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Jeet Heer Profile picture
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3 Jun, 7 tweets, 3 min read
1. I want to return to the @EricLevitz piece because it really underscores that the GOP war on democracy is one of choice. It raises the crucial question of why a party would decided to shrink the electorate instead of enlarging their share: nymag.com/intelligencer/…
2. It's true that Trump in 2020 showed GOP can be competitive with Latino voters (and to a lesser extent other POC voters). But that's not something GOP can bet on: it could be due to incumbent effect (which benefit Bush Jr. in 2004 & Obama in 2012).
3. More to the point, as @EricLevitz points out, the Tucker Carlson wing of GOP doesn't want party to become more multi-racial. And here some history is useful since these fights were played out in 1980s and 1980s between Pat Buchanan & Jack Kemp.
4. Already under Reagan there was a splintering of GOP into two opposed factions on race: the Jack Kemp approach of outreach & Pat Buchanan approach of low-level race war.
5. Kemp, even though he was GOP vice presidential candidate in 1996, is almost forgotten today but he tried (unsuccessfully) to push GOP minority outreach with gimmicks like enterprise zones. He & Buchanan were the two poles of party on race & immigration.
6. I've been re-reading Chronicles, paleo-con & Buchananite journal, and it's striking how much a hate figure Kemp was to right (even though he was a conventional Reaganite). Here he's being called a looter.
7. Everything we're seeing today - not to mention Trump's domination - would indicate that Pat Buchanan won the wars of the 1990s. The party prefers to dominate by shrinking electorate rather than be compromised (as they see it) by POC votes. More here: jeetheer.substack.com/p/is-the-gop-w…

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More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
2 Jun
1. Currently, the most energized mobilization on the American political right centers around fighting critical race theory (CRT) in education. The passion this arouses is all the more heated because almost no one knows what CRT is or how it relates to education.
2. Going back 70 years, fights over public education have been the main fuel of right wing popular mobilization. Nothing gets the lizard brain in fight mode quite like fear over children being supposedly threatened: desegregation, prayer, sex ed, gay teachers, trans kids etc.
3. The New York Times had a good piece yesterday showing how putative battles over CRT are really about a larger, more amorphous set of fears. Much of this is about catering to the anxieties about the changing demographics of America. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
30 May
1. Harry Jaffa & Allan Bloom were once the best of friends, collaborators on a book on Shakespeare they dedicated to their shared mentor: "Our Teacher, Leo Strauss." After a bitter fallout, Jaffa would pen a poisonous review suggesting gay men like Bloom deserved to die of AIDS
2. The break-up of the Jaffa/Bloom friendship had more than personal ramifications. It became the focal point of a wider split between the Straussian movement and, ultimately, the Republican Party.
3. Like hip-hop, Straussians are defined by a coastal split. Jaffa's school (West Coast Straussians) have long been aligned with hard right movement conservatism. Bloom's school (East Coast Straussians) gravitate towards the more establishment foreign policy wing of GOP.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
26 May
1. One strong tendency in Republican Party right now is that it's intensifying two seemingly contradictory tendencies: rhetorical populism ("we're a worker's party") & attempts to gain power as minoritarian party (via voter suppression, gerrymandering, electoral college etc.)
2. Minoritarianism, in various forms, has more of a history in America than I think is commonly acknowledged: the claim that a minority not only has rights to protected from majority but should (by dint of superior culture) govern majority.
3. Right-wing populism of various forms - Tom Watson(s), Coughlin, Wallace - typically squared the circle simply by imagining "the people" in a specific way (as white Christian). But has rarely had truck with the more institutional forms of minority rule (courts, bureaucracy)
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
25 May
1. So what are we to make of Bill and Jeff's non-excellent adventure? It shows that the "adage the personal is political" has far reaching implications. Image
2. That Bill & Melinda Gates are divorcing is (I assume) sad for them, their family & friends. But not of public interest. That Bill's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein was a factor raises the gossip level. But more than it: it clarifies why the divorce has policy implications.
3. The line from Bill Gates' people is: "Bill only met with Epstein to discuss philanthropy.” Which on the face of it is risible (although some people are buying it & some people say harping on the Epstein stuff is entering in QAnon territory).
Read 7 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
23 May
1. This thread makes a compelling case that (alas) the Steinbeck werewolf novel should probably not be published. At the very least it shows how nettlesome and difficult the managing of literary estates is.
2. You would think that once a writer is dead, their literary career is over. That's a mistake. Death can bring with it lots of questions of what should be preserved, what published, what edited, what left to the privacy of the archive.
3. Even seemingly obvious rules ("the author's last wish should govern estate") falls apart in practice. The world is a richer place because the last wishes of Virgil, Emily Dickinson and Kafka (to destroy major works) was disobeyed.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
21 May
1. The last 25 years of Philip Roth's are depressing to contemplate. After a bitter divorce, Roth became unmoored: touchy, self-justifying, quick to break with old friends, prone to doomed relationships, eager to find a biographical vindication. His estate continues the folly.
2. There's a weird ouroboros quality to accounts of Roth's last years because they were spent trying to control -- to shape or to resist -- the biographies we're reading. Plus a novel (Exit Ghost) about his alter-ego's fear of a biographer. Snakes eating their tails.
3. Roth wanted a biographer who would refute the account given to him by his ex-wife Claire Bloom. In the process he used one biographer as a sock puppet & broke with him (Ross Miller), stonewalled another (Ira Nadel) & finally settled on Blake Bailey (now accused of rape).
Read 7 tweets

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