(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Who House Republicans are listening to, why Trump's their candidate, and what the GOP plans next [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-09 A friend shared a video from The Young Turks with me (Yeah — social media strikes again). He was boggled by the people being interviewed. This was from just a few days ago. Here’s a description from the YouTube video link about what was going on: 359,134 views Oct 5, 2023 TYT at Trump Events MAGA asked to articulate one thing Trump did while President that made their lives better. Michael Shure reports for The Young Turks from the scene of a Trump rally in South Carolina. A manifesto for a new progressive vision http://tyt.com/justice x YouTube Video It’s a simple question: Name one thing Trump has done that has made your life better . Michael Shure, the interviewer, is not confrontational; he asks the question a non-threatening way and tries to encourage them to elaborate on their answers, give specifics. He’ll sometimes ask questions to bring out more from them, or point out a fact relevant to their answer to see what they have to say. Watching them respond to the question is fascinating. Many of them are taken aback that the question even needs to be asked, and then they struggle to come up with a specific answer. I’m going to speculate about that and offer some possible explanations why some of them struggle. Their belief in Trump is so deep, they don’t spend much time thinking about it; it’s just a fact. They spend so much time with others of a similar persuasion, the subject never comes up. It’s not something they think about because they are more concerned about those they believe are destroying the country. They are trying to come up with an answer that won’t sound bad. They are fully invested in conspiracy theories and alternative facts. I keep going back to Sara Robinson’s series on right wing authoritarian leaders and followers, drawing on the work of Bob Altemeyer. John Dean wrote about it in his book Conservatives without Conscience. All the way back in 2006 Robinson warned of what was coming; her series Cracks in the Wall began with a primer on the authoritarian personality — leaders and followers. The people in the video above are followers. Here’s what Robinson had to say about their core traits: 1. Submission to authority. "These people accept almost without question the statements and actions of established authorities, and comply with such instructions without further ado" writes Dean. "[They] are intolerant of criticism of their authorities, because they believe the authority is unassailably correct. Rather than feeling vulnerable in the presence of powerful authorities, they feel safer. For example, they are not troubled by government surveillance of citizens because they think only wrongdoers need to be concerned by such intrusions. Still, their submission to authority is not blind or automatic; [they] believe there are proper and improper authorities…and their decision to submit is shaped by whether a particular authority is compatible with their views." 2. Aggressive support of authority. Right-wing followers do not hesitate to inflict physical, psychological, financial, social, or other forms of harm on those they see as threatening the legitimacy of their belief system and their chosen authority figure. This includes anyone they see as being too different from their norm (like gays or racial minorities). It's also what drives their extremely punitive attitude toward discipline and justice. Notes Dean: "Authoritarian aggression is fueled by fear and encouraged by a remarkable self-righteousness, which frees aggressive impulses." 3. Conventionality. Right-wing authoritarian followers prefer to see the world in stark black-and-white. They conform closely with the rules defined for them by their authorities, and do not stray far from their own communities. This extreme, unquestioning conformity makes them insular, fearful, hostile to new information, uncritical of received wisdom, and able to accept vast contradictions without perceiving the inherent hypocrisy. These are the people who turn out for Republican primaries, and in heavily gerrymandered districts where the R on the ballot is going to win, it’s the primaries that matter. This is what is driving Republican elected officials farther to the right, and why they don’t dare reach out to Democrats. The people you see in the video will vote them out for a “true believer” every time “because the Left is evil.” You don’t ever work with it, and if government shuts down, well that’s fine if it stops the Left. Of course, people can only live with total government dysfunction for so long before they decide the answer is to give up on democracy and go with a strong leader who will fix everything and make it the way it should be. Hence, the Red Caesar. In June, the rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end. Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”. In a discussion of possible responses to this conspiracy theory, he wrote that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people”. They already have a blueprint for how they will do this. The Heritage Foundation has a detailed battle plan: Project 2025. ...With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers. “We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking. ...The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending. Instead, Trump-era conservatives want to gut the “administrative state” from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing. If that sounds like the end of democracy and permanent minority rule, you’ve got it. Robert Reich warns that what they are planning goes beyond ‘simple’ authoritarianism straight to Fascism. This video from August 2023 makes it very clear. x YouTube Video The people you see and hear in the Young Turks video above are primed and ready for a Red Caesar and the Fascism Reich warns about. Republicans aren’t trying to hide it — they’re promising it and putting it into practice where they can. Their inability to get their act together in the House is a feature, not a bug. The worse government paralysis becomes, the easier it will be for them to tear it all down. A second Trump administration is going to be The Second Coming foreseen by Yeats. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/9/2198252/-Who-House-Republicans-are-listening-to-why-Trump-s-their-candidate-and-what-the-GOP-plans-next?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/