Without looking at a print edition, I’m guessing The NY Times has not gone out of its way to draw attention to this analysis from Carl Hulse. It’s the kind of reporting that makes people uncomfortable so it’s probably buried somewhere inside. I’m including a link to the full article because it goes into some detail on what has been obvious for some time:
After their party was decimated in the 2008 elections, mainstream Republican leaders believed they could harness rising far-right populist forces. Instead, they were overrun by them.
The roots of the Republican crackup this fall that paralyzed the House, fueled the unexpected rise of Speaker Mike Johnson and now threatens to force a government shutdown crisis early next year lie in a fateful choice the party made more than a decade ago that has come back to haunt its leaders.
Well duh.
The roots actually go much farther back than that, but more on that below. Hulse is still not quite fully up to speed on the situation. The people being haunted by this are no longer the leaders of the Party, whatever Hulse and the rest of the media may want to believe. The GOP is caught in a death spiral where they can only keep going farther to the right. To go any farther, they have to destroy democracy to carry out their agenda. They’re not hiding it — the plans for Project 2025 are out in public. They are actively recruiting for it.
Conservatives have a knack for Great Plans — remember the Project for a New American Century and how well that turned out? What they tried to do to the rest of the world, they’re determined to do to America — make the country and the world safe for the Rich White Men who fund the think tanks that pump out this garbage, and their spawn.
Hulse traces it all to the bleak time for Republicans when Obama won the presidency and it looked like Democrats might gain enough seats in Congress to have a veto and filibuster-proof majority. As Hulse describes it:
But Republicans saw a glimmer of hope in the energized far-right populist movement that emerged out of a backlash to Mr. Obama — the first Black president — and his party’s aggressive economic and social agenda, which included a federal health care plan. Republicans seized on the Tea Party and associated groups, with their nativist leanings and vehemently anti-establishment impulses, as their ticket back to power.
Only in America would a federal health care plan be considered an aggressive agenda.
Do you notice what’s missing here? A bare mention of the racial panic on the right from a Black Man in the White House. Zero mention of how 911 and the Global War on Terror had cost trillions of dollars and countless lives, with an invasion of Iraq on the basis of lies. Zero mention of the way Republican policies had crashed the economy in 2008. No — it was the unpardonable sin of trying to get healthcare for every American that drove the Republican Party to make their deal with the Devil.
Hulse reveals the default mindset that still is what too many think the Republican Party is about:
Mr. [Eric] Cantor and his fairly conventional leadership team of anti-tax, pro-business Republicans set out to harness that rage to achieve their party’s longstanding aims. But instead, the movement consumed them...
...“We decided the anger was going to be about fiscal discipline and transforming Medicare into a defined contribution program,” Mr. Cantor said recently. “But it turned out it was really just anger — anger toward Washington — and it wasn’t so policy-based.”
The Rest of the Story
Anger towards Washington didn’t come out of nowhere; Reagan openly declared war on government. Newt Gingrich took it to the next level. Fox News has been at it for years. It’s a staple of right wing talk radio — Remember Rush Limbaugh? — and a fundamental principle in the CT realms of social media. Steve Bannon calls his propaganda operation “The War Room” — they don’t hide it.
Hulse is still trying to keep the myth of the Republican Party alive as a once reasonable and responsible participant in American politics. “Anti-tax and pro-business” is still part of the agenda of the Republican Party, but Hulse and too many in the rest of the media blind themselves to the rest of the Party agenda: racism, misogyny, religious fanaticism, xenophobia, etc. It’s all culture war all the time.
Kevin Drum nailed it in 2018 with GOPus delendus est:
...So this is where we are. The Republican Party can’t win using ordinary methods. On the process side, they can win only by inflating the white vote via gerrymandering, cracked-and-packed districts, and ruthless black voter suppression. On the policy side, they can win only with heavy dollops of strident and outright bigotry against Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, and anyone else who comes along. Even Canadians will do in a pinch.
Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons.
Like it or not, this is the modern Republican Party. It no longer serves any legitimate purpose. It needs to be crushed and the earth salted behind it, while a new conservative party rises to take its place. This new party should be conservative; brash; ruthless when it needs to be; as simpleminded as any major party usually is; and absolutely dedicated to making Democrats look like idiots. There should be no holds barred except for one: no appeals to racism. None. Not loud ones, not subtle ones. Whatever else it is, it should be a conservative party genuinely open to any person of any color.
emphasis added
(Kevin Drum is now blogging at his own place these days.)
I’m not going to completely trash Hulse — there are some useful elements in his analysis. While severely limited in scope (topics that are still too hot for the Times to handle), Hulse does go on to admit the current GOP is more extreme, more Evangelical Christian, less experienced in actually making government function than prior GOP politicians. He names a few names and what they’ve done. It’s baby steps towards acknowledging what the party has become, but there’s still a long ways to go.
The article began with Speaker Mike Johnson’s rise to power, and ends with what awaits him from his own caucus if he actually tries to govern:
Last week, Freedom Caucus members blocked a spending measure in protest of Mr. Johnson’s decision to team with Democrats to push through a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown.
