By the time of the George W. Bush administration, Movement Conservatives controlled the Republican Party, and they abandoned reality in favor of their simple story line. A member of the Bush administration famously noted to journalist Ron Suskind that “the reality-based” view of the world was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” this senior adviser to the president told Suskind. “When we act, we create our own reality.”
That is exactly what today’s Movement Conservatives are doing. After the last Republican debate, astonished observers noted that many of the candidates’ assertions were flat-out lies. The New York Times editorial board mused: “It felt at times as if the speakers were no longer living in a fact-based world.” But the lies are not random. They tell followers that America has fallen apart because enemies— minorities, women and liberals– have poisoned the government. Only a Movement Conservative leader can purge the nation of that poison and return America to its former greatness. Donald Trump, who currently commands a significant lead, is the salesman who puts it most clearly. He tells his followers that “the world is a mess.” He promises to work outside the old order and replace it with something new and wonderful. He tells them a story in which Christianity is under siege, President Obama is a foreigner, and that immigrants—who actually commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans– are criminals. He refused to contradict a follower who announced that Muslims are a problem that we must “get rid of.” And he promises to “Make America Great Again.”
But Trump is not an outlier. Jeb! says that black people vote for Democrats to get “free stuff.” Mike Huckabee insists that the United States is criminalizing Christianity. Bobby Jindal promises to “fire” Congress. Ted Cruz hints that President Obama is a Muslim and warns that no Muslim should be president. All of the candidates demonize undocumented immigrants.
And Carly Fiorina makes the outrageous claim, on national television, that political opponents murder babies to harvest and sell their brains. Think about that.
The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism. Last week, 43 percent of Republicans polled said they could imagine a scenario in which they would back a military coup. This week, Movement Conservatives in Congress knocked off a conservative speaker because he refused to sacrifice the American government to their demands.
You know over the years I have often described the Republican party as an asylum overrun by the inmates, and I don't think that has ever been more true than it is today.
There is NOBODY in the party that has any hope of regaining control over what is now a runaway train filled with Right Wing zealots eagerly awaiting its eventual explosive crash into the mountainside.
These people were elected on the idea that government does not work, and arrived in Washington to prove that point.
Today there is no real bipartisanship, no compromise, and little getting accomplished that the President is not pushing through almost completely on his own.
Truly the only way to move beyond this paralysis is to either replace the saboteurs of the Tea Party with hopeful pro-government Democrats. Or to allow the Republicans to win the White House.
And if that latter choice does not send a cold chill right up your spine, then you my friend have simply not been paying attention.
I think this next election cycle is not only incredibly important for choosing who will lead this country for the next four years, but in setting the tone for politics in the years that follow.
Conventional wisdom dictates that after one party holds the White House for two terms that the other party almost always wins the next election. However for the sake of the country Democrats need to do everything in their power to buck that trend.
And not only that but to prove to the American people that government done right is not something to fear, but rather something that can have a real positive impact on their lives.
Now the only question is among the current Democratic presidential hopefuls, who has the best chance of accomplishing that feat? And why do I keep seeing the face of Elizabeth Warren?
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