Metapolitics | Praxis

Republicans Ignored Average Joes for So Long, They Turned to Donald Trump

But if Trump’s working-class supporters were voting as much for the man as for his message, they were also clearly voting against a party leadership that pays them lip service while ignoring their concerns. Some of these concerns are rooted in racial anxiety, and an older generation’s inevitable fear of change. But many of them are rooted in basic human vulnerability — a very personal exposure to stagnant wages, family breakdown, military quagmires (America’s wars are disproportionately fought by volunteers from downscale Red America) and…

People Who Don’t Like Clinton or Trump Don’t Really Vote Anyway

One in four Americans have an unfavorable opinion of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, more than double the rate who disliked both candidates in 2012 and about four times higher than in 2008. This high level of joint unpopularity could foreshadow low voter turnout or the rise of a third-party candidate, but there are reasons why these outcomes are by no means sure things at this point. Overall, 35% of U.S. adults interviewed over the course of June had a favorable view of the…

Just 58 Percent of Americans Think Churches Can Help Solve Social Problems

Religious leaders and institutions have taken part in efforts to address important social issues throughout American history, from slavery to civil rights to today’s advocacy in areas such as reducing poverty. But Americans appear to be growing more skeptical of how much of a difference churches and other houses of worship make in tackling social concerns. A majority of U.S. adults still say religious institutions contribute either “a great deal” (19%) or “some” (38%) to solving important social problems. But the combined figure of 58%…

Donald Trump and the Twilight of the Religious Right

The evangelical divide over Trump has been widening for months, but it was only in recent weeks that the pro- and anti-Trump camps definitively split, with an increasing number of conservative evangelicals coming out forcefully against the candidate whom GOP consultant Rick Wilson once called “Cheeto Jesus.” The breaking point came on June 21, when Trump—ironically in an effort to appease the religious right—met with nearly a thousand evangelical leaders and announced a 25-person “evangelical advisory board” to help him reach conservative Christian voters. Almost…

Fox News Will Be Better Off Without Roger Ailes

Several news outlets have reported that Roger Ailes will be or already has been terminated from his position as chairman of the Fox News Channel. On Tuesday, Matt Drudge reported it as fact and a Fox representative initially confirmed the report to the Daily Beast before retracting the confirmation. Drudge even provided a copy of what he said was the legal separation agreement between Ailes and FNC’s parent company, 21st Century Fox. (Drudge later removed the document and his headline touting it, however.) The writing…

Conservative Skepticism About Government Has Become Nihilism

When populism exploded again with the 2008 financial collapse and TARP bailout, the next generation of Republican leaders — led by Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan, the self-named Young Guns — took the Gingrich playbook and ran with it, exploiting and fueling populist anger at the political establishment and the new black president to take back power. The theory was that a deliberate strategy to make all government action in Washington look disastrous, whether by stopping legislation or delegitimizing the process and its…

GOP Missed Opportunity to Adopt Trump’s More Centrist Social Positions

People form their opinions about a party based on what its platform includes. Political scientists Elizabeth Simas at the University of Houston and Kevin Evans at Florida International University have found that in years that parties adopt particularly conservative platforms, voters tend to see the nominee as more conservative too. “Voters are in fact picking up on the parties’ objective policy positions,” they wrote in a 2011 paper. That means that a platform like this one could have lasting impacts on how the Republican Party…

The GOP’s Strategic Sclerosis Is Becoming Fatal

Somewhere in recent years, the GOP’s engagement with modern America and how to best project those values into a nation of 320 million people became dysfunctional. As the country has diversified, the party has remained monochromatic, has grayed, and rather than allowing some birch-like give on shifting cultural norms, has become an unbending oak of ideological purity. The GOP now finds itself lacking an intimate’s ability to criticize productively, given its demographic and cultural divergence from the majority of the country. […] According to the…

The Republican Industrial Complex Has Turned Missteps Into Millions

Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, was famously criticized for his ability to convince others to believe anything he said through a combination of hyperbole and bravado. One Apple employee called the effect a “reality distortion field” in 1981 and the term persisted ever since. It’s quite clear by now that conservative philanthropists and grassroots donors have been living in a reality distortion field as well, the creation of a cadre of political consultants who have failed repeatedly at their jobs and yet manage…

The Decline of the Common Good Produced the Rise of Trump

If one wants to understand the rise of Donald Trump, it’s useful to consider two narratives. The first narrative goes like this: The fortunes of the white working class have been waning for decades. Real median wages for people without a college degree are lower today than they were forty years ago. Income inequality is now back to where it was during the Gilded Age. Meanwhile, trust and social cohesion have plummeted. As each new technological advance leaves low-skilled workers out in the cold and…

Understanding the present is the key to the future