the GOP establishment (with rare exceptions like Mitt Romney) will let Donald Trump get away with anything and everything out of fear of electoral consequence.
A Biden victory does not automatically remedy the problems of governance that the coronavirus has exposed or the problems of political judgment that this cynical Ohio impeachment ploy exposes. Even after removing Trump from the equation, there will still be state representatives like John Becker who either have no understanding of science or are willing to ignore it for political gain. And Trump’s defeat would do nothing to address the Republican voters themselves: voters who will support politicians in favor of removing a governor from their own party because he made them wear a piece of cloth over their face to try and save lives. There will not be a sudden mindset shift the second Biden takes his oath. These voters will look back on Donald Trump the way so many previously viewed Ronald Reagan. Whether that’s pushing for Donald Trump Jr. to run (or, God help us, Donald Trump again), or electing other candidates who mirror Trump’s policies, the GOP has been exposed as rotten to its core.


thebulwark--2020-08-25--A Party without a Platform

A Party without a Platform

It is hard to overstate how significant it is that there is no Republican party platform for the first time since the party was founded in the antebellum era .
Despite the antipathy to political parties expressed by George Washington , James Madison , and others among the Founders , by the early nineteenth century national parties had been well established .
They were remarkably successful—in various ways improving democratic politics and helping the system of government established by the Constitution to work better—to the extent that the American conception of political parties was transformed .
They went from being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential defining features of a well-functioning democracy .
Unlike parties from earlier historical regimes , American parties were oriented to elections , less ideological , less polarized , and disconnected from competing religions or regime types and therefore less connected to demagogues and potential autocrats .
But the virtues of the American party system became its source of political weakness .
The idea that presidential candidates would be chosen by elites in smoke-filled rooms away from public scrutiny seemed undemocratic .
So , about fifty years ago , the Democratic and Republican parties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ award nominations to candidates who won the most delegates via primary elections .
The party reforms of the 1960s and ’ 70s were meant to make political parties more democratic by giving ordinary citizens voice and power through the primaries .
This new system meant that successful contenders would win their party ’ s nomination by direct popular appeal rather than by working their way up the ladder of pre-existing party organizations .
Put another way , successful candidates would no longer come out of political parties , having been selected by them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the party label by amassing sufficient delegates , and the party would reflect the priorities of and vision of the nominee .
Under the old system , the party organization would persist ; after the reforms , the successful nominee would appoint new party leadership .
Rewarding the skills of stump speaking and campaigning , these party reforms are among the deep sources of demagoguery in presidential politics and the success of Donald Trump .
Nevertheless , for decades there lingered residues of the parties ’ earlier forms and functions .
Most important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a party platform during each presidential nominating convention .
The platform would reflect the priorities of the candidate , of course .
But the practice was more than a ritual—it was a mechanism to build a coalition around the successful candidate .
Crafting a party platform gave voice to the losers in presidential primaries and thereby brought their supporters into a tent big enough to win and broad enough to govern .
Platforms are sometimes denigrated as mere rhetoric—like campaign promises by the candidates themselves .
Often , platforms state positions that don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But such rhetoric is never “ mere rhetoric.
” Setting forth what a party stands for can unite a diverse and potentially capacious coalition , and it can maintain a distinction between the party and its leader—even in an era of primary elections as partisan plebiscites .
Which brings us to this week .
Just when one thought there were no more democratic norms for Donald Trump to tear up , he has done it again .
He will be nominated by a GOP convention that has decided not to fashion a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican National Committee has offered its imprimatur for whatever Trump thinks his priorities should be .
And Trump has obliged with a bullet-point list of campaign pledges .
The RNC has offered the pandemic as an excuse for not consulting fellow Republicans and negotiating a new platform .
But this is the same GOP that is eager to have meetings and rallies during the pandemic .
And note that the Democratic party had no trouble deliberating and crafting a traditional detailed party platform .
Today there is no meaningful distinction between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump .
This GOP development takes populism to its limit—to the edge of fascism where whatever the leader says is the party position simply because he says it .

