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Saturday, July 30, 2016

Republicans "'... cannot admit that their party’s voters are motivated far more by white identity politics than by conservative ideals.'"

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Republicans In The Wilderness
By Adam Ozimek, July 29, 2016

Avik Roy did an amazing interview with Ezra Klein on the state of the Republican party that is a must read. His dour conclusion about republican intellectuals is this: “They cannot admit that their party’s voters are motivated far more by white identity politics than by conservative ideals.”

He goes on:
“Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble,” Roy says. “We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.”
….
This soul-searching led Roy to an uncomfortable conclusion: The Republican Party, and the conservative movement that propped it up, is doomed.
This response to Trumpism is in contrast to other republican intellectuals are quickly trying to put together a platform that addresses the newly revealed preferences and desires of the republican base while threading the needle to remain principally conservative. In other words, they take the grievances of the base as a given, as a parameter to tune their basket of policies to.

Avik in contrast appears to view more darkly what Trumpism has revealed.  I tend to agree that after watching what Trump says and how precisely he has been successful, figuring out how to appeal to fans of *that* is less important than figuring out how to reduce the levels of intolerance, ignorance, and generally irresponsible view of what a good political leaders looks like.

I am reminded of the Pennsylvania town of Centralia where an underground fire has been burning for decades. Republican intellectuals like Avik, it seems to me, want to figure out how to put out the fire out or move everyone away from the town entirely. Others I see as scrambling to put together architectural plans for houses that can be built on top of ground that is flaming below.

In Centralia, by the way, the population has fallen from over 1,000 in 1980 to about 10 people today. Probably as it should be.
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