Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
Theda Skocpol, a professor of political science and sociology at Harvard, contended that many of the developments in states controlled by Republicans are a result of careful, long-term #planning by conservative strategists, particularly those in the #Federalist #Society, who are developing tools to build what she called “#minority #authoritarianism” within the context of a nominally democratic system of government.
Skocpol outlined her thinking in an email:
The first-movers who figured out how to configure this new “laboratory of democratic constriction” were legal eagles in the Federalist Society and beyond, because the key structural dynamic in the current G.O.P. gallop toward minority authoritarianism is the mutual interlock between post-2010 Republican control, often supermajority control, of dozens of #state #legislatures and the #SCOTUS #decision in 2019 to allow even the most #extreme and bizarre forms of partisan #gerrymandering.
These organized, richly resourced actors, she wrote,
"have figured out how to #rig the current U.S. #system of #federalism and #divided #branches, given generational and geographic realities on the ground, and the in many ways fluky 2016 presidential election gave them what they needed to put the interlock in place. They are stoking and using the fears and resentments of about half or so of the G.O.P. popular base to #undo #American #democracy and #enhance their own #power and #privileges. They are doing it because they can, and they believe in what they are doing. They are America’s G.O.P. Leninists.
Skocpol did not pull her punches:
This situation, locked in place by a #corruptly #installed #Supreme #Court #majority and by many #rotten-borough #judicial #districts like the one in #Amarillo, means that minority #authoritarians, behind a bare facade of “#constitutionalism,” can render majority-elected officials, including the president and many governors, officials in name only. The great thing from the minority authoritarian point of view is that those visible chief executives (and urban mayors and district attorneys) can still be blamed for government nonfunction and societal problems, but they cannot address them with even broadly supported measures (such as simple background checks for having military assault weapons).