Why The Left Still Can’t Understand Trump’s Appeal
Republicans aren’t motivated by resentment, they’re motivated by self-preservation in the face of a highly aggressive left.
By John Daniel Davidson
February 10, 2021
The corporate press is awash in articles speculating about the future of the Republican Party after Donald Trump. Will it purge pro-Trump elements and return to some semblance of its pre-2016 form, or double down on Trumpism and Trump, defending him even in the face of a major electoral loss and a Senate impeachment trial?
Most such articles entirely misunderstand what’s going on with the GOP and how to think about Trump’s takeover of the party. One of the worst was just published in The Atlantic, written by Chris Hayes of MSNBC under the absurd headline, “The Republican Party Is Radicalizing Against Democracy.â€
I hate to respond to anything published in The Atlantic these days, much less anything written by Hayes, but his meandering take is so slyly but profoundly backwards it must meet a response. The thrust of his argument is that Republicans have given up on policy fights of the past and are instead motivated today by “a set of resentments (often intensely gendered and racialized) about who will run the country.â€
As evidence, he cites the election of 2004, in which gay marriage and the Iraq War were major motivating issues for GOP voters. Today, most Republicans oppose the Iraq War and don’t really care about gay marriage, at least as a matter of public policy. He also notes the disconnect between the GOP donor class, which cares about things like corporate tax cuts and deregulation, and ordinary Trump voters, who, says Hayes, above all want a party that fights for them like Trump did—an accurate if oversimplified description.
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/10/why-the-left-still-cant-understand-trumps-appeal/
