Tribalism put Scott Pruitt in power. It may not be enough to save him.

[Judi Lynn]

He is pure Trumpism, but that doesn’t mean Trump will spare him.
By David Roberts@[e-mail] Apr 7, 2018, 9:00am EDT

Scott Pruitt is not like past administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency, just as Donald Trump is not like past presidents.

In both cases, it’s not that they’re conservatives. Conservatives have held those positions before. It’s that they seem to be engaged in something different than their predecessors — different not just in degree, but in kind.

They are governing on behalf of their allies and supporters, against their perceived enemies, with virtually no claims to anything more universal. That kind of tribalism in politics is not new, of course, but with the Trump administration, the US conservative movement has more or less abandoned any pretense of anything loftier. Respect for mutual norms and procedural neutrality have gone well out the window.

The GOP has become, in the immortal words of Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

More:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/4/7/17205276/trump-scott-pruitt-tribalism