I'm a few days late here, but @sjwrenlewis has some thoughts on conservative politics that parallel my own thinking, although I've been taking it in different directions 1/ mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-road…
Simon argues that conservatives in both Britain and the US have an economic agenda that is objectively bad for the majority of voters, and would be unpopular if people understood it. So why are the even competitive electorally? 2/
His answer is that (a) they cater to social illiberalism -- which in the US largely, but not entirely, means racism (b) they have managed, with the help of the media, to mislead voters about just how regressive their economic agenda is 3/
What Simon argues is that this con game is always fragile -- the public might catch on (special indications indicate that GOP attempts to kill health care for millions are taking a big toll on the party). So the right has strong temptation to cheat 4/
That is, to do away, de facto at least, with democracy. This could mean full-blown authoritarianism, but it could involve gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, etc.. A lot of this has already happened in the US, where Dems need a 7 or 8 point popular margin to take the House 5/
But there are other implications of this kind of analysis. If a party's political strategy rests fundamentally on a con game, there will be a selection bias among both politicians and voters -- one that's very visible here in America 6/
First, the party's politicians will disproportionately include people who are both willing to engage in con games and good at it -- i.e., con artists. Not saying that there are no con men on the D side, but there's hardly anything else on the R side 7/
Second, the party's base will disproportionately consist of the easily conned. And this explains why Trump, who looks to most people like a dangerous buffoon, dominates the GOP so easily: he's a crude con man, and the party's base loves him for it 8/
As a result, whatever impulses toward decency may remain among, say, Republican senators are overshadowed by their fear of the Trump-loving base. Which is, in turn, why we are so vulnerable to a constitutional crisis 9/
