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It wasnt, of course. Lively ultimately realized that the QAnon theories were false, but only after hitting bottom last summer, when she destroyed a coronavirus mask display in a Target store and posted video of the incident that went viral.

Her experience highlights how economic hardship and anxiety have served as accelerants in the radicalization of the Republican Party, experts said, part of a complex mix that includes racism along with other factors such as sexism and xenophobia and long-simmering resentment of the expansion of the federal government.

And being out of work leaves many people angry, with the time to latch onto conspiracy theories and get involved in politics.

The economic component has brought QAnon to people who otherwise would never have been involved in it, said Lively, who sought treatment afterward and now disavows QAnon. Its exploded in popularity because people are desperate.

But researchers said the role of the economy in the rightward shift of many Republicans extends beyond the unemployment line, factoring into the insecurities of white Americans that began decades ago with the onset of globalization, as well as newly empowered people of color and women benefiting from the civil rights and feminist movements. They all helped fuel the Tea Party movement during the Great Recession, Donald Trumps presidential campaign, and the rise of QAnon during the trauma of the pandemic.

An analysis this month by The Washington Post found almost 60 percent of the people facing charges in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol had signs of financial problems over the past two decades, including bankruptcies and unpaid taxes.

We often see right-wing social movements when groups are experiencing economic loss, political loss, or status-based loss, said Rory McVeigh, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame and author of the 2019 book The Politics of Losing: Trump, the Klan, and the Mainstreaming of Resentment.

The uneven recovery from the Great Recession, with wealthier people and regions bouncing back more quickly than the rest of America, created the conditions for Trump to exploit in his 2016 run for president, he said. The median wealth of middle-income families declined by a third from 2007 to 2016, while upper-income families saw their median wealth increase by 10 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Why was the angry populist message resonating? Well, a lot of people didnt really benefit from the recovery, and Trump was able to . . . appeal to that population, McVeigh said. The economic-populism message infused with racism, infused with sexism, spoke directly to the monster that had grown in the Republican Party.

Experts caution not to overstate the impact of economic distress in radicalizing people. Some are just racists, resisting the diminished influence of white men in society.

The data and a lot of the literature would suggest its more cultural and racial than economic, said Antoine Banks, director of the Government and Politics Experimental Lab at the University of Maryland. Its not that economics wasnt there, but it wasnt the main fuel behind it.

Christopher Sebastian Parker, a professor of social justice and political science at the University of Washington who has studied the Tea Party movement and Trumps supporters, said complaints about economic circumstances are primarily just a cover for people who dont want to acknowledge their racism.

They feel like theyre losing their proprietary grip on America and its because of these rapid social changes, he said.

In December, Parker and Rachel M. Blum, an assistant political science professor at the University of Oklahoma, surveyed nearly 2,000 supporters of Trumps Make America Great Again movement whom they reached through social-media ads featuring the slogan. They found half had middle-class incomes and at least 60 percent were white, Christian, and male. The results echoed what Parker had found previously, including for his 2013 book, Change They Cant Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.

The Tea Party movement proclaimed that it had economic underpinnings. It began amid the deepening Great Recession and the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the election of Barack Obama as the nations first Black president. Many Americans who already were struggling as manufacturing jobs shifted overseas and technological skills became more crucial in the workplace found themselves in dire economic circumstances. They focused their frustrations on Washington, opposing the federal governments bank bailouts and Obamas push to expand access to health care.

The average Republican base voter is a middle-aged older white person, and the problem was their lives were changing, seemingly overnight. They were losing their jobs. They were losing their industries, said Joe Walsh, an Illinois Republican who rode the Tea Party wave into Congress in 2011. A lot of it was resentment at the way this 1954 life they loved was changing overnight.

Polls showed that many in the Tea Party movement believed the lie promoted by Trump and others that Obama was not born in the United States. Walsh acknowledged there was a racism component of the movement, but said he doesnt think it was the prevailing viewpoint.

Tea Party backers advocated reining in the federal government, which had shifted to full Democratic control in 2009, and reducing the national debt. But he said that Republicans, who gained the House majority in 2011 and the Senates in 2015 on the strength of Tea Party activism, were unable to enact the major changes the movement wanted. That opened the door for Trump to radicalize many of the activists amid a sluggish economic recovery, Walsh said.

