Thread by @tzimmer_history

It’s simply remarkable how out of step the Republican Party is with public opinion on several issues that are central to the reactionary political project. And Republicans understand this very clearly: It is what fuels the conservative radicalization against democracy.

https://twitter.com/prripoll/status/1550195664898117633

Conservatives aren’t oblivious to these numbers. But when they look at them, they just don’t see cause for moderation or course correction – only proof that the supposedly radical forces of Godless, “Un-American” leftism have already been allowed to advance much too far.

No one should seek comfort in the idea that conservatives – and the Republican Party they dominate – will inevitably moderate once they realize the majority is so clearly against them. They have realized that long ago, and it has pushed them further to the right.

The idea that Republicans will eventually moderate is predicated on the assumption that they care about democratic legitimacy. But they don’t. They care about what they believe is the natural / divinely ordained order and their right to rule and dominate this “real America.”

The overriding concern of conservatism as a political project since at least the 1950s, and thus the GOP’s overriding concern since at least the 1970s, when conservatives became the dominating faction within the party, has been to preserve that version of “real America.”

Conservatives’ allegiance has never been to democratic ideals – their acceptance of democracy was always conditional and depending largely on whether or not it would be set up in a way that allowed for the forces of “Godless” multiracial pluralism to be kept in check.

In other words, the fact that public opinion or the numerical majority of the electorate has turned against their vision will not deter them, it will only heighten their sense of urgency. If democracy betrays and threatens “real America,” then democracy has got to go.

The rightwing offensive against democracy is not coming from a sense of strength, it’s not fueled by favorable polling numbers. It’s animated by a sense of weakness, by a feeling of being under siege, of running out of time to preserve what is the only acceptable order.

This isn’t a new development. In fact, a sense of being under siege has been one of the characteristics of modern conservatism since its emergence in the middle part of the last century. Conservatives have never *not* been claiming to be preserving America from impending doom.

Conservative elites have always cultivated a sense of elite (self-)victimization, have displayed a remarkable persecution complex while holding disproportionate power, at least politically and economically, often focused on the cultural sphere they didn’t manage to dominate.

Until quite recently, this overall feeling among conservatives of being victimized was accompanied by a sense of representing the majority will of the people – of having the “silent majority” on their side.

The “silent majority” idea was obviously based on a racialized conception of America’s true volk - but at least it entailed some notion of majoritarian government and therefore, at least in theory, recognized democratic principles. That’s completely gone, in theory and practice.

Conservatives have basically shifted from “We are the silent majority, so how dare this ‘activist’ government / Court go against our will” to “We are a shrinking minority, but the majority is illegitimate, and so we need to entrench minoritarian rule by whatever means.”

The shift from “We are the silent majority, entitled to rule over those radical special-interest groups” to “We are the virtuous minority and there are fewer and fewer of us” corresponds directly with the shift from “No judicial activism” to “The Court needs to safe our America!”

The Right is reacting to something real: The political, cultural, and, most importantly, demographic changes that have made the country less white, less conservative, less Christian are not just figments of the reactionary imagination.

Recent political and societal events have dramatically heightened the sense of being under siege on the Right. The first one was the election / re-election of the first Black president to the White House, a symbol of the imminent threat to the “natural” order of white dominance.

The Right’s radicalization must also be understood as a white reactionary counter-mobilization to the mobilization of civil society after the murder of George Floyd, which conservatives saw as irrefutable proof that radically “Un-American” forces of “woke” extremism were rising.

This combination of structural (cultural, demographic) factors and specific events led to an enormously heightened sense of being under siege, which is a key reason why these far-right popular energies were finally able to break through where they had previously failed to do so.

Trump was the latest in a series of successful rightwing demagogues – and he managed what George Wallace in 1968, David Duke in 1990, or Pat Buchanan in 1992 couldn’t, becoming the leader of the Right, fueled by this unprecedentedly radical sense of threat and weakness.

So, what does all that mean going forward? One theory holds that if electoral incentives were to change, Republicans would ultimately have to moderate. However, if we look at what’s happened in places where that is already the case, the picture is much bleaker.

On the west coast, for instance, from an electoral standpoint, the Republican Party should have moderated a long time ago. It didn’t – and basically became uncompetitive in statewide elections. Electoral pressure fueled radicalization, not moderation.

In fact, in Oregon, for instance, the GOP’s radicalization has gone so far that the line between “conservative” and extremist forces has been fully extinguished, and fascistic militant groups now increasingly serve as the party’s paramilitary arm.

https://twitter.com/sethcotlar/status/1547590787344412672

It doesn’t bode well for the future of American democracy that the underlying sense of threat on the Right very much seems to override electoral incentives in pretty much all situations and contexts. They aren’t seeking majorities – only power, by whatever means.

The west coast example of Republican retreat from power notwithstanding, the fact that conservatives are increasingly out of step with majority opinion also doesn’t mean that they are destined to lose. The overturning of Roe should be a painful reminder that they are winning.

The reactionary crusade against abortion rights has never been able to change public opinion. Conservatives managed to overturn Roe by building one of the most successful social movements of recent history and by exploiting un-/anti-democratic features of the system.

They did it by setting up a complex judicial infrastructure, inventing legal doctrines, figuring out how to channel radical popular energies and combine them with an elite political / intellectual reactionary project – and by finding a way *around* majority will.

The fundamental reality of the current political conflict is that the many anti-democratic distortions in the constitution and the political system leave the door open for authoritarian forces and have put them in a position to undermine and subvert democracy on all levels.

People in the pro-democracy camp need to resist the false comfort of the demographic destiny fallacy: “We have the numbers” won’t cut it. Conservatives understand the numbers better than anyone else, and they have figured out a way to succeed anyway.

The Republican Party has a comprehensive strategy to put its vision into practice. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are mainly focused on obstructing efforts to safeguard democracy. It’s at the state level where the reactionary assault is accelerating the most.

https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1527280467082219520

If America were a functioning democracy, a representational system in which people were allowed to participate in the democratic process as equal citizens and gaining majority support from the electorate translated into political power, the situation would be very different.

America would still be in major trouble: It’s not an easy task to deal with a shrinking, but substantial reactionary minority of the population that is rapidly radicalizing, and the spread of fascistic violence that accompanies the process of democratization.

But at least in a functioning democracy, these forces wouldn’t be in a position to prevent functional governance on the federal level and impose their will on the country by relying not just on red-state legislation, but also on the highest court as the reactionary spearhead.

The current system of government wasn’t designed to accommodate multiracial, pluralistic democracy, and it consistently awards disproportionate power to those who abhor true democracy. High time to change that. Or democracy will perish against majority will.