CPAC, conservatives and the culture war: Why Republicans will become more extreme in Trump's absence

[marmar]

CPAC, conservatives and the culture war: Why Republicans will become more extreme in Trump's absence
This is a very radical group of people and they are much more extreme than they were in 2016

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
MARCH 3, 2021 2:29PM


(Salon) Back in 2017, the dominant post-election analysis held that the people who voted for Trump were driven into the arms of the billionaire, populist, demagogue out of an overwhelming sense of "economic anxiety." Political pundits spent months wringing their hands over how the Democrats had somehow failed to address the basic, workaday, kitchen-table-issues of these hardscrabble Americans while Donald Trump gave them hope that he would ease their burdens with his very stable business genius.

That was never very accurate as anyone observing the Trump phenomenon could see. Those voters were just mad at the fact that society is changing and they feel they are losing their status. In other words, they don't want to share the culture equally with people who think and live differently than they do. Donald Trump spoke their language of grievance and exclusion and they reveled in it. They followed him around like a bunch of red-hatted Deadheads, dancing, chanting and cheering ecstatically at every insulting, degrading remark he made, unashamedly telling the press that they loved him because he said out loud what they were thinking.

....(snip)....

New York Magazine's Ben Jacobs smartly observed that the American right has pretty much abandoned any pretense to libertarianism and is now much more aligned with the European right than its ever been. (Yes, their paeans to "freedom" are as shrill as ever but, as Jacobs points out, the point seems to be more aimed at "owning the libs" than any adherence to principle.) He notes that while there were some tepid gestures toward small government economics, the over-arching theme at CPAC this year was demagogic, culture war red meat, with "strident warnings about Marxism and Black Lives Matter, hardline stances set out on immigration and the rise of China and newfound zeal to combat and regulate social-media companies." And Jacobs notes that politicians all tried to tap into the "'but he fights' ethos that fueled Trump's rise." .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/03/03/cpac-conservatives-and-the-culture-war-why-republicans-will-become-more-extreme-in-trumps-absence/

[underpants]

1. This nails it. Basically they flipped out.

Those voters were just mad at the fact that society is changing and they feel they are losing their status.

[SharonClark]

2. They certainly have gone beserk in Iowa.

public money for private schools
no background checks for guns
ban abortion
ban "divisive" issues in public schools (like discussions on sexism and racism)
silencing free speech at universities
"back the blue" to punish protesters
punishing companies that stop giving money to trumpers
punishing city schools for their covid precautions
etc.