Tea Party people around the country got disenchanted, and Trump tapped the economic impact that people were feeling, said Walsh, who lost reelection in 2012 after redistricting and launched a primary bid against Trump in 2019. This whole economic nationalist strand took over.

Former Tea Party supporters became some of Trumps biggest backers in his 2016 campaign and through his first year as president, the Pew Research Center found in 2019. And their concerns about government debt, which continued to rise under Trump, largely disappeared after he replaced Obama.

The insecurity is real in an economic sense, but the genius of Trumps populism was to tie it into a notion that theres an injustice, said Adam Hilton, an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College who has studied the relationships between social movements and political parties. He spoke to some legitimate and factually based questions about the economy, but also xenophobia and racism and immigration.

Some political scientists refer to the dynamic as status threat.

A Black president, an economic crisis, and massive forms of government intervention, Hilton said. That provided an opportunity for people to feel very nervous about living in a country that they dont seem to recognize anymore.

Lively said she didnt have time for politics before the pandemic and didnt even vote for president in 2016. She said she voted for Trump in November solely on the basis of the economy and his support for Israel.' But her views of him changed after the election.

I have found all of the shenanigans post-Nov. 3 to be absolutely ludicrous and quite frankly embarrassing for anybody who espouses any sort of conservative values, said Lively, who is writing a memoir titled You Cant Cancel Me The Story of My Life.

But during her darkest financial times last year, she was open to believing anything QAnon was espousing, she said.

The reason why QAnon started with weirdos in basements is because all of the normal people were out living their lives before the pandemic, and the pandemic completely changed the paradigm, she said. When people are employed and people are busy theres no time to be spending 10 hours a day watching conspiracy videos on YouTube.

Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera.

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Economic hardship and anxiety have accelerated the Republican Partys radicalization, experts say - The Boston Globe

She added, It is way too much control for one branch to have over another branch, particularly where one of its charges is to rein in the excesses of the legislative branch.

If the Republican bill becomes law, Pennsylvania would become just the fifth state in the country, after Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Illinois, to wholly map its judicial system into electoral districts, according to the Brennan Center. And other states may soon join Pennsylvania in trying to remake the courts through redistricting.

Republicans in the Texas Legislature, which is also controlled by the G.O.P., recently introduced a bill that would shift districts for the state appellate courts by moving some counties into different districts, causing an uproar among state Democrats who saw the new districts as weakening the voting power of Black and Latino communities in judicial elections and potentially adding to the Republican tilt of the Texas courts.

Gilberto Hinojosa, the chair of the Texas Democratic Party, called the bill a pure power grab meant to keep Blacks and Latinos from having influence on courts as their numbers in the state grow.

These judicial redistricting battles are taking shape as Republican-controlled legislatures across the country explore new restrictions on voting after the 2020 elections. In Georgia, Republicans in the state legislature are seeking a host of new laws that would make voting more difficult, including banning drop boxes and placing sweeping limitations on mail-in voting. Similar bills in Arizona would restrict mail-in voting, including barring the state from sending out mail ballot applications. And in Texas, Republican lawmakers want to limit early voting periods.

The nationwide effort by Republicans follows a successful four-year drive by the partys lawmakers in Washington to reshape the federal judiciary with conservative judges. Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, until recently the majority leader, and Mr. Trump, the Senate confirmed 231 federal judges, as well as three new Supreme Court justices, over the former presidents four-year term, according to data maintained by Russell Wheeler, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In a state like Pennsylvania, which has two densely populated Democratic cities and large rural areas, this could give outsize representation to sparsely populated places that lean more conservative, particularly if the legislature resorts to a gerrymandering tactic similar to one used in Pennsylvania in 2011.

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How the Pennsylvania GOP is Trying to Increase Their Control of State Courts - The New York Times

Where do Americas two leading political parties go from here?

How might things change as the presidency and the U.S. Senate shift from Republican to Democratic control?

And how, after the violent events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, can we return to even marginally more civil dialogue and bipartisanship?

Those were some of the questions on the virtual table in a Wednesday night panel discussion hosted by the University of Virginias Center for Politics. The all-star panel included Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times columnist and UVA alumnus; Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and another alumnus; David Ramadan, an executive and international consultant and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates; and Tara Setmayer, a CNN political commentator, ABC News political contributor and former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill. All four are visiting scholars at the Center for Politics, with Krebs as the newest addition.

