Why Trump’s control of the Republican Party is bad for democracy

  As former President Donald Trump edges closer to clinching the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, our political science research has shown that a second Trump presidency is likely to damage American democracy even more than his first term did. The reason has less to do with Trump and his ambitions than with how power dynamics have shifted within the Republican Party.

Republicans are trying to build a multiracial right – will it work?

  Former Republican South Carolina Governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley launched her bid for president recently in a video that began by describing the racial division that marked her small hometown of Bamberg, South Carolina.

  Meanwhile, another presumptive GOP candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has continued his crusade against “woke ideology,” most recently on a tour of Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois, presenting himself as a defender of law and order.

The GOP needs to pick a side on border security

  In 2022, Republican leadership made numerous promises about securing the border, ending the Biden border crisis, and reducing illegal immigration. A month into this new Congress, they are already breaking their commitments.

  If securing the border is the football, the GOP is Lucy. During campaign season, it’s all about securing the border “no questions asked.” Once safely elected, however, some members’ focus changes to “comprehensive immigration reform” or backroom deals that hold border security hostage to mass amnesty—and GOP leadership indulges them.

Teddy Roosevelt’s failed Bull Moose campaign may portend the future of the GOP and Donald Trump

  What happens when a former president decides he wants his old job back, regardless of what stands in his way?

  As Donald Trump launches his third run for the White House, it is useful to look back at another ex-president, Theodore Roosevelt, whose campaign to regain the office from his successor, William Howard Taft, divided the Republican Party and ensured the victory of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the presidential election of 1912.

How the quest for significance and respect underlies the white supremacist movement, conspiracy theories and a range of other problems

  President Joe Biden’s fundamental pitch to America has been about dignity and respect. He never tires of repeating his father’s words that “a job is about more than a paycheck, it is about … dignity … about respect … being able to look your kid in the eye and say, ‘Everything is going to be OK.’”

  In strikingly similar language, Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton affirm that “jobs are not just the source of money.” When jobs are lost, they wrote in 2020, “it is the loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and of self respect … that brings on despair, not just or even primarily the loss of money.”

Anti-gay conversion therapy plank should not be part of GOP platform

  The Southern Poverty Law Center strongly condemns the possible inclusion of an anti-gay, conversion therapy plank in the Republican Party platform that will be adopted at the party’s convention next week.

  Modern science has entirely and thoroughly debunked conversion therapy – a term used to describe the discredited practices that purportedly can change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: The race is on

  As if we have not been inundated enough with politics this year, hold on to your seats. Over the next few weeks that is all you will hear, read or see. The Republican Convention is set for July 18-22 in Cleveland, and the Democratic Convention will begin on July 25 in Philadelphia.

  After a full year of primaries, caucuses and delegate collecting, the field is finally set for the fall campaign for president. After the July conventions are over, the race is on between Democrat Hillary Clinton and the Republican standard bearer, Donald Trump.

Mark Potok: Rep. Scalise’s denials are not believable

  Faced with an exploding crisis sparked by the revelation that the No. 3 Republican in the House gave a speech to a well-known group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis a dozen years ago, the GOP in Rep. Steve Scalise’s home state of Louisiana is doubling down, calling the entire episode a mere “manufactured blogger story.”

  Really? A manufactured blogger story?

Despite GOP efforts to expunge extremists, several far-right candidates elected

  Despite claiming its success this election cycle came from expunging extremists from its ranks, the GOP managed to let a fair number of candidates with extremist views rooted in conspiracy theories and far-right fears slip through the cracks.

  “Little was left to chance,” The New York Times reported earlier this week. “Republican operatives sent fake campaign trackers — interns and staff members brandishing video cameras to record every utterance and move — to trail their own candidates. In media training sessions, candidates were forced to sit through a reel of the most self-destructive moments.”

Eric Alterman: Heads, the Tea Party wins; tails, the Tea Party wins

  Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum recently suggested that Americans would be less apt to hold Republicans responsible for the government shutdown than they did in 1995 because of the help Republicans could expect to receive from Fox News. She was wrong about this; indeed, she and Fox News host Brit Hume were typically wrong about almost everything. For instance, MacCallum said that:

        Fox News Channel was just beginning. People are very—it’s a different world in terms of what people understand about what’s going on. In those days, it was much easier to pin the problems in this on the Republicans … I’m not sure that they’re going to punish the Republicans to the extent that they did last time around.

