The limits of GOP crazy

Writing for the NY Times Magazine, Mark Leibovich riffs on John McCain's recent deprecation of Donald Trump's adoring "crazies," and asks: "Exactly who is crazy and who is not in today’s political environment?" In answering, Leibovich takes the long view of a rather short period (roughly the last 20 years):

While party leaders have criticized Trump for his "tone," he flouts this very criticism as emblematic of a political status quo. Not only is he correct about that, it’s arguable that the political status quo is itself a big bag of calcified crazy. The same "tone" — cautious and hyperdeferential — has dominated politics for a long time and yet our politics haven’t improved. Politicians are so fond of invoking that clichéd definition of insanity [same acts, different expectations] … And yet those same politicians keep coming back year after year, repeating the same old talking points and following the same unspoken rules.

In one way, Leibovich is profoundly correct no matter the time frame, since democracy is an enduring circus in which victory is often born of fringe-mobilization. Today there are in fact more Burkean conservatives out there than tri-corned paranoids, but in presidential elections the GOP can't risk alienating the latter, who could be the necessary margin of electoral success. Hence the GOP has come to ruinously self-define through the enemy within: protesting, poster-toting, "Don't Tread On Me"-chanting bullies. This shoves many authentic conservatives to either non-participating despair or into the welcoming arms of the Democratic Party, which guarantees its margin of victory. For now at least, the party can afford to keep at arm's length — as Hillary has done with some delicacy — any loud, rude, coalition-upsetting, NetRoots-like factions. (Bernie Sanders has more overtly done what Hillary Clinton is subtly doing, and his overtness is killing him.)

Leibovich is, on the other hand, misguided, I think, in asserting that "caution and hyperdeference" have "dominated politics for a long time." Here, Leibovich is arguing that the crazies are nothing new; we've always had the Birchers, the Know-Nothings, the Illuminati-hunters, in general, Hofstadter's whole paranoid crowd. That part of his argument is incontestable. Yet to concurrently argue that caution and hyperdeference, rather than crazy and hyperbullying, have dominated our politics and continue to dominate them in the 21st century is to dismiss an unhinged, barbarous reality.

In catering to the crazies, one of our two major parties is on its way out. It will either be shrouded and sung over or reemerge unrecognizable. Anarchy, nihilism and America-loathing are, happily, self-limiting political programs. And because these have dominated the GOP of late and therefore our politics — really, is there any question about that? — one can only with insurmountable difficulty argue that today's "political status quo" looks and sounds very much like yesterday's — unless one goes way, way back. Which is to say, the GOP's ravings are reminiscent of the Democratic Party's antebellum insanity. Those ravings reflect the unmistakable continuum of a regional, Southern white party, whatever its name.

Demagoguery is also nothing new, although Republicans' party-wide demagoguery is. (And, as noted, in its hyperdeference to the crazy, demagoguery is killing the GOP.) Also dominantly new, in relative chronological terms, are the GOP's denial of science, its far more pronounced anti-intellectualism, its rabid and once-unthinkable assaults on sitting Democratic presidents, and its determination to destroy all progress, notwithstanding the inevitability of it.

That, I'd submit, Mr. Leibovich, is the uncalcified crazy status quo. And its political days are numbered in years — perhaps 10, at the outside.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

I understand the temptation that lead the Republican party down the path they have taken although I would hardly call it deference. They did not merely defer to the fringe because they needed every vote. They encouraged the fringe and much lunacy because it promoted turn out and they desperately needed to do that to compensate for adverse demographic trends. There is a vast difference between the two.

Wisdom is what Clinton displayed by avoiding the whole Netroots fiasco but there is a huge difference between the fringes of the left and right. All the democratic contenders can show deference to pretty much all the sub-groups one might have found at Netroots for the simple reason that they all, each in their own way, have legitimate beefs. Deference they can show but what they can't allow is a giant pissing match over whose beef is bigger than whose. You don't want to get lost in that maze. As maddening as I sometimes find some of the lunacy on the left I've never found they didn't have a point.

[Bob]

Mark Leibovich thinks that America once had "saner times." If it ever has they were brief. Extremists, and often violent ones, have always been part of the American political landscape. A long list could be compiled. One example is the turn of the 20th century anarchists led by Luigi Galleani and famous for bombings. "Bomb-throwing anarchist" was a phrase still often in use in the 1950's and '60's. However, there are converging political aspects that seem to be creating types of "crazy" unique to the times.

A period of introspection followed the Vietnam defeat, but reactionary forces rejected any nuance and attempted to popularize American militarism again. This was finally accomplished using the 9-11 terrorist attack as an excuse. The lack of satisfactory results has inflamed an unhealed wound and left many feeling vulnerable if not paranoid.

The expansion of world trade has resulted in energizing an economic class. Reaganomics might be even more responsible for the declining middle, but sending jobs to "others" is a potent idea that also ties in to changing demographics in an amplifying feedback loop. The accelerating trend towards a majority-minority population has alarmed reactionary elements, not all of them wearing tricorn hats or carrying pictures of President Obama made up as a witch doctor: http://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9023721/white-whiteness-race-identity

The above are further amplified by the latest in propaganda techniques. The identification of emotional hot buttons has become a science, and some professionals are beginning to suspect political advertising can cause mental imbalance.