How should we understand the relationship between Trump and the evolution of the GOP? Is it a rupture, intensification, more of the same? In response to #LetThemEatTweets, the ever-thoughtful @JohnQuiggin offers a helpful metaphor: phase transition. 1/
johnquiggin.com/2020/07/15/the…
johnquiggin.com/2020/07/15/the…
The GOP's gone from a "mixture of many dissolved ingredients, in which the dominant element was the business establishment, and the Trump era party...as a crystallised mass of plutocratic economics, racism and all-round craziness" (@JohnQuiggin). 2/
In the process, "various groups (Blacks and Northeastern liberal Republicans in C20, liberaltarians more recently) have left the Republican coalition in response to its racism and know-nothingism" (@JohnQuiggin). 3/
And "[t]he dregs that have precipitated out are ideas that were supposed to be important to Republicans (free trade, scientific truth, classical liberalism, moral character and so on) that turned out not to matter at all" (@JohnQuiggin). 4/
