At a campaign rally earlier this month in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Donald Trump told the crowd, “You can’t have [Biden] as your president … Maybe I’ll sign an executive order: You cannot have him as your president.”
Leaving aside the unconstitutionality of such an order or of Trump remaining in office beyond two terms, as he has also suggested, most disturbing was attendees’ response these statements: not the horror one would expect in a healthy democracy or laughter suggesting the naive presumption he was joking, but cheers and applause.
Under Trump’s leadership, the GOP is now well into the final stretch of its transformation from a mainstream center-right party into a far-right authoritarian one, bearing less resemblance even to the GOP of 20 years ago than to Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. That’s not to say all Republicans are hostile to democracy. But as evidenced by the defections of prominent conservatives like columnist George Will, former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh, Bush administration aide Steve Schmidt, and others, it’s not the party of democratically inclined conservatives anymore.
Instead, the GOP is now the party of willing participants in Trump’s brazen assaults on democracy and human rights and the cowards who let them happen. It’s the party of credulous Archie Bunker slobs who applaud his unconstitutional fantasies. It’s the party of neo-fascist thugs like the Proud Boys and gun-toting militias. It’s the party of soulless Twitter trolls who make careers out of “owning the libs” — usually through bad-faith, hypocritical argumentation and bigotry meant to conceal their lack of original ideas — or promote absurd conspiracy theories like QAnon. It’s the party of propaganda disguised as news from outlets like Fox News, OANN, Breitbart, and The Federalist. It’s the party of white people who get mad at football players taking a knee or at Black Lives Matter protests and wave thin blue line flags to proudly proclaim their indifference to — or support for — racist police violence.
In sum, the party of Lincoln has become a proto-junta that in the mid-20th century would have been branded a fifth column and hauled before HUAC.
Maybe you think that’s unfair, but lest you doubt there’s an authoritarian vogue among Republicans and those adjacent to them, consider this snapshot of events since late August:
- At the Republican National Convention, the party substituted for a platform a resolution that read, “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” In other words, “Le Parti, c’est Trump”;
- Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose the election, as his administration reportedly seeks to bypass election results entirely;
- Leaked chats showed pro-Trump activists in Portland acquiring arms and ammunition, planning and training for violence, naming multiple Oregon politicians as possible assassination targets;
- The Department of Justice declared Portland, Seattle and New York “anarchist jurisdictions” and pledged to strip them of federal funding over Trump’s distaste for their approaches to police brutality and racism;
- Trump, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and commentator Ann Coulter defended or even praised Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old arrested in a shooting during the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Black Lives Matter protests that left two dead and one seriously wounded, with a gun he was carrying illegally after traveling across state lines;
- At a campaign rally in Bemidji, Minnesota, Trump called it “beautiful” when MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi was hit with a rubber bullet while covering unrest in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd by police. He also told the nearly all-white crowd they have “good genes.”
Now, consider that Richard Nixon lost much of the Republican Party’s support for offenses that paled in comparison to Trump’s. But what happens when Trump scorns and disregards democratic norms, traumatizes innocent children, snatches protesters off the street, cozies up to dictators and even admits on tape to lying about the severity of a pandemic that — thanks to his negligence — has now killed over 200,000 Americans and wrecked the economy? Polls report his job approval rating among Republicans remains at least in the mid to high 80s. Even his refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power was met with, at best, muted criticism from prominent Republicans and a unanimous but toothless Senate resolution.
The unavoidable conclusion is that for all their lip service to the Constitution and patriotism, a large chunk of Republicans — from the party brass down to the rank and file — has abandoned liberal democracy, whether out of active hostility or preoccupation with enjoying tax cuts and other personal benefits of Trump’s presidency.
And a new report indicates this is a major cause of America backsliding into autocracy, potentially to the point of no return.
In a new report, Varieties of Democracy, or V-Dem, a group of international scholars that measures the health of democracy around the world, stated that the U.S. is experiencing “significant and substantial autocratization.” And according to The Washington Post, American democracy’s decline has reached a point that usually leads to full autocracy.
Citing Hungarian sociologist Balint Magyar’s theory of democracy giving way to autocracy in three stages — attempt, breakthrough, and consolidation — New York writer Masha Gessen has identified Trump’s 2016 election as an autocratic attempt, while reelection would mark autocratic breakthrough, followed by consolidation of his autocratic power. I wish I could say Gessen’s fears are overblown, but I don’t see any substantial Republican resistance to Trump’s authoritarianism.
Perhaps the party would be more inclined to preserve democracy if it were more confident in its long-term ability to win elections fairly.
In an article in the December 2019 issue of The Atlantic, Yoni Appelbaum wrote that with white Christians on their way to becoming a political minority due to America’s increasing ethnic and racial diversity, the Republican Party is losing faith that it can win elections in the future. And a study by Vanderbilt University researcher Larry Bartels found that antagonism toward Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants was the strongest predictor of antidemocratic attitudes among Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters.
But rather than getting with the times, the GOP engineers the political system through voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering so it can’t lose, using appeals to white Christian grievance and attacks on minorities to ensure the fanatical loyalty of its base.
Fidesz has successfully used similar tactics to undo Hungary’s democracy while tapping that country’s own sordid history of racism with attacks on Roma, antisemitic dog whistles against George Soros and scaremongering about Muslim refugees. The V-Dem report describes Hungary as an “electoral authoritarian regime” and thus non-democratic. The Republican Party under Trump is turning the U.S. into something similar, while the president himself exacerbates divisions that threaten to violently tear the whole country asunder.
And the rest of the world looks on with shock and dismay. But unlike Europe, Asia, and Latin America, the U.S. isn’t a mere generation or two removed from tyranny or war on its soil. My boyfriend comes from a former Soviet republic and has vivid memories of the USSR’s collapse, followed by years of civil war, deprivation, and dictatorship. His stories are the stuff of nightmares and show that anyone who would let the same things happen in the U.S. and prefer burning the nation down over sharing its abundance with people who are different recklessly takes our democracy, stability, tranquility, prosperity, and global standing for granted and doesn’t comprehend what they’re wishing for.
But with Donald Trump leading his party and country down the dark path of autocracy and armed thugs prepared to kill for him, it’s we true patriots of all political stripes standing up for the bedrock values of our country who would suffer the consequences of their death wish for democracy.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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