Heather Cox Richardson makes the point in her column1 that the Republican Party has been trapped for years in a “Triangle of Doom” - a viscous circle that is diluting its identity, eradicating a legacy of decades - and collapsing the big tent they once erected.
What was once the party’s lunatic fringe is now its core; and within its new dynamic, refusal to embrace that core dictates rejection and expulsion.
The Triangle of Doom works as follows:
Republican base voters seek out media that will confirm their biases; since the rise of Hate Radio and Fox News, the days of Cronkite have given way to media that does exactly that;
The fringe outlets gain traction as their numbers grow, and so any Republican politician hoping for any chance at all of connecting with voters are forced to go to those outlets;
This, in turn, increasingly normalized fringe media, to the point that the party is radicalized to believe fringe rhetoric – and non-fringe Republican politicians have no choice but to acquiesce.
I grew up in a Republican household, and my memory is that the conservatives of that era were diverse – from Barry Goldwater to Richard Nixon to William F. Buckley to Phyllis Schlafly to William Rehnquist. They all leaned right, but for different reasons, and with different agendas. They disagreed with one another. None of them appealed to everyone.
I saw enough of this diversity to realize that it was diminishing, when the Triangle began. That happened in the Nineties, when Hate Radio began, and the Gingrich Congressional revolution commenced openly courting political warfare between left and right at the highest levels.
But in hindsight, it’s clear that the Nineties were enabled by the Eighties. The post-Sixties calm of the Seventies brought down levels of fear and paranoia, and we’d become a nation no longer at war and breathing deeply, finally enjoying going to McDonald’s and the movies. The Eighties changed that; we went back to fear, stoked by the specter of the “Evil Empire” and the gangrenous encroachment of the “welfare queen”. We went back to being wary of others, both abroad and at home.
And the Nineties made it profitable; now, faux media could rake in billions and its pundits could become stars and millionaires. That hadn’t been possible in the Sixties or Seventies.
That’s how the Triangle got started. The question today is, what can shut it down?
The Republican base – the MAGA voters – have now had their taste of honey. Never before have they had so much hour-by-hour assurance that they are the only true Americans; that their worldview is the only reasonable one; that anyone not in their tribe is an enemy to be distrusted and vanquished.
Their leader is the only legitimate one; they represent the majority, no matter what the actual numbers are; their votes, as the true Americans, are the ones that should count. They are reassured of these beliefs every minute of every hour of every day, by talking heads with $200 haircuts and blonde manes and a self-assurance that is only possible through an absolute surrender of fact.
The Republican base will never, ever step back from this infinite well of comfort and validation. It will never pause and say, “Hm, perhaps critical thinking and skeptical inquiry will be more healthy and productive in the end.” This leg of the Triangle isn’t going away.
What about the fringe outlets? What about the fringe radio and news, Fox and its $200 haircuts and blonde manes, and all their kin?
They pull down hundreds of millions a year in advertising revenue, and that advertising works: tens of millions of viewers and listeners who increasingly take in nothing but fringe media have become the thriving customer base of the brands leveraging it. Will the executives or stockholders of fringe media and their advertisers pause and say, “Hm, perhaps we’re not serving the public interest very well by operating as we are; perhaps there is as much merit in promoting a healthy and vigorous national dialog and public debate as there is in insanely-high profit margins.”
This leg of the Triangle isn’t going away.
Can we take comfort and hope in the fact that many, if not most, Republican politicians think MAGA rhetoric is loopy and are smart enough and sufficiently experienced not to fall for the Big Lies? We have ample evidence that this is, indeed, true: Ted Cruz himself has gone on the record as saying that not a single senator out of 100 believes that Donald Trump is not corrupt; and more specifically, where Trump’s attempts to coerce the Ukrainian government were concerned, “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.”
Might we have a possibility, then, that there will be Republican politicians who stand against the MAGA core of the party, and fight to reestablish the Big Tent? To restore nuance and diversity of viewpoint to a once-proud party? To restore the Big Tent by standing against the Big Lies?
We’ve seen some of them try it. Almost all of them – most recently Liz Cheney – have been shown the door, leaving only those willing to surrender whatever vision or ideals they have, to cater to the MAGA millions who wallow in the cesspool of mindless idolatry, exhilarating otherhatred, and the visceral thrill of faux fear.
That leg of the Triangle isn’t going anywhere.
The inevitable outcome is Doom.
“Say goodnight. The party’s over,” said Sarah Longwell, Republican political strategist, in The Bulwark. “The Good Republicans are gone. Probably for good.”
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