It is hard to overstate how significant it is that there is no Republican party platform for the first time since the party was founded in the antebellum era.
Despite the antipathy to political parties expressed by George Washington, James Madison, and others among the Founders, by the early nineteenth century national parties had been well established. They were remarkably successful—in various ways improving democratic politics and helping the system of government established by the Constitution to work better—to the extent that the American conception of political parties was transformed. They went from being considered baleful dangers to necessary evils to essential defining features of a well-functioning democracy. Unlike parties from earlier historical regimes, American parties were oriented to elections, less ideological, less polarized, and disconnected from competing religions or regime types and therefore less connected to demagogues and potential autocrats.
But the virtues of the American party system became its source of political weakness. The idea that presidential candidates would be chosen by elites in smoke-filled rooms away from public scrutiny seemed undemocratic. So, about fifty years ago, the Democratic and Republican parties changed their rules for presidential selection to award nominations to candidates who won the most delegates via primary elections.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The party reforms of the 1960s and ’70s were meant to make political parties more democratic by giving ordinary citizens voice and power through the primaries. This new system meant that successful contenders would win their party’s nomination by direct popular appeal rather than by working their way up the ladder of pre-existing party organizations. Put another way, successful candidates would no longer come out of political parties, having been selected by them; rather, successful candidates would capture the party label by amassing sufficient delegates, and the party would reflect the priorities of and vision of the nominee. Under the old system, the party organization would persist; after the reforms, the successful nominee would appoint new party leadership.
Rewarding the skills of stump speaking and campaigning, these party reforms are among the deep sources of demagoguery in presidential politics and the success of Donald Trump.
Nevertheless, for decades there lingered residues of the parties’ earlier forms and functions. Most important of these was the practice of crafting a party platform during each presidential nominating convention. The platform would reflect the priorities of the candidate, of course. But the practice was more than a ritual—it was a mechanism to build a coalition around the successful candidate. Crafting a party platform gave voice to the losers in presidential primaries and thereby brought their supporters into a tent big enough to win and broad enough to govern.
Platforms are sometimes denigrated as mere rhetoric—like campaign promises by the candidates themselves. Often, platforms state positions that don’t get translated into law. But such rhetoric is never “mere rhetoric.” Setting forth what a party stands for can unite a diverse and potentially capacious coalition, and it can maintain a distinction between the party and its leader—even in an era of primary elections as partisan plebiscites.
Which brings us to this week. Just when one thought there were no more democratic norms for Donald Trump to tear up, he has done it again. He will be nominated by a GOP convention that has decided not to fashion a new platform for this election. Instead, the Republican National Committee has offered its imprimatur for whatever Trump thinks his priorities should be. And Trump has obliged with a bullet-point list of campaign pledges.
The RNC has offered the pandemic as an excuse for not consulting fellow Republicans and negotiating a new platform. But this is the same GOP that is eager to have meetings and rallies during the pandemic. And note that the Democratic party had no trouble deliberating and crafting a traditional detailed party platform.
Today there is no meaningful distinction between the Republican party and the person of Donald Trump. This GOP development takes populism to its limit—to the edge of fascism where whatever the leader says is the party position simply because he says it.


thebulwark--2020-08-25--For Today’s GOP, the Power Is the Point

For Today’s GOP, the Power Is the Point

The one constant of the Republican party in the age of Trump—perhaps best demonstrated by the convention ’ s literal failure to come up with a new platform—is an inability to define what , exactly , the standard-bearers of conservatism actually stand for .
As Republicans moved from the party of Nixon to the party of Reagan , they couched their work as a defense of the Constitution and claimed to be conserving classically liberal ideals : separation of power , checks and balances , property rights , individual rights , and so on .
More deeply , Republicans and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public and private life .
They were proud of themselves for standing up to the corruptions of Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy and the bigotries of the Birchers .
Above all , conservative intelligentsia , mostly in the pages of National Review , claimed to be defending the idea of a natural right against the moral relativism of the progressive left and historicism and positivism in academia .
And , to be fair , they did more than claim .
They did make these arguments .
Not anymore .
Looking at the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has to struggle and squint to see even the slightest reflection of any of the ideals they formerly championed .
The Republican party has no interest in property rights .
Its leader , Donald Trump , has a history of trying to abuse eminent domain .
Republicans don ’ t seem to be bothered by the footage of guardsmen who shot paintballs at residents inside their own property .
Today ’ s GOP is not interested in checks and balances , either .
Most Republican members of Congress have done nothing to oppose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a trade war with China , even though the imposition of tariffs is a task reserved for Congress , on allies and enemies alike .
Worse , most Republicans supported the president ’ s bogus emergency declaration last year that allowed him to shift congressionally appropriated funds to pay for his fence at the southern border .
Republicans have no particular interest in legislating , preferring to leave action to the executive branch so they can ’ t be held accountable by their constituents .
After all , doing the right thing might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But why does that matter ?
This is the real problem : They want to win re-election for the sake of winning .
Victory is not a vehicle for governance .
It is a good unto itself .
What was once a governing philosophy has been replaced by a mere desire for power .
The only point to winning is to stop the left from taking power , and this might be a problem inherent to conservatism : It has always been a reactionary movement against progressivism .
The left stands for more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the left .
As long as the other side is not in power , all ’ s well .
The right currently has no agenda beyond stopping the left .
Even in power , even in majority , they have the mentality of the minority in opposition .
But even though conservatism was reactionary and oppositional , it still used to have proposals .
This new stupid conservatism is partially a result of the decline of the conservative intelligentsia in the post-Reagan years .
The intelligentsia either ran out of ideas or failed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
Reagan won 49 states in 1984 .
His platform was a successful one .
As a result , Republicans have run on that platform ever since , and the conservative intelligentsia has advocated for the same policy proposals .
Except those issues aren ’ t really relevant anymore .
Tough-on-crime policies are a difficult sell when crime is at historic lows ( though rioters across the country are doing their best to revive the issue ) .
Religious conservatism ( not to be confused with cultural and social conservatism ) is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low in the United States .
Tax cuts make no sense with a runaway deficit , especially when the rates are quite low anyways , as opposed to the 1980s .
Eventually , you fall on the other side of the Laffer curve .
Yet , the right has nothing new to propose .
As the old ideas fade into irrelevance , the right doesn ’ t even really talk about them any longer .
All they have to offer is saving America from progressives and Democrats .
Some party stalwarts even openly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ noted in a grim new Politico article : So much for “ the party of ideas.
” Progressive Democrats will be ruling if the right continues its current course .
Not because of changing demographics .
Not because the future is less white and less religious .
But because the right has become the party of Nietzsche in a society that belongs to Montesquieu and Locke .

