The GOP is not moving back to normal.
Crazy is getting more crazy. Trump is doubling down.
In investment markets extreme conditions eventually "correct." An equilibrium is found that generally reflects a longer term, sustainable balance.
It happens in politics, too. Democrats should wish for a healthy GOP that finds that equilibrium. Republicans will win more elections, and they would be a more reasonable governing party. In our two-party system, Republicans will hold majority power about half the time. Voters are fickle. Being replaced in office is the mechanism of political equilibrium.
Politics, like investments, have bubbles, when crazy gets more crazy. That is happening now within one party, the GOP. Democrats have their own problems, but Democrats chose Joe Biden to be the nominee. Joe Biden is a conventional, old-school ethnic politician whose extreme passions are union firefighters and fathers who feel shame at having lost a job. GOP fundraising letters say he leads a war on Christianity and all-American values, but he is a cradle-to-grave Catholic and a member of the Silent Generation. A priest puts ashes on his forehead on Ash Wednesday. He is not a leader of fashion-forward, woke, anti-capitalist modernism. Toi the dismay of some Democrats, the party moved toward an equilibrium.
Republicans, though, are in a feedback loop. Extreme is attempting to out-do extreme. It is a new GOP with the old name. The politicians Republican voters cheered a decade ago are the enemy now. George Bush is out. He is a RINO. Liz Cheney is out. Dick Cheney is out. Mitt Romney is out. Paul Ryan is out. Mitch McConnell is in trouble.
After reporting that Trump lost Arizona in 2020, Fox News saw that it, too, was going out. It chose to risk defamation lawsuits to stay in. Too little, too late. This week Steve Bannon said he considered Fox to be out.
The credible candidates for the GOP nomination are not presenting themselves as "back to normal" Republicans leaning toward some former equilibrium. DeSantis is attempting to out-Trump Trump. DeSantis declares himself more anti-vaccine, more angry about gays and trans, more willing to confront Disney or any other company that would cross him, more harsh in treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, more anti-abortion, and a better and stronger agent of God.
Trump isn't flat-footed. He is raising his own bet on extreme. Trump is not minimizing the January 6 Capitol riots or distancing himself from people who were caught on camera in violent overthrow of the election. Trump just released on streaming services a musical performance he made in concert with them. A choir of January 6 prisoners sings the Star Spangled Banner while Trump says the Pledge of Allegiance. It ends with a chant of U-S-A, U-S-A. Trump has a position: His post-election actions were patriotic.
Republicans are testing American democracy. It is increasingly likely that Democrats will nominate a vulnerable candidate, an elderly Joe Biden. He is getting more popular. People see him as capable, after all. But it is a risk. Voters may consider him a Fetterman-in-waiting. That makes the GOP candidate, no matter how extreme, a plausible alternative. Republicans are in a feedback loop of one-upsmanship on extreme. Voters rejected Trump in favor of Biden once, just barely when measured by electoral votes in battleground states. I had hoped the GOP would moderate, but the party appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Click on the link and listen to the "song."
I would like to remind the commentators that Obama brought us national health care. For millions of Americans, that's a big deal.
I wish to comment on the following statement in today's blog: Biden "is not a leader of fashion-forward, woke, anti-capitalist modernism. Toi [sic] the dismay of some Democrats, the party moved toward an equilibrium. I'm not sure what equilibrium you have in mind or what Democrats. Before Biden, the party had been in the control of centrist, pro-Wall Street, pro-neoliberal Democrats like the Clintons and Obama. Joe Biden did not bring the party back from the way left to the center. Along with his own long-time commitment to working people, he felt lots of pressure from the Sanders-Warren-Sherrod Brown Democrats to move considerably farther to the left than his Democratic predecessors in the White House. Because of that, and in line with Democratic senators and representatives, in his first two years he accomplished far more than Obama did in eight, and the party suffered no losses in the Senate in the mid-term election and far fewer in the House than Clinton or Obama did. Your obsessive concern that progressive Democrats are jeopardizing the party's electoral chances blind you to the reality.