That Republicans want to fall in line behind their candidates and Democrats want to fall in love with theirs is by now hoary political wisdom. But it speaks as much to different personality types as ideologies. On the right, to an authoritarian one.
Rick Perlstein spoke with “The Majority Report” last week about his June 30 article on the authoritarian roots of the Capitol riot. The occasion was his June 30 article in New York magazine. Perlstein found a gem from 1981 in Advertizing Age. The magazine had named Reagan chief strategist Richard Wirthlin its Adman of the Year, Perlstein writes:
Wirthlin began his work in 1979 with an exhaustive “Survey of Voter Values and Attitudes,” in which he discovered that Reagan supporters “obtain high scores on … authoritarianism — and a low score on egalitarianism.” It continued, “Eastern European ethnic groups living in large cities … follow the same pattern, and hence were a prime target for conversion.” Thus Reagan launched his nomination campaign with “highly visible visits to such neighborhoods.”
A Wirthlin assistant was then quoted: “Reagan decided to stop the practice because he considered it exploitative.” In fact, Reagan made constant campaign stops in white ethnic neighborhoods, and God knows his appeal to authoritarians never sagged. The crucial point is that a Reagan associate even thought to claim Reagan put the kibosh on the enterprise. There’s an old saying: Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Meaning, those who say one thing and do another are at least acknowledging that right and wrong exist. If you want to understand the evolution of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, that’s the whole rancid enchilada.
It’s always been about building a political base of authoritarians. But at least Republicans used to be sheepish about it. Donald “They’re Rapists” Trump was but a milestone in the Republican Party’s long journey toward dropping the pretense altogether. January 6, 2021, was another. Build your party’s power by actively seeking out thugs, and of course things eventually get out of hand.
I warned a new congressional candidate Saturday that voter registration in the district is a misleading measure of the relative Democrat-Republican strength here. There are still many Reagan Democrats left over from the Civil Rights Era when southern Democrats moved toward the Republican Party. Many simply never switched party identification.
The T-party explosion after Barack Obama’s election was, for all it’s pretensions to economic conservatism, as much about race as the image of Obama as a bone-in-nose witch doctor made clear.
Vaccine resistance in 2021 has some of those undertones. Some among the Republican faithful would rather not have the vaccine at all if those people get it too. But it is also a measure of manliness and faithfulness to Trump to face Covid unprotected.
Resistance to getting a “Fauci ouchie” is also defiance of another Democrat in the Oval Office and obediance to Donald Trump, supposed president in exile. His followers will die for him, at least in their own minds, and until face-to-face with the reality or else a double lung transplant.
Michael C. Bender described the allure Trump rallies have for his followers:
In Trump, they’d found someone whose endless thirst for a fight encouraged them to speak up for themselves, not just in politics but also in relationships and at work. His rallies turned arenas into modern-day tent revivals, where the preacher and the parishioners engaged in an adrenaline-fueled psychic cleansing brought on by chanting and cheering with 15,000 other like-minded loyalists …
“The whole place is erupting, everyone is screaming, and your heart is beating like, just, oh my God,” Kiczenski told me. “It’s like nothing I’ve experienced in my lifetime.”
“It’s their Woodstock,” Digby tweeted. But perhaps more like Brother Love’s Salvation Show. Without the love, and where salvation comes through sacrificing oneself for Him even if it means the destruction of the country.
“We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage,” 56-year-old Saundra Kiczenski from Michigan told Bender. “We were just there to overthrow the government.”
They won’t just fall in line but fall in battle.
“What Democrats have been slow to understand is that this is an insurgency against democracy with parliamentary and paramilitary wings, ” Perlstein writes.
The paramilitary wing of the party mobbed the Capitol seeking traitors to lynch. Meanwhile, the parliamentary wing, represented by the majority of the Republican members of the House and Senate who voted not to certify Biden’s electoral votes, raised a clenched fist. Together, these two wings compose the right-wing model of governance — and at this model’s heart lies the citizen as bearer of violent threat.
You build an authoritarian movement and of course things eventually get out of hand.