AP Report on Right

Jul 24, 2023

At this point, 'Republican" is just the name on the label, right there next to the yellow sticker with the skull and crossbones.

You may have noticed, but you probably didn't, that here in the shebeen we have started to refer to the current right-wing politicians as conservatives rather than Republicans. "Republican" is just the name on the label, right there next to the yellow sticker with the skull and crossbones, indicating that there is poison within. American conservatism, in virtually all its manifestations, is the poison.

It's why I have limited patience for many of our Never Trump allies. (Except for Stuart Stevens, who seems to take much the same long view that I do that many of them contributed not only to the ratfcking and nasty politics they so deplore now, but also to a series of godawful policies beginning with the narcotic fantasy of supply-side economics that has led them into the dark intellectual woods in which they now reside. It is the prion disease that always waxes and never wanes, that exists in a state of permanent relapse.

The Associated Press put together a precise prediction of the future course of the disease. It is not a promising diagnosis.

Sounds promising. But that first sentence is the key. This authoritarian wet dream is shared by enough elements of American conservatism that it is a perfect demonstration of what American conservatism is all about in 2023 CE. It isn't Trump. And it isn't a fluke change in our politics. It is what modern conservatism always has been— a vehicle to shove the nation's wealth upwards and to recreate an America run by inherited privilege and white skin.

And what's on tap from the Party of Ideas?

Lovely. Going to be tough getting a lot of this through Congress, though, I'd imagine. No problem.

See? No problem.

Too late, Mr. Wallach. Several decades too late, to be honest. What was Iran-Contra if not the unitary executive theory put into action regarding foreign policy? What was the torture regime if not a unilateral assertion of the executive's power to abrogate international treaties and international law? What was the technique of installing Cabinet secretaries opposed to the proper functions of the departments in their charge but the functional equivalent of cutting the employee rolls to the bone? And Heritage is the furthest thing from a fringe operation; it's arguably the most influential idea factory in the country. (See the current Supreme Court for details.) And the fanciful victimization that fuels so much of conservatism's emotional core was at work even before Heritage came along to give it form and substance. This is the vision of the future toward which American conservatism has been slouching since Barry Goldwater ran for president. It is also its past and present as well.

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.

Hurricane Idalia Became a Threat In Record Time

Behold Florida's Whitewashing of Slavery History

America's Wetlands Are at Risk

Our Campaign Finance Problems Won't Go Away

This Is Bone-Deep and Beyond Antidote

Trump's First Trial Set for Spring

Our Illusions Are Killing Us

This Ain't It, Vivek. And Neither Is That.

Sluggo & Co Get Booted From the Spin Room

When MAGA Meets Local Government

A Non-Debate for a Non-Party

What Are These People Thinking?