The move underscored the far-right’s antipathy to compromise and the dominance it now enjoys in the House, and raised the prospect that Mr. Johnson could face another rebellion if he strays again.
What Hulse cannot admit: the GOP is suffering from an American Psychosis
While Hulse traces the current extremism of the Republican Party back to their panic in the face of Barack Obama’s election and their turn to more extremist elements like the Tea Party, it actually goes much farther back. It should be noted the Tea Party was never a true populist grass-roots movement; it was fertilized with money from the Koch brother’s Americans For Prosperity advocacy group.
But this was not the first time the Republican Party has moved away from the mainstream and towards elements that had been on the fringe. David Corn has done a dive into the history of the Republican Party, and he traces it back to the 1950s and the red scares exploited by Senator Joe McCarthy. The full title of his book is American Psychosis — A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
Corn looks at what trade offs the party made time after time. President Eisenhower was not a fan of McCarthy and his tactics, but he was reluctant to distance himself and the party from McCarthy’s campaign until he became too toxic to continue to embrace. So long as McCarthy was bringing in votes and big donors, Ike was willing to put up with him. Exploiting Cold War paranoia would become just the first example of GOP appeals to voters on the basis of protecting them from scary things, rather than actually making their lives better.
Corn gives names, dates, and places where the Republican Party has chosen to keep turning to the Dark Side. It has been building to this point for 7 decades now. Corn summarizes it here in Why the GOP Can’t Quit Donald Trump (Hint: Look at Its History):
...One key point of the book is that your-father’s-GOP is largely a myth. Trumpism—or a version of it—has been a critical part of the Republican Party for seven decades. As American Psychosis shows, since the 1950s, the GOP has always encouraged and exploited extremism. Through McCarthyism, Barry Goldwater’s alliance with the nutjobs of the John Birch Society, Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy partnership with racists, the New Right and the Religious Right, Reaganism, both George Bushes’ embrace of antisemitic conspiracy-monger Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Sarah Palin, the tea party, and, finally, Trump, the party has long nurtured a relationship with far-right radicals, bigots, fundamentalists, and, yes, kooks. It did so by recklessly and relentlessly stoking the paranoia, fear, resentments, and grievances of conservative voters.
Often this was considered a side-hustle by the GOP establishment, an action necessary to achieve electoral victories that would then allow its officials to govern in a more respectable manner. Court the wingnuts during the campaign but then return to Washington as responsible statesmen. Think of Mitt Romney in the 2012 race enthusiastically accepting Trump’s endorsement, even though Trump was best known politically at the time as the champion of the racist birther conspiracy theory. (A former Romney aide tells me that seeking Trump’s embrace was considered a necessary evil to bolster Romney’s standing with right-wing GOP voters and that after it was secured the campaign wanted nothing else to do with Trump.) But then Trump came along as a candidate in 2015 and tossed all pretenses aside. He made outreach to the extremists a central component of his campaign. He even went on Alex Jones’ show to talk directly to the wackos.
TL;DR for American Psychosis: The GOP’s relationship with hatred and conspiracism did not begin with Trump. Consequently, yearning for the good ol’ days—like when the House GOP made Rush Limbaugh, a super-spreader of fear and loathing, a honorary member of its caucus?—is misplaced nostalgia. Put another way, the roots of the GOP’s present troubles—which bore the poisoned fruit of Trump—are deep and have long been in place. There is no clean ground to which to return.
emphasis added
Hulse, The NY Times, and too many others are still pursuing that mythical version of the GOP as a respectable governing party. The elements that put Trump at the top of the party are in its DNA and can’t be brushed away. The horse race coverage of GOP candidates trying to get past Trump barely mentions what they would do, what policies they would support. Not one of them stands a chance of getting the GOP base to turn out without promising them what Trump does. Not one of them will reject Project 2025. Not one of them will try to distance themselves from the hate and fear that drives GOP politics, not until locking down the nomination — and then they’ll lie about distancing from it once the general campaign starts — if they don’t instead try to double down.
I strongly recommend getting a copy of American Psychosis. (You can order directly from the publisher at this link.) A short preliminary version ran at Mother Jones if you want a sample. I warn you, it can be a tough read at times — it’s history that needs to be looked at, no matter how ugly it can be.
If you belong to a book club, consider making it a group read for discussion. Donate a copy to your local library. You may also want to subscribe to his newsletter Our Land for twice-weekly updates on the news.
Here’s a 2022 interview with Corn discussing the book on C-SPAN. There are some interesting moments, as when Republican callers chime in with what’s gospel GOP disinformation. It really illustrates exactly what the book is about.
And maybe someone should send a copy to The NY Times editorial board.
UPDATE 11/27/23 12:00pm ET
Robert Reich on Four ways the mainstream media is quietly helping Trump and his Republican allies
Read the whole thing. Reich gives four things with short summaries that gets right down to what’s happening. Here’s how he concludes:
As we head into the critical election year of 2024, the mainstream media must adapt to a new political reality: The contest is no longer between Democrats who want more government and Republicans who want less. It is between democracy and fascism.