The event was part of the centers national, yearlong Civility Project, announced in January as an effort to promote civic engagement and civil dialogue. The hope, Center for Politics Associate Director Ken Stroupe said Wednesday, is to use national, state and local partnerships, events and scholarship to lower the temperature in politics by focusing on what unites Americans of goodwill, rather than what divides us.

Our system is adversarial by design, but the events of Jan. 6 underscore that the partisanship and negative partisanship have reached levels that have already threatened the American republic and may continue to do so unless there are concerted efforts by every American of goodwill to try to change this trajectory, Stroupe said. As we kick off this series, we thought it important to look at the state of Americas two political parties and where they might be headed in the future.

All four panelists careers have afforded them an up-close look at Americas often-cantankerous two-party system: Bouie as a journalist, Setmayer as a commentator and former GOP consultant who formally left the Republican Party in 2020 after 27 years, and Ramadan as a Republican elected official and consultant with a reputation for working across the aisle.

Krebs, however, has perhaps the most experience with the personal costs of bitter partisanship. The senior cybersecurity officer responsible for securing the 2020 presidential election, Krebs was appointed to that position by former President Donald Trump in 2018 and then fired by Trump in November after asserting that the election, contrary to Trumps protests, was in fact secure.

Bringing all of those experiences to the discussion, the four panelists explored everything from the consequences of the filibuster rule in the Senate to the possibility of a three-party system.

Here are some key takeaways from their discussion. You can also watch the full event here.

Both parties are facing identity questions.

On the Republican side, panelists agreed, the key question is what Republicanism looks like now that Trump is no longer in office and the Democratic Party controls both the White House and congressional majorities.

Ramadan and Setmayer both pointed to members of the Republican Party who did not embrace Trump, or who questioned his claims that the 2020 election had been rigged, such as U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney or U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse. However, they also acknowledged that the majority of the party has continued to support Trump. Setmayer cited one recent poll showing that although 25% of Republicans no longer supported the former president, 75% remained confident in him.

Bouie also pointed out that aspiring Republican presidential candidates, including Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and others, appear to be fashioning political personas in Trumps image.

They are clearly interested in making a run for the White House, and they are not walking away from Trump. If anything, they are trying to find what part of his political persona or style they can use to win votes, Bouie said. That, to me, is the clearest indication that, to the extent that there is a civil war in the Republican Party, its already over. The direction the party is going is the direction that Trump has forged.

On the Democratic side, panelists said, there is a divide between the most progressive wing of the party and more centrist elements. Bridging that divide and keeping both groups happy will be a key challenge for President Joe Biden and his administration. Questions about student loan forgiveness offer one current example, as Biden has refused to commit to canceling up to $50,000 in student debt per borrower, but proposed canceling up to $10,000.

I have a hunch that we will consistently see the Biden White House under-promising and attempting to over-deliver, Bouie said. He has voiced support for forgiving $10,000 in student debt, for example, which is not $50,000, but is a big change from the current approach. That is the dynamic we will see with Biden, pressing against the maximalist version of something, but pushing or endorsing something that is still pretty progressive relative to past Democratic presidents.

Setmayer warned Biden against catering too much to the progressive wing of his party.

Joe Biden was not elected to be a progressive president. He ran as a moderate, she said. I think progressives trying to put too much in a COVID relief package, or pushing favorite policies so soon, are setting themselves up for failure later, because it is not showing goodwill in areas that have to be addressed first [such as COVID relief].

National partisanship is trickling down to state and local politics.

Ramadan, himself a veteran of state politics, remained confident that bipartisanship is possible at the state and local level, though he saw some concerning trends.

We still had real debate in Richmond, to a certain extent, Ramadan recalled, remembering his friendship with Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. They would often criticize each other harshly, he said, but then reunite over a beer, building a relationship despite their differences.

But I did see some partisanship carry over from D.C. to Richmond, said Ramadan, who served in the House of Delegates from 2012 to 2016. Our local politics were infected, I would say, with national partisanship, and that is a problem.

Krebs also pointed out concerns about the politicization of the election process at the state and local level.

I think we need to look carefully at the role of politics in the administration of elections, he said. The majority of our secretaries of state who actually administer elections are independently elected; they are politically affiliated. That, in my view, if left unchecked or without appropriate engagement, can lead to less-than-ideal political outcomes.

