Share this page!

Jeet Heer Profile picture
Twitter logo
11 May, 6 tweets, 2 min read
1. Almost exactly a year ago Joe Biden said, "With Donald Trump out of the White House—not a joke—you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.” But in fact GOP continues to Trumpify: Trump critics are defenestrated & party rallying behind voter suppression
2. Stepping back, it's crucial to see how unusual it is that a defeated president continue to be a dominant figure in party who sets agenda & can punish foes: was that true of (in recent memory) Ford, Carter or Bush Sr.
3. Even successful presidents normally in modern times step background, only rarely commenting on public events & exercising authority in background. That's not Trump, who continues to set GOP agenda & have pols come to kiss his ring.
4. To understand Trump's continued dominance of GOP, you have to go back more than a century to figures like Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt (popular enough to break GOP in half when he led 3rd party in 1912.)
5. The Andrew Jackson precedent is particularly striking because Jackson was an untutored, vulgar, bullying, ideologically incoherent racist authoritarian whose cult of personality reshaped his party & re-aligned American politics.
6. The future of Trumpism after Trump remains an open question. Many remain skeptical that the worldview can outlive the outsized personality. But the Andrew Jackson precedent is worth thinking about. More here: jeetheer.substack.com/p/never-trump-…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
10 May
1. How do you strangle and drown your wife but still get celebrated by the press? The simple answer is that you be one of the gang and work for a British tabloid. This is the story of John Kay and the British media.
2. In 1977, John Kay, a reporter recently elevated to an editorial post at The Sun, a leading British tabloid, strangled and drowned his wife Harue. He claimed a bout of insanity. His employer took up his cause and hired an eminent lawyer to defend Kay, who got a lesser sentence
3. The Sun didn't just pay for Kay's legal defense. They assured the court there would always be a job for Kay at the paper. After a brief stint of psychiatric care, he was back at the paper as one of their star (and highest paid) reporters.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
7 May
1. CIA has always been (to use this misappropriated terminology) "woke": the liberal wing of the national security state because top-heavy with Ivy League grads. CIA top brass was Yalie liberals when they carried out Operation Paperclip & recruited countless Nazi war criminals.
2. "The CIA is too liberal" is one of the foundational complaints of movement conservatism, which was formed by a group of ex (or "ex") CIA agents who disliked CIA's support of non-communist left (Buckley, James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall etc).
3. One core mission of CIA from start in 1947 was winning over the non-communist left (NCL in CIA jargon) in Europe and decolonized world: hence CIA support of literary journals & cultural modernism as well as AFL-CIO assisted infiltration of unions.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
7 May
I have a hard time seeing how you can hold these two positions. I suppose you could if you made a distinction between supporting democracy/rule of law & substantive police positions. But that's a false distinction: democracy & rule of law are also policy matter.
I think this is a usefully sophisticated way of thinking about the "moderation" issue -- going hard right on some issues allows a Republican to be more moderate on others. But I'll add that a lot of Trump's supposed moderation was in level of rhetoric.
mean to put in this link on the "usefully sophisticated way of thinking about moderation issue"
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
6 May
1. The usual contrarian clowns -- specifically Greenwald and Fang -- are trying to muddy the waters on the Liz Cheney business, so it's worth spelling out why Bernie is right.
2. You can easily believe, as I do, that Liz Cheney is wrong about nearly everything but that she's right to oppose Trump's attempts (which are ongoing) to overturn the 2020 election results & subvert American democracy.
3. Saying that Cheney is right about Trumpian authoritarianism and using her as a wedge to divide GOP does not entail supporting anything else Cheney believes. To suggest otherwise like the numbskull argument that being a vegetarian means supporting Hitler.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
6 May
1. With Liz Cheney's pushed out of GOP leadership, worth remembering just months ago she was a super-star. Last November Politico wrote of her prospects to be Speaker or even President, complete with Margaret Thatcher comparisons. What went wrong?
2. Liz Cheney has fallen because she stood up to Trump: it's a very consistent pattern over last few years that any Republican who does that is either swept aside or surrenders to Trump (as Lindsey Graham). The GOP's heart and soul belongs to Trump.
3. Given Trump's near total control of GOP, it's hard not to admire those Republicans who at real political cost oppose him. But we have also to be clear-eyed that Never Trump Republicanism is a political dead end. There's no sign it has a constituency inside GOP.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
3 May
1. So, the CIA intersectional ad has been getting some polarizing reactions (Left: look at this shit, the right: oh, no, the CIA is woke, some liberals: actually it's good CIA is anti-racist).
2. It's all too telling that Glenn Greenwald takes the right wing position (see, the woke left is running the show). This seems to be a pretty naive understanding of how intelligence agencies use ideology.
3. We actually have a great historical precedence on this since the original CIA of 1947-1968 was heavily invested in shoring up what was called the non-communist left (liberals in USA, social democrats in rest of world). That was NOT because CIA was progressive.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @HeerJeet has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @HeerJeet!

Read all threads by @HeerJeet

:(