🙋♀️ Oh, pick me! @MarkSZaidEsq !
I can answer your question about why Trump remains so popular with the GOP.
Richard Hofstadter, in his classic work The Paranoid Style in American Politics, offers one of the best answers.
Next up: Yale prof. @TimothyDSnyder and what he calls the politics of Sadopopulism.
🔹identifies an “enemy”
🔹enacts policies that create pain in their own supporters
🔹blames the pain on the “enemies”
🔹presents themselves as the strongmen who can fight and defeat the enemies.
Sadopopulism arises from a policy problem facing would-be oligarchs.
Leaders of liberal (rule of law based) democracy enact policies to better the lives of the citizens.
The need to keep the masses in their places, so the enact policies which benefit them (tax cuts for the rich) and harm their supporters. . .
They persuade their followers that the "liberal fascists mobs" attacking statues are a bigger danger than the virus.
The virus will kill some people. They think the liberals will "kill" their way of life.
Political psychologist, who tell us that approximately 1/3 of the population has what they call an anti-democratic or authoritarian personality.
Info from from Ngo, and Sanders, “The Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale” academia.edu/34651963/The_R…
I won't go into the details about this personality type. "Anti-democratic personality" and "authoritarian disposition," are descriptive. More info is available in the cited articles.
That 1/3 percentage reappears through history. Huey Long and Joseph McCarthy had 30-30% approval. The Nazis came to power with 33% approval.
Trump’s support hovers at about 40% . . .
The reason given for the higher-than-should-be number is usually the polarization or hyper-partisanship in the US.
It seems to me hyper-partisanship not the cause. It’s a description of the effect.
There’s a theory afloat that the Republican elected leadership backs Trump because they’re being blackmailed.
In fact, the GOP-Russia love affair has been evident for some time.
abcnews.go.com/International/…
Also in 2018, Guiliani attended a pro-Russia conference last year.
thinkprogress.org/why-is-rudy-gi…
rt.com/uk/429777-kati…
Putin’s regime, remember, is built on homophobia and fear of those who are different.
Hassen talked of “Looking to Russia with hopeful eyes . . .”
scribd.com/document/40010…
What's with the hopeful eyes?
And that, @MarkSZaidEsq, is [partly] why the Republican Party is so in love with Trump. I could go on, but 20 tweets is long enough.
Confession: I'm also constantly losing my keys.
To begin with, the GOP is no longer "conservative" in the sense used by political psychologists. The fringe right wing nuts have co-opted the term "conservative" to give themselves legitimacy.
Anyway, the demographics of the GOP are also shrinking. The Fox viewership is aging.
So Trump is popular with minority party. He's doubling down on this minority and running as a George Wallace.