The US Republican Party - tending toward autocracy?

[lpetrich]

This time around,

Because autocratization is more gradual, democratic actors may remain strong enough to mobilize resistance. This happened for instance in South Korea in 2017, when mass protests forced parliament to impeach the president, which reversed the prior autocratization trend.86 Conversely, initial small steps towards autocracy brought other countries – such as Turkey, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia – on a slippery slope deep into the authoritarian regime spectrum.

...
Yet, one conclusion is clear: As it was premature to announce the “end of history” in 1992, it is premature to proclaim the “end of democracy” now.

Looking at the article's appendix, I recognize lots of familiar episodes. Like the Nazis taking over in Germany: 1930-1934, with the EDI dropping from 0.63 to 0.08 (1 = democratic, 0 = autocratic). It was an autogolpe - Adolf Hitler and his Nazis came to power as coalition partners, then suppressed all parties but theirs.

In Italy, Benito Mussolini and his Fascists over 1921 - 1929 did EDI = 0.39 to 0.07

Nothing for the third Axis power, Japan.

Over 1993 - 2017 (cutoff date), Russia has gone from 0.53 to 0.27.

Cuba wasn't very democratic before Fidel Castro and his Communists took over, but they made it worse.

• 1904 - 1907 ... 0.34 to 0.19
• 1927 - 1934 ... 0.33 to 0.19
• 1952 - 1953 ... 0.43 to 0.20
• 1959 - 1961 ... 0.27 to 0.07

Looking at nations that never had an autocratization episode, we find EDI's:

• Sweden, Switzerland: 0.90
• Australia, Finland, New Zealand: 0.88
• UK: 0.87
• Canada: 0.86
• Ireland: 0.84
• Japan (no postwar episodes): 0.83
• US: 0.82
• Taiwan: 0.80
• South Africa: 0.73
• Israel: 0.69
• Mexico: 0.65
• Lebanon: 0.51
• Vietnam: 0.26
• Jordan, Kazakhstan: 0.25
• United Arab Emirates: 0.15
• North Korea: 0.09
• Saudi Arabia: 0.02

 

[lpetrich]

Trump Proved That Authoritarians Can Get Elected in America - The Atlantic

Now that Joe Biden has won the presidency, we can expect debates over whether Donald Trump was an aberration (“not who we are!”) or another instantiation of America’s pathologies and sins. One can reasonably make a case for his deep-rootedness in American traditions, while also noticing the anomalies: the early-morning tweeting, the fondness for mixing personal and government business, the obsession with ratings befitting a reality-TV star—the one job he was good at.

The author then mentioned Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey.

These people win elections but subvert democratic norms: by criminalizing dissent, suppressing or demonizing the media, harassing the opposition, and deploying extra-legal mechanisms whenever possible (Putin’s opponents have a penchant for meeting tragic accidents). Orbán proudly uses the phrase illiberal democracy to describe the populism practiced by these men; Trump has many similarities to them, both rhetorically and policy-wise.

He campaigned like they did, too, railing against the particular form of globalization that dominates this era and brings benefit to many, but disproportionately to the wealthy, leaving behind large numbers of people, especially in wealthier countries. He relied on the traditional herrenvolk idea of ethnonationalist populism: supporting a kind of welfare state, but only for the “right” people rather than the undeserving others (the immigrants, the minorities) who allegedly usurp those benefits. He channeled and fueled the widespread mistrust of many centrist-liberal democratic institutions (the press, most notably) —just like the other populists. And so on.

But there’s one key difference between Trump and everyone else on that list. The others are all talented politicians who win elections again and again.

He was lucky to have Hillary Clinton as an opponent - someone not liked very much. I don't think that it was luck that his Republican opponents underestimated him. He must have seemed to them like yet another minor-party political dilettante.

"Luck aside, though, Trump is not good at his job. He doesn’t even seem to like it much. He is too undisciplined and thin-skinned to be effective at politics over a sustained period, which involves winning repeated elections." - someone who doesn't like reading briefing papers and who prefers watching Fox & Friends all day.

"Trump ran like a populist, but he lacked the political talent or competence to govern like an effective one." Like not delivering on infrastructure.

 

[lpetrich]

Most populists globally deploy wide patronage networks: state spending that boosts their own supporters. Trump’s model remained attached more to personal graft: He encouraged people to stay in his hotels and have dinner at Mar-a-Lago in exchange for access, rather than develop a broad and participatory network that would remain loyal to him for years. And when the pandemic hit, instead of rising to the occasion and playing the strongman, rallying the country through a crisis that had originated in China—an opportunity perfect for the kind of populist he aspired to be—he floundered.

"I suspect that the Republican leadership is sanguine, if not happy, about Trump’s loss."

The author then discussed convenient features for the Republicans, like the Electoral College and the Senate, and ways in which the Republicans have rigged the system to their advantage, like gerrymandering.

The situation is a perfect setup, in other words, for a talented politician to run on Trumpism in 2024. A person without the eager Twitter fingers and greedy hotel chains, someone with a penchant for governing rather than golf. An individual who does not irritate everyone who doesn’t already like him, and someone whose wife looks at him adoringly instead of slapping his hand away too many times in public. Someone who isn’t on tape boasting about assaulting women, and who says the right things about military veterans. Someone who can send appropriate condolences about senators who die, instead of angering their state’s voters, as Trump did, perhaps to his detriment, in Arizona. A norm-subverting strongman who can create a durable majority and keep his coalition together to win more elections.

Sen. Josh Hawley? Sen. Tom Cotton? Tucker Carlson? Joe Rogan? Someone like Sarah Palin? A QAnon fan like Lauren Boebert?

GOP senator writing book criticizing Big Tech for 'tyranny' | TheHill

"What can be done? First and foremost, we need to realize the nature of the problem and accept that elite failure cannot be responded to with more of the same."