Been wondering if the traitors do not have some bigger plan....

[Mike 03]

8. My two cents

Putting aside Trump for the moment (because he only thinks about the present moment and a few seconds into the future), the Republican Party has two modes:

When there's a Republican president: Look out for themselves and their high-end donors and feed the base (especially the Christian Nationalists).

When there's a Democratic president: Try to make the United States ungovernable so that people begin to question whether or not democracy works. That kind of blockade of governance is what made Trump possible. It is a playbook that seems to be working in Europe, and is primarily a Russian export that is catching on as far right parties begin to degrade (or have completely degraded, as in the cases of Hungary, Poland and some others--India, Brazil, Philippines) formerly functioning democracies.

I think the GOP is moving back into the second mode.

I've come to this conclusion after reading a few books on this subject, most recently Ezra Klein's book Why are we Polarized?, Timothy Snyder's book (all of them are incredible) The Road to Unfreedom, Benjamin Carter Witt's book The Death of Democracy (which is actually about the rise of the Nazis, but ever-so relevant) and Anne Applebaum's book Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. There are some other great books on this too, but those come to mind this early in the morning.