There was an explosion of news this week with a theme: The increasing radicalization of the Republican Party.
First, we have the abortion pill mifepristone debacle in which a federal judge in Texas attempted to outlaw mifepristone for the entire nation. Here’s the timeline (I find that a bullet point timeline is the best tool for understanding a complex legal situation):
- Last year, a coalition of anti-abortion rights groups called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA alleging that mifepristone should not have been approved. Note: Mifepristone was approved 20 years ago, has been proven safe, and is also used in miscarriage management.
- On Friday, April 7, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas agreed with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. He ruled that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved the abortion pill mifepristone and issued a nationwide injunction pausing the FDA approval, set to take effect in 7 days.
- Hours after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, the DOJ appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
- A coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to block the FDA from pulling the drug from the market.
- In response to that lawsuit, a federal judge in Washington state, Thomas O. Rice, blocked the FDA from “altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of Mifepristone.”
- We thus had dueling federal district court rulings, creating an untenable situation for the FDA, which meant that SCOTUS would have to weigh in quickly.
- On Wednesday, April 12, the Fifth Circuit, in a late-night ruling, held that mifepristone can remain on the market, but with limited access. The order was riddled with problems, which I won’t go into here.
- On Friday, the DOJ and abortion pill distributor Danco Laboratories asked the Supreme Court to block the order limiting access to mifepristone.
- Late Friday, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay maintaining the status quo while it hears the case.
Bottom line: As a practical matter, a federal judge doesn’t have the authority to intervene in the workings of the FDA and substitute his judgment for the judgment of the FDA. As Steve Vladeck pointed out, the case has other procedural problems such as standing (do the plaintiffs have the right to bring this lawsuit) and statute of limitations.
From my mail this week: “Teri, I would love to see a post on your views of how SCOTUS will rule.”
Because we have a few completely unhinged justices, it’s hard to say for sure, but I can’t see the Supreme Court twisting itself into knots to keep mifepristone off the market, which would involve overlooking standing and statute of limitations issues and allowing federal courts to usurp the role of the executive branch.
Also, even though the underlying issue here is different from the issue presented in Roe v. Wade, the Court overturned Roe partly on the grounds that federal courts shouldn’t be making those decisions. For federal courts to intervene now on thin pretense and make a ruling on abortion access would obviously smell of rank hypocrisy. A normal court would not consider agreeing with Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, but we have an increasingly radicalized Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court does such a thing, the backlash against the Court (and Republicans) will be fierce.
More news:
- Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy (before most women know they are pregnant).
- We learned that Justice Thomas took large sums of money from Harland Crow and failed to report real estate sales and gifts from Crow.
- The Tennessee Legislature grabbed the national stage when, in an act of stunning racism, expelled two Black members for protesting gun violence while not expelling the white woman who also protested gun violence. (The expelled representatives have been returned to office.)
- Fox News was sanctioned for withholding evidence in the Dominion defamation case. (This is a big deal.)
- That was how we learned that there are recordings of Trump campaign officials basically admitting that they had no evidence (or very little evidence) of issues with the machines. (No wonder Fox didn’t want to turn over the evidence.)
- On Thursday, Merrick Garland announced that the FBI arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira, a 21-year-old employee of the US Air Force National Guard who apparently leaked more than 100 classified US documents on social media. Turns out, Teixeira is a radicalized Christian libertarian who has “doubts about America’s future” and who also exhibits racism and antisemitic behavior.
- Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) defended Teixeira on the ground that he is “white, male, Christian and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.” [By “anti-war” she meant “anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia”).
- Alvin Bragg had to waste time responding to Jim Jordan’s attempt to turn the Manhattan Trump indictment into another Benghazi.
- Trump brought an unhinged lawsuit against Michael Cohen.
- Trump’s Truth Social postings have become increasingly unhinged and incoherent.
- Even as Trump is having a mental breakdown of some kind, the Republican Party continues to support him as a candidate for president.
We are essentially being hit with a firehose of insanity. I could spend a full blog post on any one of the above, but I think it’s better to back up and take a bird’s eye view to ask how has the Republican Party became so unhinged and radicalized.
The Republican Cycle of Radicalization
While the title of Let Them Eat Tweets by Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, and Berkeley political scientist Paul Pierson feels a bit dated, the book succinctly explains what we might call the Republican cycle of radicalization whereby the party leaders are locked into accepting increasingly extreme and unhinged positions.
The authors begin with what Harvard Prof. Daniel Ziblatt calls the “Conservative dilemma,” which goes like this:
- Conservatives represent the interests of a few wealthy people.
- Their economic policies are unpopular.
- So when more people are allowed to vote, conservatives have a problem.
Plutocracy is incompatible with democracy for two reasons: (1) most people will not knowingly vote to keep a plutocrat in power when that plutocrat is essentially robbing them, so plutocrats have trouble winning elections the normal way, by putting forward their policies and plans. (2) As more money becomes concentrated in the hands of a few people, power, too, becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people.
Plutocracy is not new in the United States. Slavery, after all, was a plutocracy, as was the era of robber barons. (Heather Cox Richardson in her book To Make Men Free refers to these as our first two oligarchies. We are now heading toward a third.) The Civil War got us out of the first oligarchy. Roosevelt’s New Deal got us out of the second.
