Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Tagged with: Republican Party

Nikki Haley Will Not Move the GOP Past Trump

Despite the tough road ahead for Haley as she tries to become her party’s nominee for president in 2024, she brings a combination of youth, energy, media skills and accomplishment that are unmatched by any major Republican politician looking at the race. However, there is little reason to believe this is anything more than a better presentation of the angry, grievance based messages that have been the handmaiden of the Republican Party’s efforts to weaken American democracy since 2016.

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Becoming the Republican Nominee Will Not Be Easy for Ron DeSantis

Since the midterm elections, something just short of a consensus has formed that Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. It is also assumed that along the way he will defeat Donald Trump and prevent the former president from winning a third straight Republican presidential nomination. This consensus is in part due to both smart Republican strategists, and there are still some, as well as center and center-left pundits, observers and journalists, wanting to believe it, albeit for totally different reasons.

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The Republican Seinfeld Civil War

The Speaker’s vote was personal, pitting one not very popular right-wing Trump apologizing congressman against a series of even less popular right-wing Trump apologizing congressman. The stakes were low enough that opponents of McCarthy could drag the process out and keep demanding more because they had so little to lose. McCarthy ultimately won and when it comes to legislation, will use his Speakership to do, well, nothing.

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Biden Must Pay Attention to Domestic Policy Too

The best way for the US to help Ukraine is to have a functioning Biden administration-and preventing that is the primary goal of the GOP. Therefore, doing the domestic and policy work must be at the center of Biden’s efforts to support Ukraine in this war.

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The Domestic Politics of Biden’s Russia Dilemma

Given Russia’s role in destabilizing American politics in recent years, it is certain the Kremlin understands the President, and the country’s, vulnerability at this moment. That may not be the primary reason they have chosen now to loudly beat the drums of war in Ukraine, but it has certainly informed their thinking.

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Partisanship Isn’t the Crisis, but the Crisis Is Partisan

The biggest challenge is to persuade a significant proportion of those who now support the authoritarian movement that is almost entirely indistinguishable from the Republican Party that democracy is a better solution. If the GOP is recaptured by conservatives who believe, generally, in the idea of democracy, or if it is defeated enough that fewer than about 30% of the American people support it, democracy will have a chance in the US. However, if neither of those unlikely events come to pass, the crisis will endure for a while.

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Over-Reacting to Virginia

Ultimately, the recent Virginia elections tells us much less than we would like to think about what will happen in the 2022 or 2024 US elections, but they provide a roadmap for both parties. Much of what happens in those elections will depend on how well the parties can follow those roadmaps.

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The Media, Afghanistan and the Republican Party

Asking Republicans who feign earnest concern about America’s national security, or more ironically how the rest of the world sees us, about January 6th and the Trump administration more generally is not partisanship, it is, in fact, balanced journalism. However, almost nobody in the media did this.

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The Republican Covid Fetish

In recent weeks, the Republican Party has taken an even stranger, darker and more murderous approach to Covid. While their previous policies led directly to the deaths of Americans because they simply ignored the danger of Covid and resisted medical interventions from masks to social distancing to vaccines, current GOP policy essentially mandates that people directly or indirectly expose themselves to the virus and seeks to punish those who would like to prevent that.

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CPAC and Trump’s Republican Party

The recent CPAC convention was the world’s first glimpse of the post-Donald Trump Republican Party and that glimpse made it clear the Republican Party is not post-Trump at all. Donald Trump’s speech on Sunday, which in tone, style and duration was very similar to one of his campaign rallies, capped off a weekend where it was made clear that fealty to Donald Trump, and the alternate reality that he created, is still the price of admission into today’s Republican Party.

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The Myth of the Republican Party Civil War

The view that the Republican Party is about to tear itself apart trying to wrestle with the legacy of the Trump administration is another case of the American political class wanting to believe the crisis is less acute than it really is. If we convince ourselves that Trumpism is on its way out, we can also convince ourselves that American democracy is still strong. This is intellectually lazy and politically dangerous. As partisan and ugly as it sounds, Trumpism is the Republican Party. There is no way to purge the latter of the former. Rather, they both need to be summarily defeated.

