The Republican Travelogue to Hell (and Trump's Special Master lawsuit update)

Contents

Part I: The Republican Travelogue to Hell
Part II: Trump’s Special Master Lawsuit Backfires

Part I: The Republican Travelogue to Hell

Tim Miller’s Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell opens with a splash.

America never would have gotten into this mess if it weren’t for me and my friends.

He describes his task in writing this book:

Why We Did It aims . . to dig through the wreckage of the party I once loved and come to understand how so many of my friends allowed something that was so central to our identity to become so unambiguously monstrous. And why they had continued to do so once the monster became uncontrollable.

Miller entered politics in 1998 at the age of 16. For him, politics was a game and the goal was to win. If this required nefarious means, he told himself that the ends justified those means:

I saw myself as someone who could channel the dark arts of politics to positive ends. If the more rational, reasonable, compassionate side of the party was going to win the battle for the soul of the GOP, we were going to have to do so as slash-and-burn executioners. We were also going to have to throw some elbows on behalf of the conservative base so they would know we had their back. At least, that was the story I told myself.

Here is how he describes the Republican primary voters:

[The] most vocal constituents, the Republicans who turn out to vote in primaries . . . don’t give a shit about incremental progress or the plight of their fellow man or a serious and nuanced response to a deadly pandemic anyway. Boring. They are only made upset if a politician doesn’t satiate their desire to see hot-fire slams savaging their perceived enemies, further incentivizing the pols to prioritize this fight over all else.

And here’s how the Republican elites inflamed the angry mob (the highlights are mine):

You’ll also see how the Republican ruling class dismissed the plight of those we were manipulating, growing increasingly comfortable using tactics that inflamed them, turning them against their fellow man. How often we advanced arguments that none of us believed. How we made people feel aggrieved about issues we had no intent or ability to solve. How we spurred racial resentments and bigotry among voters while prickling at anyone who might accuse us of racism. And how these tactics became not just unchecked but supercharged by a right-wing media ecosystem that we were in bed with and that had its own nefarious incentives. . .

Even moderate Republican candidates like McCain were forced to adopt racist and anti-immigrant sentiments to appease the mob:

[McCain] had transitioned from taking a confrontational stance with the audience to using the politician’s “comforting lie.” The comforting lie centers the mob’s feelings, their anger, their passion, over the uncomfortable realities of governing. It was a small change but a meaningful one.

Did any of this bother Miller?

. . . you might assume I would have had some pause about becoming a professional partisan axe thrower in service to these extremists. Nope. Not a one. Honestly.

It was actually a bit unnerving how openly Miller describes how he and his friends lied and stoked racial resentment. I’ll go farther than that. For someone who watched for decades as Republican leaders riled a bloodthirsty racist mob, it was disturbing. You know those moments when Shakespeare’s Richard III basically tells the audience, “Now watch me do evil!” Reading the first half of Miller’s book was like that.

Miller jumped ship when Trump won the nomination in 2016. He voted for Hillary Clinton, worked hard to sink both Trump’s presidential campaigns, and has been an outspoken critic of what the Republican Party has become.

During the Trump era, he puzzled over his pals who lined up to kiss Trump’s ring. To understand them, he looked inward because he figured he knew something about soul-sellers. He then categorized the various character failings which caused former colleagues to go full MAGA.

He eviscerates them, one and all.

Elise Stefanik is a “striver” high on the drug of ambition willing to jettison personal integrity for the thrill of moving with the powerful. Sean Spicer is a social nerd who thought bowing to Trump would make up for his lack of personal charisma. “Enablers” include Jeff Sessions (who “has a lust for the blood of immigrant children”) and the “slithery” Stephen Miller.

I won’t lie. That part was fun to read. However, I wasn’t persuaded by the theory that these slithering enablers and strivers knew all along they were lying, and then those who went full MAGA did so because of character flaws. Everyone has character flaws so this doesn’t really explain how a major political entirely lost its moral compass.