One example is currently happening in Georgia, Krebs said, a swing state in the recent election where state lawmakers recently introduced bills that could limit absentee voting, vote by mail and other voter access measures.

To me, we are going down the wrong track, Krebs said. Democracy should be based on access, and it seems to me we are not headed toward more access. We are actually headed the other way.

Structural obstacles in the Senate could inhibit cooperation.

Panelists spent a chunk of the event talking about gridlock and obstructionism in Congress, particularly in the U.S. Senate.

Krebs noted that power seems to have increasingly coalesced at the top of the House and the Senate, leaving many members with little power and little incentive to cooperate.

One thing that has struck me over the last several years is the consolidation of political power, particularly in Congress in the leadership ranks, almost disenfranchising rank-and-file members, he said. If they cant actually contribute to the political process, these members turn into more performative politics players as they speak to the media or rile up constituents.

That creates a less-than-helpful environment, and allowed a lot of the disinformation and misinformation we have seen over the last several years to go mainstream, particularly on some of the networks, Krebs said.

Bouie also spoke about the filibuster rule in the Senate, which allows members to delay a vote on a bill until 60 senators vote to the end the debate. Effectively, it means that major legislation often has to have a 60-vote majority, instead of a simple majority of 51 votes.

I think the biggest obstacle right now to conservative policy being passed into law is the filibuster, Bouie said. If you have to have a supermajority to pass legislation, it is not worth your while to try to build 51- or 52-vote coalitions.

He cited U.S. Sen. Mitt Romneys ideas about child benefits and ending child poverty as an example. Many Democrats like Romneys ideas, Bouie said, but they know that he cannot persuade enough Republicans to join him to reach a 60-vote majority.

If you need 60 votes and Romney cant bring nine Republicans with him, there is no point, Bouie said. But if you only needed 51 votes, there would be some room for [cooperation].

A third-party system would require major structural change.

With questions of identity rising on both sides, it is tempting to consider what would happen if particular wings of the Republican or Democratic parties broke off to form their own party. However, Wednesdays panelists largely agreed that a three-party system would be very difficult to form or sustain.

I do not think a three-party structure would work, Krebs said. If you spend a lot of time in politics or Washington, D.C., he said, you realize that everything is binary it is hard to hold three disparate ideas in discourse at the same time. Its unfortunate, but things break down to yes or no, right or left.

Structurally, Bouie said, it would be hard for a third party to get candidates on the ballot successfully, and pull enough votes from either Democrats or Republicans to actually win an election.

We would need major change to the electoral system to have a viable third party, he said. There are clear divisions where you could imagine a multi-party system developing, but the rules and the structure we have dont really provide incentives for the parties to consciously uncouple their various coalitions.

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What's Next for the Democratic and Republican Parties? - UVA Today

Whos a good boy? Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On the evening of January 6, after a Trumpist mob had stormed the Capitol, Senator Lindsey Graham stood on the Senate floor and finally detached himself from the president he had so obediently served: Count me out, enough is enough.

But the thing about Lindsey Graham running away is that he always comes back. After his brief and apparently unpleasant experience with independence, Graham has returned to his familiar, comfortable place at Trumps feet. I think hes going to be a viable leader of the Republican Party, he gushes. Hes very popular. And hes going to get acquitted.

Graham might be the most overtly comic illustration of his partys turnabout on impeachment, but he is also perfectly representative of its dominant faction. The post-Trump GOP is split three ways. The partys tiny, small-d democratic wing on its left has fully broken with the authoritarian former president (Representative Adam Kinzinger continues to urge conviction). The partys far-right wing, with members like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, is sinking deeper into the Trump personality cult. In the middle are the soft authoritarians, whose initial and genuine revulsion at the violent insurrection has given way to weary cynicism.

The purpose of impeaching Trump is to hold him accountable for his effort to undermine the election and secure a second, unelected term, essentially putting an end to the republican experiment. That scheme began months before the election with his efforts to discredit mail voting, continued with his blatant lies about the election outcome and attempts to pressure various state officials to disregard the vote, and finally culminated in summoning a mob to the Capitol and goading them to violence.

