Mastodawn

If we want to understand why the republic is on the brink, we must start with the fundamental reality of American politics today: The struggle over whether or not the country should actually be a pluralistic democracy maps onto the conflict between the two major parties.

Democracy itself has become a partisan issue. As of right now, the Democratic Party is the country’s sole (small-d) democratic party – while the GOP is firmly in the hands of an ethno-nationalist movement and oligarchic interests determined to impose their reactionary vision.

How the hell did we get here? This is not a total history of the GOP and the American Right since the 1850s, of course – but an attempt to identify some key moments and dynamics and come up with something that may serve as a framework for how to think about that crucial question.

It’s the story of how a party with anti-slavery origins first became a “big tent,” then came to be dominated by Modern Conservatism, and has since gone the way of the conservative movement: Taken over by extremists who had always been part of the rightwing coalition, but never so powerful.

Halfway through the 20th century, there was no “conservative” and no “liberal” political party in the United States. There was a Democratic Party and there was a Republican Party – but they existed as massively heterogeneous coalitions that each covered the whole ideological spectrum.

The 1960s civil rights legislation catalyzed and drastically accelerated a process of partisan realignment and ideological sorting that would fundamentally transform the political landscape and ultimately unite the forces opposing multiracial pluralism in the Republican Party.

The Republican Party became the new political home for a rightwing movement that referred to itself as “Modern Conservatism”: It brought together all those who generally rejected the emergence of the “New Deal” state and the implementation of egalitarian pluralism.

The balance of power within the GOP kept shifting to the right. This development was not inevitable; there were other paths available. It was actively accelerated by political elites and conservative activists who were determined to make the GOP into the parliamentary arm of the Right.

This rightward radicalization happened on different levels simultaneously: From the top, Republican leaders sought to “polarize” the electorate by appealing to the racial and cultural resentments of white voters - an approach Nixon’s advisors called the “southern strategy.”

At the same time, religious leaders worked hard to mobilize conservative Christians as foot soldiers for a crusade against “secular humanism,” and rightwing activists succeeded throughout the 1970s and 80s at activating a conservative base for massively impactful grassroots campaigns.

The establishment of the Heritage Foundation in 1973 also manifested how much the Right was gaining influence as a key force at the highest levels of Republican politics. From the start, Heritage defined itself as the vanguard of a conservative countermobilization - on a mission to pull the party to the right.

A similar rightwing insurgency was also happening on the local level: A far-right grassroots culture existed across the country that was defined by antisemitism, rabid anti-communism, white Christian nationalism, and conspiratorialism - fertile ground for a political culture of extremism.

By the early 1990s, the Republican Party had become a recognizably conservative party on an accelerating rightward trajectory, devoted to the interests and sensibilities of constituencies that were opposed to leveling hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth.

Strategically, the Republican Party faced a dilemma: In a pluralizing society that was generally moving away from such a vision for the country, the GOP would either have to find a way to broaden its appeal – or be henceforth struggling to generate a democratic majority.

Republicans, however, were neither willing to widen their focus nor accepted the prospect of relinquishing power.

It was the hour of those on the radical rightwing flank of the party who favored a third option and identified democracy itself as the real problem.

All the energy within the GOP shifted towards those who were determined to transform the political system in a way that would allow them to hold on to power without majority support - even against the explicit desire of a growing numerical majority of the electorate.

They would soon be in charge of the GOP – convinced that if they couldn’t have some restricted version of democracy *and* white Christian patriarchal domination, then democracy simply needed to go.

The road from there leads to authoritarianism and the potential downfall of the republic.

This outcome was not inevitable. The anti-democratic tendencies that have come to dominate the GOP have pulled the party to the right for decades. But there were alternative paths available. Republican elites, in particular, had agency – but chose to go along with or actively further the rise of extremism.

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This is Part I of a two-part series on the history of the Republican Party - and a long-term radicalization that ultimately paved the way for Trump’s rise.

Part II will follow later this week. Please consider subscribing to Democracy Americana:

Democracy Americana

A newsletter on U.S. politics and history - and the ongoing struggle over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in America

Steady

Carrie Shanafelt Mar 9

@tzimmer_history Last week, a colleague of mine said some of my students were going around talking about this really radical seventeenth-century left-wing thinker John Locke, and said they were reading him with me. I mean, we are just finishing the Two Treatises--basically the foundation for the US Constitution--and it reads, to them, like really out-there radical ideas, having grown up in the era of Trump and Netanyahu.

Carrie Shanafelt Mar 9

@tzimmer_history (The student in question was really excited by it, not offended, but to my generation, that's like getting really thrilled by a basic civics lesson.)

@tzimmer_history

" the Democratic Party is the country’s sole (small-d) democratic party"

The remaining small-d-democratic party is not far behind the autocratic Republicans.

The current breed of politicians are doing the bidding of the owner class and they know it and act accordingly, despite having the numbers of real life victims of capitalism ala the bigger/richest owner class.

They don't work towards getting lobby/money influence out of the decision tree.

@silkester @tzimmer_history

I think this is really easy to say if you're not a black or brown person being hunted down on the streets of an American city.