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Continuity and Change in Recent Elections

The election was a clear victory for the Democrats, but while the electoral college made Biden’s victory seem bigger than it was, the senate map and the way many states are gerrymandered, benefited the Republicans. This is significant, because it points to the intuitive conclusion that voters responded to this campaign by hardening their partisan positions and, in the huge majority of cases, voting a straight party ticket.

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Donald Trump Will Struggle to Remain Relevant

A few months from now, Trump may be an odd sideshow, occasionally appearing in the media to spread disinformation and indulge his megalomania, while trying to stay one step ahead of the law and creditors. This will be a familiar role for Trump as it was the one he played for decades before running for president.

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American Democracy's Last Stand

The recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic have made Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses and mental instability, as well as the cult-like loyalty of his of his followers, even more apparent. In the last few weeks, even in the last few days, as Donald Trump has asserted his “total” authority while continuing to suggest that, in so many words, universal suffrage is prima facie election fraud, the acceleration of democratic rollback has increased substantially. Queries and earnest commentary about whether the US is in the beginning of a Constitutional crisis seem positively quaint now. We are not at the beginning of that crisis, nor, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, are we at the end of the beginning. We are in the middle, or perhaps more alarmingly, approaching the end of that crisis-and democracy is losing.

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Coronavirus Could Make Voter Suppression Even Easier

Given the recent history of the Republican Party seeking to put barriers in front of young people, African Americans and Latinos seeking to exercise their franchise, the states where the Coronavirus crisis could lead to greater voter suppression having a major effect on the presidential election are those swing states that have Republican governors and state legislatures-Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Ohio, or where there are Democratic governors, but Republican control of the state legislature-Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If recent actions to make it harder for some groups to vote in states like Ohio, Georgia and Wisconsin are any guideline, it is very possible the laws passed in these states, to adjust to the Coronavirus crisis will have a similar impact.

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The Voters Won’t Be Able to Hold Trump Accountable Either

The idea of waiting for the voters to decide whether or not Donald Trump should be removed from office is appealing in its simplicity and because it appeals to what seem like first principle understandings of democracy, but it is nonetheless wrong.

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Republican Obedience to Trump is the Real Story of Democratic Rollback

The decision by the non-Trump leadership of the Republican Party to cast their lot with Russia and Trump rather than with the US, and indeed with traditional conservative, even right-wing policies is baffling, but only if one ignores the corrosive influences of bigotry, ignorance and anti-democratic sentiments in the GOP since long before spring of 2015.

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Trump's Cult Followers

The shouts of “snowflake” by Trump supporters who were heading to the comparative warmth of the subway or the real warmth of a bar or restaurant at demonstrators who were braving the chilly December night to walk to downtown is an example of the kind of projection that is such a deep part of the cult of Trump. The irony of the moment was almost funny, but the larger pattern of a cult built around a faith in Trump’s ability to protect his supporters from change, whether in the form of racial equality, scientific reality or an evolving culture calling anybody a snowflake was hard to miss. Trump supporters are afraid of understanding, or even hearing about, American history with more nuance than they learned in middle school, yet they hurl the odd epithet “snowflake” at their opponents.

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Impeachment and the Polarization Fallacy

It is easy, and not entirely inaccurate, to describe the US has a deeply polarized country and to argue that the impeachment hearings demonstrate this as the Democrats and Republicans in the relevant congressional committees have such radically different understandings of the events in question. This explanation is insufficient because it glosses over the critical reality of the state of American politics as demonstrated during the impeachment hearings. The issue is not so much one of political polarization but that the Republicans in Congress, reflecting the position they share with the White House and the right wing media and punditry, are deeply committed to constructing and inhabiting a fantasy world built on a foundation of deliberate lies and held together with support from the Kremlin and almost solely dedicated to keeping Donald Trump, and those around him, in power and out of prison.

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Michael Bloomberg and the New Two Party System

Because they have chosen simply to exploit the least democratic elements of the Constitution, the Republicans have no incentive to broaden their party’s appeal or expand that appeal beyond their base. Therefore, there is no reason why the most deluded, angry and narrow parts of the base cannot take over the party-and that is exactly what has happened. The result of this is that a primary opponent to Trump, even somebody with the wealth and resume of Bloomberg, would not only lose, but would be subject to the attacks, threats and slander that is now the way the Republicans respond to all perceived threats to Trump’s power.

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