The one constant of the Republican party in the age of Trump—perhaps best demonstrated by the convention’s literal failure to come up with a new platform—is an inability to define what, exactly, the standard-bearers of conservatism actually stand for.
As Republicans moved from the party of Nixon to the party of Reagan, they couched their work as a defense of the Constitution and claimed to be conserving classically liberal ideals: separation of power, checks and balances, property rights, individual rights, and so on. More deeply, Republicans and conservatives claimed to be defending virtue in public and private life. They were proud of themselves for standing up to the corruptions of Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy and the bigotries of the Birchers. Above all, conservative intelligentsia, mostly in the pages of National Review, claimed to be defending the idea of a natural right against the moral relativism of the progressive left and historicism and positivism in academia. And, to be fair, they did more than claim. They did make these arguments.
Not anymore. Looking at the Republican party and the conservative movement, one has to struggle and squint to see even the slightest reflection of any of the ideals they formerly championed.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The Republican party has no interest in property rights. Its leader, Donald Trump, has a history of trying to abuse eminent domain. Republicans don’t seem to be bothered by the footage of guardsmen who shot paintballs at residents inside their own property.
Today’s GOP is not interested in checks and balances, either. Most Republican members of Congress have done nothing to oppose the president’s unilateral declaration of a trade war with China, even though the imposition of tariffs is a task reserved for Congress, on allies and enemies alike. Worse, most Republicans supported the president’s bogus emergency declaration last year that allowed him to shift congressionally appropriated funds to pay for his fence at the southern border.
Republicans have no particular interest in legislating, preferring to leave action to the executive branch so they can’t be held accountable by their constituents. After all, doing the right thing might be unpopular and cost them re-election.
But why does that matter? This is the real problem: They want to win re-election for the sake of winning. Victory is not a vehicle for governance. It is a good unto itself. What was once a governing philosophy has been replaced by a mere desire for power.
The only point to winning is to stop the left from taking power, and this might be a problem inherent to conservatism: It has always been a reactionary movement against progressivism. The left stands for more government, and the right stands against the left. As long as the other side is not in power, all’s well. The right currently has no agenda beyond stopping the left. Even in power, even in majority, they have the mentality of the minority in opposition.
But even though conservatism was reactionary and oppositional, it still used to have proposals. This new stupid conservatism is partially a result of the decline of the conservative intelligentsia in the post-Reagan years. The intelligentsia either ran out of ideas or failed to persuade Republican candidates to run on them. Reagan won 49 states in 1984. His platform was a successful one. As a result, Republicans have run on that platform ever since, and the conservative intelligentsia has advocated for the same policy proposals.
Except those issues aren’t really relevant anymore. Tough-on-crime policies are a difficult sell when crime is at historic lows (though rioters across the country are doing their best to revive the issue). Religious conservatism (not to be confused with cultural and social conservatism) is difficult when irreligiosity is at an all-time low in the United States. Tax cuts make no sense with a runaway deficit, especially when the rates are quite low anyways, as opposed to the 1980s. Eventually, you fall on the other side of the Laffer curve. Yet, the right has nothing new to propose.
As the old ideas fade into irrelevance, the right doesn’t even really talk about them any longer. All they have to offer is saving America from progressives and Democrats. Some party stalwarts even openly admit as much, as Tim Alberta noted in a grim new Politico article:
“Owning the libs and pissing off the media,” shrugs Brendan Buck, a longtime senior congressional aide and imperturbable party veteran if ever there was one. “That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”
So much for “the party of ideas.”
Progressive Democrats will be ruling if the right continues its current course. Not because of changing demographics. Not because the future is less white and less religious. But because the right has become the party of Nietzsche in a society that belongs to Montesquieu and Locke.