The soft authoritarians supported Trumps plot until the end, when it exploded into disorder that threatened their own safety. But as their anger with Trump dissipated, and they realized the partys voters did not share their disgust, they calculated that repudiating his autogolpe did not serve their interests.

As they have worked through their feelings, first rebelling against Trump and then suppressing their own rebellion, they have redirected their anger away from Trump and toward the Democrats. Trumps actions may have been wrong, even impeachable, but it is also wrong for Democrats to try to impeach him.

The whole thing is stupid, complains Marco Rubio. I know this: Nothing we do next week on that floor is going to help people get vaccines or more people keep their jobs. We should be focused on that instead. Rubio himself does not seem to be focused on either goal. He did not join the ten Republicans trying to negotiate a bill to speed vaccinations and restore jobs. Nor has he developed any alternative efforts to do so. What he means is that he would rather be sending out tweets and press releases attacking Democratic plans to speed vaccinations and restore employment than have to take a position on Trumps crimes.

Their curious reasoning is that, since Republicans wont vote to convict Trump, impeachment wont punish him. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which previously conceded that Trumps actions were an impeachable offense, argues today, Democrats say it will deter future impeachable acts late in a Presidents term, but that is unlikely if Mr. Trump is acquitted, as he likely will be.

This is true! If Republicans vote to acquit Trump, then future presidents will be encouraged to commit more Trump-like crimes. One might take this simple cause and effect relationship as a reason to convict Trump. Instead, the Journal uses it as an argument against holding a trial at all.

The soft authoritarian Republicans consider their unwillingness to break with Trump and offend his voters a fixed and nonnegotiable fact of political life. Forcing them to confront Trumps crimes therefore serves no purpose other than embarrassing them.

As the very brief rebellion of the Republican elite recedes further into memory, Trumps control over its rank and file has tightened. Trumps inner circle is confident both of his acquittal and that hell come out of the trial with his influence over the Republican party all but cemented, reports Politico.

If Republicans decided to send a message that Trumps plot against the republic was unacceptable, they could do so. Instead, they have reasoned tautologically that theyre going to vote against it because it is going to fail.

The Republicans obviously have reasons to acquit Trump deeper than the merely circular. But they and their voters dont wish to repudiate his authoritarianism. While some of them might rue its final violent spasm, their main regret is not that he tried to steal the election, but that he failed.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

Continued here:
Republicans: Trump Cant Be Impeached Because He Cant Be Impeached - New York Magazine

Recent studies show the Republican party is losing voters after the riots on Capitol Hill last month.

SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. Recent studies show the Republican party is losing voters after the riots on Capitol Hill last month. Five people lost their lives and dozens of people were injured including police officers, after attending a rally held by former President Donald Trump.

Voting experts at the University of Florida say thousands of voters are no longer registered with the GOP. They say far more Republicans than Democrats are changing their registration, and its happening here in San Diego County too.

The insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6th is something most people thought theyd never witness. Now political research says the fallout from that day shows thousands of registered voters fleeing the Republican Party.

These Republicans are rejecting Trumpism, a brand that they see continue to lead the party, even after his defeat, said Laura Fink, a Political Analyst.

In California, the Secretary of States office shows over 33,000 voters have left the GOP since the riot at the Capitol. In San Diego County, more than 4,700 Republicans have defected.

I think this isnt just a temporary blip. This is an acceleration of the long-term declining fortunes of the Republican Party in California broadly and in San Diego in particular," said Thad Kousser, a UCSD Political Science Professor.

"This was a city that not that long ago, just over a decade ago, had a long string of Republican mayors, very competitive City Council, and a County Board of Supervisors that was all Republican, Kousser said.

He says now Democrats have a majority, and the change can be seen across the Countys political landscape.

Not only have you seen voters leaving the Republican Party, but some prominent San Diego Republicans have left the Party, Kousser said.

Research shows that a large number of defections after this presidential election isnt typical.

The majority of voters leaving the Republican Party are anti-Trump. That said, there may be a handful of them that are so pro-Trump, they feel that the Republican Party is not Trump enough, Fink said.

Both Fink and Kousser say Republican voters will continue to be torn between supporting Donald Trump or moving in a different direction with the Party.

CBS 8 reached out to the Republican Party of San Diego County and no one was available for comment.

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Researchers say voters are leaving the Republican Party - CBS News 8