Ross Douthat sees a conflict within the GOP between a sniffy, Tory anti-democratic elite and a populist base. On the other hand, he thinks the Democratic Party is dominated by an elitist establishment which kowtows to experts and is also opposed to democracy. Is he right?
Only in part. His characterization of the Buckley/Will Tory element of the GOP is accurate, but that element doesn’t matter much in electoral terms. His description of the reactionary populist cohort of the party, on the other hand, is completely inaccurate; what makes that cohort dangerous to liberal democracy is its knowledge that it does not, in fact, represent a majority of the American people–only a majority of what they consider to be real Americans. Their real objective is to disenfranchise as much of the rest of America as possible, but they lack the will and the imagination to admit it; instead, they rely on “fraud” to make the case against democracy.
The difference between the two elements described by Douthat is, therefore, one of degree. The Tories think that the government should be run by wealthy businessmen and right-wing intellectuals; the reactionaries would expand that group to all white Christians, but would exclude anyone who isn’t a “real American.”
As to the Democrats, if the progressive expert-lovers ran the party, Elizabeth Warren would be president today. Only a portion of the party–and not the largest part–could reasonably be described as “elitist.”