@HakeemG @tzimmer_history

I think that the capital-D Democratic Party betrayed its people for decades, because even after Nixon aide Ehrlichman confessed, the capital-D Democratic party didn't take away the incentive for political prisoners and restored that part of US democracy.

And their current willingness to fund Trump's storm troops aka DHS speaks volumes.

@silkester @tzimmer_history

You think that because you have probably lived a privileged life. I know that my aunt is alive today because of Obamacare. She's not alone, 20 million people received healthcare as a result of that bill.

@HakeemG @tzimmer_history

And if Clinton the asshole had restored the security pool to its former glory a lot more people would be alive today and reforms with the black voting pool intact, many legislation in favor of people would have been possible.

You might even have avoided Trump both times and Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been the Democratic candidate either.

You ignore the big picture of anecdotal evidence. Living on the wrong side of the track in food deserts is a reality in the US.

@silkester @tzimmer_history

I'm not sure what you're talking about but Bill Clinton was highly regarded in the black community. In fact so was Hillary, that's how she beat Bernie in 2016, even though he blamed it on the "elites", aka black people in southern states. He was the original election denier and to this day his base still claims that election was stolen from them. The similarities with MAGA are striking.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged

Was the Democratic primary rigged?

Democrats made a big mistake in the 2016 primary.

Vox

@HakeemG It doesn't mean that the Clintons are good for America. Former President Clinton is a neoliberal asshole.

Many USians revere Reagan, and boy was he an asshole.

And we will never know how much of an asshole Hillary Clinton would have been.

What does that have to do with Bernie being the original election denier and pushing his anti democratic conspiracies?

"What does that have to do with Bernie being the original election denier and pushing his anti democratic conspiracies?"

What are you referring to? I'm talking socio-economic frameworks not election denial.

I'm talking how social security was eroded.

Do you even are aware of what Nixon aide Ehrlichman confessed to?

Yes I'm aware that Nixon started the war on drugs to target black and brown people who have borne the brunt of it. A fact that Bernie and his base refuse to acknowledge by pretending the country's current problems are isolated to class. Note how different the country responded to poor and working class white people when they had drug issues.

Good. So we can agree that when the Democrats had the majority, they didn't establish voting rights for felons in prisons.

The incentive to write legislation to eliminate votes for the opposition remains.

That is not a Bernie problem. That is an entire party problem.

Except Bernie is a both sides BS artist who lives in a delusional world where the horrors and atrocities that are occuring now are similar to the world we lived in during the Biden years. That's painfully incorrect, except to the most oblivious and privileged people in the nation. Not to mention the guy spends all his time on right wing podcasts helping to normalize the fringe.

Is it?

When the Canadian actress was released from detention for visa violations in January 2025, she talked about brown detainees who had been there 10 months.

That is 10 moths prison conditions for a misdemeanor under Biden.

2013 BPD report reporting on Ross style killings by border patrol was under Democratic majority.

There is a lot of glossing over and turning a blind eye.

Democrats are not far behind...

An anecdotal observation doesn't change the facts. I'm sure there were plenty of scumbags at DHS when Biden was president because DHS has a lot of Republicans. If you really cared about any of this you would be more knowledgeable about it.

Only because I cited a single anecdotal incident, doesn't mean that I didn't take notice that Democrats react to Republican propaganda with a Republican solution.

Left wing politicians in Europe are just as dumb in this respect. This among other reasons why we have a fascist problem on both sides of the Atlantic.

Who is your politician of choice? Please share with us.

"Who is your politician of choice? Please share with us."

The US doesn't breed my kind of politician. The two party system is keeping them out of politics.

Maybe the US has a chance to re-invent their democracy in an interim phase after Trump.

Yeah nobody, exactly. Maybe you can write in unicorn.

@HakeemG
That single anecdotal example is enough to tell you, that migration policies under Biden was violating US laws, btw.

Also we don't agree on that because elections are run by the states and here is a list of mostly Democratic run states where that's not true. Maybe stop listening to Bernie.

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington, Washington D.C.

You assume I listen to Bernie. I don't. I just looked at ills of the US that seem to persist legislation after legislation after legislation regardless who is in power.

Conditions that are unfathomable for a European. Third world crap — and accepted normalcy for USians.

It is the continuation from the Civil War, when slavery remained in the Constitution and the South wrote legislation that made vagrancy illegal so they could have their chain gangs in the fields.

The Civil Rights movement was toppled and didn't finish the job.

And under Trump there is talk of putting vagrants in concentration camps. That is Jim Crow. That is reverse of the worst kind.

@HakeemG @tzimmer_history

The left in my country shifted to the right the same way as Bill Clinton did, and how much of a problem this represents is coming to lights these days.

We are fighting fascists because of it.

Back in the days it was the zeitgeist and it didn't seem to have this much of an impact. Sure life got a little harder for the less privileged but for most either nothing changed or even seemed to get easier.

We didn't see the true cost.

Maier Amsden Mar 9

@tzimmer_history The DNC literally argued in court that they're not legally required to hold democratic primaries. They're better than the GOP, but still *very elitist.