Rick Wilson and others explain that much of the GOP leadership is afraid of Trump. They dislike him, but they’re afraid to go against him.
A follower asked:
It works like this:
- Trump controls his base.
- His base is a majority of the Republican Party.
- A Republican cannot get elected without Trump’s base.
- If they cross Trump, he’ll turn his base against them.
- They want power more than they want to do what is right.
There is a two part answer.
(1) Over the past few decades, the GOP morphed from a conservative party into a reactionary party.
(2) Trump created (and fanned the flames) of what political psychologists Karen Stenner and Jon Haidt call an Authoritarian Dynamic. Their article, “Authoritarianism Is not a Momentary Madness but an Eternal Dynamic Within Liberal Democracies” first appeared in this book:
You can also read it here.
About a third of the population have what these psychologists call an authoritarian disposition.
Conservatives are averse to change. They prefer stability & status quo.
Those with an authoritarian disposition, on the other hand, are averse to complexity (which includes diversity). They prefer sameness and uniformity and have “cognitive limitations.” They’re “simpleminded avoiders of complexity.” They have a “bias against different others” (racial and ethnic outgroups, immigrants).
A normative threat is something that threatens “sameness and order.”
When confronted with a normative threat, those with an authoritarian disposition have a strong reaction. They become fearful and angry. They can be violent & tolerate violence in others.
Fear of immigrants is discomfort with people who are different.
Trump governs by creating normative threats. He deliberately keeps the authoritarians riled.
That’s why he is accusing China of unleashing the virus as a bioweapon. Most of us roll our eyes. His base gets riled. They think he’s the strongman trying to protect them while the media and Democrats (defined as anyone who opposes Trump) are trying to hamstring him.
The demographics of the two parties have been slowly shifting for decades. Before the Democrats embraced civil rights, the white South was Democratic. So was the KKK and other white supremacists.
After the Civil Rights movement, Libertarians, the KKK, and Birchers (white evangelicals) found themselves with a common goal: Dismantle the federal government. The GOP welcomed them all. To expand its base & bring the white South into the GOP devised the Southern Strategy. Nixon talked about being “tough on crime” (code for putting black men in jail). Reagan talked about “welfare queens.”
What happened next in a nutshell: The authoritarians grew increasingly powerful & took over the party. If you invite authoritarians into your party, eventually they’ll do what authoritarians do: They’ll take over.
So two things happened at once:
- The GOP morphed into a right wing authoritarian party
- Trump creates normative threats to keep them riled.
And here we are.
(If you want to read more about the history of the parties, see this post.)