To understand the radicalization of the Republican Party, we need some history. (Some of the next few sections will be familiar to longtime readers, but I think it offers valuable context for Tim Miller’s observations.)

How the Party of Lincoln Became the Party of Trump

At the time of the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the party of the Confederacy and rural America. Democrats wanted a limited federal government because they knew the North, if given the chance, would end slavery. To keep the industrial north (and the federal government) weak, they vetoed federal funds for canals and highways and other infrastructure.

In 1855 the Republican Party, called the “Freedom Party,” was born as an anti-slavery, pro-industry, pro-federal government party. Its anti-slavery stance made it pro-labor and pro-Civil Rights. (Well, as pro-labor as anyone was back then.)

The Republicans gave us our first income tax. After the Civil War and the crushing defeat of the South, the Republicans had the power to pass pro-industry legislation including the building of infrastructure. The building of infrastructure allowed industries to grow rapidly. As a result, the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful men (they were always men) shifted from plantation owners to railroad and business tycoons.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Republican Party split into two factions: The conservative pro-industry faction and the liberal civil rights faction. By the 1920s, the pro-industry faction took control. The Republicans dropped racial equality and labor rights from its platform and became the party of business and free-market capitalism.

The Democratic Party base at the time consisted of Southern whites, agricultural America, and factory workers.

Neither party championed racial equality. This ushered in a long period of relative harmony between the parties—they respected each other’s “differences” because they weren’t that different. Both parties were ruled by white men.

In the 1920s, President Harding (a Republican) deregulated industry and repealed taxes. Money flowed into the pockets of business tycoons. Unregulated banks freely lent too much money. It was the age of business. Meanwhile, laborers worked long hours in dangerous jobs at poverty wages.

Then, in 1929, it all came crashing down. First, the market crashed and then came the Great Depression.

Enter, stage left, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his pro-labor New Deal. The New Deal was a series of legislation intended to improve the conditions for laborers and curb the worst impulses of capitalism through federal regulation. The New Deal thus expanded the federal government. The Republicans pushed back. They had the infrastructure they needed, they didn’t want labor rights, and they didn’t want to be regulated.

The New Deal gave us our first strong middle class, but Blacks and minority communities were still left out. The United States still basically lived under the 19th century patriarchy: a social ordering with White men at the top and Black women at the bottom.

Then, in 1954, everything changed: The Supreme Court declared racial segregation unconstitutional, which ignited the Civil Rights movement, which in turn ignited the modern women’s movement.

In the 1960s the Democratic Party embraced civil rights. Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. As a result, Former Confederates and white supremacists (for obvious reasons) grew uncomfortable in the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, the Republicans, as the Conservative party of business, faced what Harvard political scientist 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 how can they win elections with economic policies that are unpopular and hurt their own constituents?

The Republicans solved this problem by luring into their party two large demographics: (1) the segregationists and others who were angry over the rapidly diversifying American electorate, and (2) the Christian Nationalists (White evangelicals), who had previously been spread out over both parties.

Nixon talked about being “tough on crime” (which was code for putting Black men in jail). Reagan talked about “welfare queens,” cynically playing into ugly stereotypes of Black women.

By the 1990s, the switch was complete. The Democratic Party was the party of urban America and minority communities. The Republican Party coalition, led by the free-market “elites,” was the party of rural America, white supremacists, and gun-toting militias who armed themselves against what they called a “tyrannical” federal government.

Put another way: The Trump-DeSantis-Fox-Newsmax GOP is a backlash from the Civil Rights and women’s rights movement which entirely changed the United States, moving us—for the first time—toward a true multi-racial democracy.

Now let’s take a closer look at the mob that Tim Miller and the other free-market “elite” Republicans enflamed.

The Paranoid Style

Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his classic 1964 work, conducted a thorough review of American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism and noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.

He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.

Those embracing the paranoid style believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger to which they belong. According to Hofstadter, the “something larger” to which they belong is generally phrased as “the American way of life.”

They “feel dispossessed” and that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind.” They are “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion.” They therefore adopt extreme measures. They will stop at nothing to prevent what they see as an impending calamity.

