The Claremont Institute published a column in which the author argued that the 81 million Biden voters aren’t real Americans, that all of our institutions are rotten, and that the Constitution doesn’t work any more. At about the same time, Tucker Carlson was giving his voice of approval on TV to neo-Nazi replacement theory. What is going on here?
Instead of repudiating Trump after his resounding defeat and half-hearted coup attempt, GOP thought leaders are responding by moving even further right on culture war issues. They are openly embracing the concept of an anti-democratic counterrevolution based on white Christian nationalism without identifying a means of accomplishing it, and describing more than half of America as the enemy. This is, as you can imagine, a very dangerous state of affairs if you believe in liberal democracy.
Where does this go from here? Anything that gets repeated a few times on Fox News, regardless of whether it conforms with actual life experience of right-wing voters, becomes the gospel in Nebraska shortly thereafter. We can only hope against hope that the Biden boom causes middle America to tune it out. If that doesn’t work, then the only thing protecting our system would be a lack of will or imagination on the part of the counterrevolutionary wannabes.