The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages

[DonViejo]

The GOP has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.

9:20 AM ET

Tom Nichols
Author of Our Own Worst Enemy

TOM NICHOLS is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of the forthcoming book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy.

We are living in a time of bad metaphors. Everything is fascism, or socialism; Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Republicans, especially, want their followers to believe that America is on the verge of a dramatic time, a moment of great conflict such as 1968—or perhaps, even worse, 1860. (The drama is the point, of course. No one ever says, “We’re living through 1955.”)

Ironically, the GOP is indeed replicating another political party in another time, but not as the heroes they imagine themselves to be. The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.

I can already hear the howls about invidious comparisons. I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.

No one thinks much about the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, and no one really should. This was a time referred to by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as the vremya zastoia—“the era of stagnation.” By that point, the Soviet Communist Party was a spent force, and ideological conviction was mostly for chumps and fanatics. A handful of party ideologues and the senior officers of the Soviet military might still have believed in “Marxism-Leninism”—the melding of aspirational communism to one-party dictatorship—but by and large, Soviet citizens knew that the party’s formulations about the rights of all people were just window dressing for rule by a small circle of old men in the Kremlin.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/the-republican-party-is-now-in-its-end-stages/618132/

[speak easy]

1. Then, after some chaos, an American Putin.

[moondust]

2. Morally and ideologically bankrupt, yes.

But unlike the totalitarian Soviets, the GQP can always blame "the other guys"--which is what they've been doing for quite some time. The Soviets didn't have a convenient domestic scapegoat. I guess that's one of the pitfalls of one-party dictatorship.

[hedda_foil]

3. "The Republican Party is, for now, more of a danger to the United States than to the world."

The Republican Party is, for now, more of a danger to the United States than to the world. But like the last Soviet-era holdouts in the Kremlin, its cadres are growing more aggressive and paranoid. They blame spies and provocateurs for the Capitol riot, and they are obsessed with last summer’s protests (indeed, they are fixated on all criminals and rioters other than their own) to a point that now echoes the old Soviet lingo about “antisocial elements” and “hooligans.” They blame their failures at the ballot box not on their own shortcomings, but on fraud and sabotage as the justification for a redoubled crackdown on democracy.

[stopdiggin]

4. Is there somethng we can do to ease (or accelerate)

their passage? --- (a nice cocktail perchance?)
----- ---- ---- -----

[NurseJackie]

5. That's a GREAT subject line! (It made me smile!)

[qazplm135]

6. I don't think so

and quite frankly, the worst thing you can do is underestimate your enemy. They remain a threat. We have to fight as if they are the favorites in 2022 and beyond. We won a battle. People said the same thing in 2009 when we had fillibuster control (however briefly) of the Senate, the House, and the WH, with one of the most popular Presidents in history. Things changed pretty rapidly and by 2017, Republicans had control everywhere, and people were talking literally about the breakup of the Democratic party. Then things changed rapidly again back to us.

[wnylib]

8. I agree. Never underestimate your enemy and

fight like the GQP is favored in 2022 because, in some states, it is.

I've been reading and hearing about the demise of the GQP party for decades, now. Hasn't happened yet and I don't see it happening in the near future.

[qazplm135]

9. goes back to when folks thought Reaganism

was going to be the death of Democrats...then folks thought Clinton was going to be a permanent Dem majority, then Rove talked about a permanent Rep majority.

Each side claims the other side is toast after losing an election. Never happens.

[flying rabbit]

11. Yeah.

It ain't over.

[Lonestarblue]

13. We need a lot of outreach to young people.

They believe in climate change, many who have gone to college are loaded down with debt and are looking for a better way, and I think a majority of them do not have the phobias about LGBTQ and abortion.

I received a mailing late last year from a Republican group of college kids against abortion. It was four pages as I recall and filled with the standard Republican talking points about abortion. I have never received anything similar from a Pro-choice group. All I receive from Democrats mostly comes from the House or Senate groups. I get literally dozens and dozens of appeals for money via email, from individuals as well as PACs.

Is there even such a thing as Young Democrats groups on college campuses anymore? David Hogg was very effective at getting young people registered to vote and getting them to the polls. We need more efforts like that.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. K&R

[Martin68]

10. I'm getting tired of excited announcements that the GOP is dead.

The GOP is divided, wounded, confused, and lacking a unified vision of the path ahead. It would actually be to our benefit if they finally united around an anti-Trump, anti-fascist coalition of "moderate" conservatives. The alternative is that they will continue down the authoritarian path. Let's hope the former wins the battle for control. But to think the Republican Party is dead is a foolish delusion. the fat lady hasn't even begun her aria.

[roamer65]

12. If it steals its way back into power as a Trumpist party, expect WW3.

[ancianita]

14. Nichols, with clever framing, misframes reality, which is not even the cult or oligarchy, but the

Last edited Fri Feb 26, 2021, 11:20 AM - Edit history (1)

hundred year corporate war that uses both cult & oligarch political drama as its front for the older divide-and-conquer war, racism and race force, to undermine equality under law, and democracy of, by and for Americans.