Paul Krugman's April 18 column is explicit in a way the mainstream press largely avoids. (This link should allow access through The NY Times pay wall.)
...I’d say that G.O.P. campaigning in 2022 is all culture war, all the time, except that this would be giving Republicans too much credit. They aren’t fighting a real culture war, a conflict between rival views of what our society should look like; they’re riling up the base against phantasms, threats that don’t even exist.
This isn’t hyperbole. I’m not just talking about things like the panic over critical race theory, although this has come to mean just about any mention of the role that slavery and discrimination have played in U.S. history. Florida is even rejecting many math textbooks, claiming that they include prohibited topics.
That’s bad. But we’re seeing a growing focus on even more bizarre conspiracy theories, with frantic attacks on woke Disney, etc. And roughly half of self-identified Republicans believe that “top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings.”
What are they doing? Why?
...But look, none of this is a mystery. Republicans are following an old playbook, one that would have been completely familiar to, say, czarist-era instigators of pogroms. When the people are suffering, you don’t try to solve their problems; instead, you distract them by giving them someone to hate.
And history tells us that this tactic often works.
As I said, I have no idea whether Trump’s endorsement of Vance will matter. What I do know is that the G.O.P. as a whole has turned to hate-based politics. And if you aren’t afraid, you aren’t paying attention.
emphasis added
It’s past time to recognize that the GOP has become a hate group. For some reason they get a pass from much of the media, despite too many examples in plain sight. If four years of Trump was not enough to convince people, you’d think January 6 would do it — but nope.
The mainstream media still largely covers politics as though it was a rivalry between opposing sports teams, instead of something that has serious consequences. It’s bad enough when they try to frame every story as a ‘both sides’ narrative; it’s worse when they do IOKIYAR (It’s OK If You’re A Republican). Case in point: Hunter Biden versus Jared Kushner.
But after all, Republicans behaving badly is not news. It’s their brand. Or so the mainstream media seems to believe.
Read all of Krugman, and for a bonus, look at the top reader-rated comments as well.