To win elections with unpopular economic positions, plutocrats can either:
- Move to the center by agreeing to implement economic policies that benefit more people, or
- Consolidate minority power so they don’t have to compromise on economic issues.
Beginning with Nixon, guess which the Republicans chose.
To win elections with unpopular policies, the Republicans formed an alliance with Fox, the NRA, and white Evangelical groups. The alliances worked like this: Fox, the NRA, and Christian nationalist groups turned out voters. In exchange, the Republican candidates and elected officials gave them the social policies they wanted: Get rid of abortion, deregulate guns, etc.
You see, plutocrats don’t care about things like guns and abortions, but they needed the votes, so they made a deal with organizations that could turn out voters.
At first, outsourcing voter mobilization was a boon to Republican candidates, but to please their audiences, talk show hosts like Tucker Carlson swung farther to the right. Meanwhile, because Republican elected officials needed Fox to turn out voters, Fox began exerting more influence on Republican candidates, creating a radicalization cycle. As these organizations moved farther to the right to accommodate their readership, Republican officials had to similarly move to the right to win their votes. Even so-called moderates like Mitt Romney were forced to make deals with Fox and other right-wing groups.
The difference between so-called Republican “moderates” and crazies like Marjorie Taylor Greene is that the moderates made a deal with right-wing extremists and Greene is a right-wing extremist.
Before Trump, Republican candidates would position themselves far to the right to win primaries, and then adopt a more moderate stance in the general election. By 2016, the base had enough of that. They were tired of voting for candidates who they felt gave their issues lip service in the primaries and then, in the general election, promised to govern from the center-right. So they went for Trump. No more Mitt Romneys. No more candidates making deals with the far right. They wanted someone who was far right.
What looked like a 2015-2016 Republican civil war (moderates v. far right wing) was simply the Republican Party officials, including people like Lindsay Graham, panicking because Trump refused to hide his racism and extremism behind euphemisms and dog whistles. But when Trump won the nomination, the Republican leadership fell in line.
Another way to say the same thing: To win elections, Nixon and Reagan invited white Supremacists and Christian nationalists into the party. Now the white Supremacists and Christian nationalists have taken control.
Yet another way to say the same thing: To stay in power, plutocrats have employed strongman psychology: They promise to protect their supporters from their “enemies” (woke Democrats who want access to abortion and gun regulations, and who refuse to lie about American history).
Plutocrats offering “protection,” leads to what Timothy Snyder calls sadopopulism, which works like this:
- Plutocratic leaders enact policies designed to protect their own wealth. For example, they lower taxes on the wealthy and remove access to healthcare for those who are not wealthy.
- These policies inflict suffering on the people.
- The leader blames their pain on the “enemies” (immigrants, minorities, migrants seeking asylum, Democrats, etc.)
- The richer the plutocrats become, the more general suffering exists in the population, so there is more anger to direct against the “enemies”, thereby creating a need for a strongman to “protect” the “victims.”
This chart was included in Let Them Eat Tweets:
The Republican Party has moved even farther to the right since 2019. If the Republican Party continues on its course (and there is no reason to think it won’t) we can expect the Republican Party to keep shrinking. As it shrinks, it will become more desperate and dangerous.
Obviously one of two things will happen:
- The Democrats will win elections and make it harder for right-wing extremists to hold power or
- the Democrats will lose the upcoming elections and the right-wing extremists will win.
There are no magic bullets. The only way to contain the threat of right-wing extremism is for Democrats to win the upcoming elections, which can put into motion another cycle that would favor the expansion of liberal democracy.
In this lecture, Harvard professor Steven Levitsky (who talks about “white Christians” as the base of the Republican Party) offers these statistics:
In 1994, white Christians were 74% of the electorate.
By 2014, they were down to 57%.
By 2024, they’re projected to be less than 50%.
In other words, the Republican Party represents a shrinking demographic group. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has morphed into a party of urban intellectuals, minority communities, and young people—and this demographic is growing.
The Cycle Created By Changing Demographics
If the Democrats do nothing more than continue to hold the White House and Senate, they can contain the threat of right-wing extremism by gradually replacing the federal judiciary, controlling national enforcement, other federal agencies, etc.
But a trifecta, particularly with large margins, will allow for rapid change. Franklin Roosevelt, after all, got us out of an oligarchy through regulations. (He also experienced severe pushback from a reactionary Supreme Court, but that’s another story.)
A trifecta in 2024 with wide enough majorities to pass election reform legislation, for example, would allow Democrats to pass legislation making it easier for everyone to vote in federal elections. (The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate federal elections.) Making it easier for more people to vote makes it harder for plutocrats and extremists to win elections, thereby helping the Democrats expand their majorities, which in turn will allow for the kinds of changes that will move us closer to a true multi-racial representative democracy.
Do you want a Democratic trifecta in 2024? Get busy. For ideas, click here.
I’ve had a few complaints from readers that JJ hasn’t made an appearance for a few weeks.
Turns out, this week was a perfect time to take his picture: He came back from the groomer all dressed up. He immediately returned to duty at his guard post by the window to keep a sharp eye on the neighborhood. I’m afraid the bow tie may not do much to enhance his image as a ferocious guard dog.
(I used to try to give him a bath and haircut myself, but it never went well. His groomer has magical powers.)
