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I’d like to take issue with an aspect of that @YAppelbaum essay:
He says the 2012 GOP autopsy was “ideological.” I.e., at that point the GOP was thinking about how to change its ideas to capture new voters. Whereas in 2016 the party doubled down on (white) identity.
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He says the 2012 GOP autopsy was “ideological.” I.e., at that point the GOP was thinking about how to change its ideas to capture new voters. Whereas in 2016 the party doubled down on (white) identity.
1/x
I think that gets things backward.
In fact, the 2012 autopsy reflected minimal ideological reflection: It doubled down on libertarian or right-liberal dogma. It said in effect: “If we only sell this stuff with more multicultural rhetoric and less social conservatism, we’ll win.”
In fact, the 2012 autopsy reflected minimal ideological reflection: It doubled down on libertarian or right-liberal dogma. It said in effect: “If we only sell this stuff with more multicultural rhetoric and less social conservatism, we’ll win.”
The 2012 autopsy, in other words, was an act of denial — the denial of the political. It tried to extinguish simmering class antagonism and using liberalism’s default reflex: to reduce the political to markets, procedure and norms (diversity!).
Then came 2016, when voters registered a strong desire to renegotiate the old consensus — a longing for the political: Why, voters asked, are we supposed to welcome China’s rapacious rise? What do borders mean?
These are political questions.
These are political questions.
I don’t deny that white identity politics were a component of this shift. But I don’t see how returning to autopsy Republicanism, as @YAppelbaum implicitly advises, can solve that problem.
