Comment

I knew Frum couldn't get through a whole piece without bashing liberals, liberalism, and, indirectly, President Biden: "The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution." FFS. If only the GOP could turn itself back into a legitimate party so all these never-Trumpers could go back home.

I guess I did not read his remarks as "bashing", although they were unnecessary IMO. I keep asking myself in whose interest is it ultimately that the democratic party suddenly fall apart and quake fearfully when the Biden administration and a majority of them have brought good things to many Americans. The gop has been a source of disinvestment and grievance politics for so long we've all internalized the feelings of fear and resentment. These are easily awakened by the wanna be dictator "for o…

"Bashing" might have been too strong a word -- "dig" would have been better. But the effect is cumulative: former (?) Republicans like Frum keep telling liberals / Democrats what they're doing wrong while taking minimal responsibility for their own party. Frum was a speechwriter for Bush II, for heaven's sake. Before Trump came along, the Bush II administration was in the running for "worst in U.S. history." The pundits in general are acting panicky as pundits often do, but when the pundits are…

Agree with your assessment of pundits who were formerly "republican". I no longer believe there is a republican party. It began dying before reagan...maybe nixon began the process. The struggle is with this authoritarian/fascist version. Former republicans can't face it IMO.

I can't pinpoint a date either. Dana Milbank in his very good THE DESTRUCTIONISTS: The Twenty-Five-Year Crackup of the Republican Party dates it to the rise of Newt Gingrich, though he does look at the conditions that made Gingrich -- I cannot stop my fingers from typing "Gingrinch" -- possible. I mostly trace the beginning of the end of the GOP to Nixon's "southern strategy," which brought a horde of white Southern Democrats into the Republican Party in the mid/late '60s.

I suppose HCR would date it earlier to the forces opposing FDR. Timothy Snyder describes the gop an extremist libertarian political philosophy.

And earlier than that even! I just read Jacob Heilbrunn's recent AMERICA LAST: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, which traces it back to H. L. Mencken and others who were enamored with Kaiser Wilhelm II. Heilbrunn's book meshes well with Rachel Maddow's PREQUEL and the Ultra podcasts. I believe that behind this "libertarian political philosophy" are the uber-wealthy and mega corporations who want no checks or balances on their economic "freedom." HCR traces that tendency back to at least the Civil War.

So much to know, so little time

This "History Comes Alive!" thing is sort of nerve-racking.