By the time of McCarthyism and Barry Goldwater in the 1950s and 1960s, Hofstadter noticed that these fringe elements were moving into mainstream politics.

Political psychologists call the paranoid style the “authoritarian personality.” Those with this personality type:

defer to established authorities
show aggression toward out-groups when authorities sanction that aggression
support traditional values endorsed by authorities
respect toughness and power
exhibit rigidity
are cynical
have a low tolerance for complexity (which includes diversity and globalization).

In the words of political psychologist Karen Stenner, those with this personality type prefer sameness and uniformity and are vulnerable to conspiracy theories and theories that include magical thinking.

Stenner (and other researchers) have concluded that about 33% of the population across cultures has this personality. She also says people are born with this predisposition.

Slavery was authoritarian. The 19th century patriarchy was authoritarian. Racial segregation was authoritarian. These eras cover about 80% of American history.

OK, so. If only about a third of the population has an authoritarian disposition, how is it that 80% of our history was dominated by authoritarianism? The answer is simple: Only white men were allowed to vote, and all white men benefitted from a system that put a class of men and all women below them on the hierarchy.

The Authoritarian Dynamic

Those with authoritarian personalities can be good citizens. They will embrace institutions and follow rules when those institutions and rules are endorsed by their authority figure.

However, when riled by what political psychologists call a normative threat, they can become cruel, tolerate cruelty in others, and show aggression toward out-groups.

A normative threat is something that threatens sameness and order.

After the Civil Rights and women’s rights movements, Republican elites were able to rile the mob with normative threats, like this: “Unworthy people [members of minority communities] are trying to replace you and take what belongs to you!”

Yale professor Timothy Snyder coined the word “sadopopulism” to describe how the Republican elite keeps the support of their voters even as they adopt policies that hurt those voters. They follow a simple formula, that goes like this:

Identify an “enemy” (homeless migrants, minority communities, Democrats, etc.)
Enact policies that create pain in their own supporters (tax cuts for the rich, take steps eliminate social security and access to health care)
Blame the ensuing pain on the “enemies”
Present themselves as the strongmen to fight the enemies

Then Trump, a sadopopulist, came along and perfected the art of creating normative threats.

The Cycle of Radicalization

Tim Miller, in his book, Why We Did It, The Republican Travelogue to Hell, talked about how Republican candidates were “in bed with” a right-wing media ecosystem that had its own nefarious incentives. Yale political scientist Jacob S. Hacker and Berkeley political scientist Paul Pierson explained that this happened because Republican politicians outsourced voter mobilizations to right-wing media outlets.

At first, the Fox-GOP partnership was a boon to GOP candidates. Fox turned out voters, and the voters voted Republican. But outsourcing voter mobilization had drawbacks: Soon FOX and other right-wing media outlets were exerting control over GOP officials, who relied on Fox to turn out voters. Meanwhile, Fox personalities cater to their audiences, which moves them further toward extremism. In a cycle of radicalization, the media outlets then force GOP officials to adopt more extreme policies.

The GOP similarly outsourced voter mobilization to the NRA and white Christian evangelicals, which forced the Republican leaders to cater to these groups.

By the time Tim Miller entered politics, Republicans understood that the only way they could win elections was to rile an angry racist mob.

Riling a mob was precisely what worried the ancient and 18th-century political philosophers, who wondered whether democracy could work. Their concern was that without an educated population, the winner of an election would be the person who could con the largest number of voters—or stir them to rage and anger through manipulative lies.

In the Republican mea culpas, I see a blueprint for what not to do: Don’t enflame a mob.

And what to do:

Constantly check the moral compass.
Call out all untruths, half-truths, and simplifications.
Work on educating the population.
Bring down the temperature. Don’t be like them.
Offer voters a choice. One party has to be the party that represents rational thought and rule of law.

“I work all day long. I tell you anytime a mail carrier, delivery person, squirrel, pigeon, personal walking a baby carriage or other danger comes near the house. So why don’t I get the good stuff?”