Sam Fulwood III: Hard-Right Americans fear the future

  I have a self-identified progressive friend who takes a perverse and masochistic interest in watching Fox News and frequently listening to Rush Limbaugh. He is quick to tell anyone that he doesn’t believe a syllable of what he hears from the right-wing media.

  "You have to know what the enemy is thinking," he says, when asked why he tortures himself. "How else can I understand what they’re doing and how they’re telling people to act if I don’t snoop on their media?"

  My friend has it twisted. It’s not the right-wing media that’s leading conservative voters astray; it’s quite the opposite. For proof, take a look at the efforts of Democracy Corps, a Democratic-leaning public opinion and strategic consulting firm that is "mapping the Republican brain" in an effort to understand why our national politics is mired in seemingly intractable gridlock.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Who will be the GOP’s savior?

  Alabama and the Deep South have now become the heart and soul of the Republican Party in America. We are the most reliable base of support for any GOP presidential candidate. We and our sister southern states of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana are the bastion of the GOP.

  Our loyalty to Republican presidential candidates is not only unquestionable and predictable, it has been going on for quite a while. Alabama has been a safe haven for the GOP for close to five decades when it comes to national politics. Since 1964, we have voted for the GOP candidate for president 11 out of 13 times. The Republican candidate has carried Alabama the last nine presidential elections going back 36 years to 1976.

Sam Fulwood III: Fixing the GOP

  I suspect that those who need to hear it most are unlikely to read—or heed—what I’m about to say. After poring through all 100 pages of the Republican National Committee’s soul-searching report released Monday, the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” I feel compelled to offer the party faithful some advice.

  Yeah, I know that I’m not the sort of person whose ideas are typically associated with a group that would nominate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president. But, hey, I’m an American. I want to see a revitalized Republican Party because it’s good for the country to have at least two strong political forces battling in the marketplace of policy.

Larry M. Elkin: Republicans, lacking direction, cannot steer the country

  President Obama has finally come of age politically, and he knows where he wants to go. His political adversaries do not.

  The president served notice in his second inaugural address, and again in his State of the Union speech, that he intends to follow the path blazed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, two fellow Democrats who insisted that expanded government could improve most American lives. They pushed the costs of their programs onto future generations, but most citizens nevertheless came to cherish government-subsidized pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, and medical care for the elderly and poor.

Sheldon Richman: Republican reconsideration of immigration

“Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.” — Groucho Marx

  Apparently Groucho has been elected chairman of the Republican National Committee.

  Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama has so shocked the Republican Party that it now is willing to question long-held positions. If defeat prompts Republicans to abandon anti-freedom convictions, that’s all to the good — even if the abandonment is motivated by cynicism.

Cameron Smith: A Conservative hoping for change

  As pundits across the country sift through the electoral debris, President Obama’s re-election affords an opportunity for Republican introspection. The recent election demonstrates that American political ideologies, cultural demographics, and even the level of political engagement are transitioning in a way not seen in generations. Conservatives face the challenge of determining how the principles of limited government, individual responsibility, strong families, and free markets can regain a foothold during the change.

  Republicans need to be frank about the election results. Their electorate ran a “moderate” candidate against a President whose largest policy accomplishments have been poorly received during a period of lackluster economic performance. Instead of a Reaganesque sweep, Republicans failed to gain any meaningful traction. In fact they actually lost ground. Arguing that the President did not win as many electoral votes as he did in 2008 is about as useful as finding a silver lining in being beaten by two touchdowns instead of three.

Ian M. MacIsaac: Romney's whitewater runs dry

  Mitt Romney lost on Tuesday for a lot of reasons. He was a flip-flopper and a serial liar; he was a wooden campaigner and repeatedly proved himself incapable of connecting with average people; he was a caricature of all the worst aspects of the "one percent."

  But Romney did not lose last night purely through personal failings. In retrospect, any Republican candidate would have likely lost last night. The problem? There simply were not enough white people.

Tim Kelly: The GOP’s gold plank

  The 2012 Republican Party platform contains a plank concerning a possible return to the gold or other metallic standard. The US dollar has been a fiat currency since President Richard Nixon suspended its convertibility to gold on August 15, 1971.

  The plank reads,

       Determined to crush the double-digit inflation that was part of the Carter Administration’s economic legacy, President Reagan, shortly after his inauguration, established a commission to consider the feasibility of a metallic basis for U.S. currency. The commission advised against such a move. Now, three decades later, as we face the task of cleaning up the wreckage of the current Administration’s policies, we propose a similar commission to investigate possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar.