Krugman: The Education of Fanatical Centrists

[BeyondGeography]

Will they finally admit what the G.O.P. has become?

It’s hard to believe that barely three weeks have passed since Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, issued a mysterious subpoena to the acting director of national intelligence, demanding that he produce a whistle-blower complaint filed by someone in the intelligence community. Since that subpoena was issued, the impeachment of Donald Trump has gone from implausibility to near certainty; I at least find it hard to see how the House can fail to impeach given what we already know about Trump’s actions. Conviction in the Senate remains a long shot, but not as long as it once seemed.

And the whole tenor of our national conversation has changed. It looks to me as if we’re witnessing the rapid collapse of a powerful faction in U.S. public life, one whose refusal to accept facts at odds with its prejudices has long been a major source of political dysfunction. But I’m not talking about the right-wing extremists who dominate the Republican Party. Sorry, but they’re not going anywhere. Most of Trump’s base is sticking with him, while the list of prominent Republican politicians willing to call out Trump’s malfeasance in clear language consists so far of Mitt Romney and, well, Mitt Romney.

No, I’m talking about fanatical centrists, who aren’t a large slice of the electorate, but have played an outsize role in elite opinion and media coverage. These are people who may have been willing to concede that Trump was a bad guy, but otherwise maintained, in the teeth of the evidence, that our two major parties were basically equivalent: Each party had its extremists, but each also had its moderates, and everything would be fine if these moderates could work together. Who am I talking about? Well, among other people, Joe Biden, who has repeatedly insisted that Trump is an aberration, not representative of the Republican Party as a whole. (Biden’s refusal to admit what he was facing may be one reason his response to the Ukraine smear has seemed so wobbly.)

Some of us have been pushing back against that worldview for many years, arguing that today’s Republican Party is a radical force increasingly opposed to democracy. Way back in 2003 I wrote that modern conservatism is “a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system.” In 2012 Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein declared that the central problem of U.S. politics was a G.O.P. that was not just extreme but “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

For a long time, however, making that case — pointing out that Republicans were sounding ever more authoritarian and violating more and more democratic norms — got you dismissed as shrill if not deranged. Even Trump’s rise, and the obvious parallels between Trumpism and the authoritarian movements that have gutted democracy in places like Hungary and Poland, barely dented centrist complacency. Remember, just a few months ago most of the news media treated Attorney General William Barr’s highly misleading summary of the Mueller report as credible...

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/republicans-trump-moderates.html

[zipplewrath]

1. The tyranny of the centrists

I've long thought about what I consider the "tyranny of the centrists". It is the over sized influence they have upon legislation. Despite which party is in control, they pull legislation back towards themselves. They exist in both parties, but basically they leverage the votes of the opposition to move legislation towards themselves. They frustrate both parties, but never are held to account and have a sense of entitlement as some sort of "sensible middle" that is no more sensible than either party.

[Celerity]

2. I can see this part giving some the vapours

Who am I talking about? Well, among other people, Joe Biden, who has repeatedly insisted that Trump is an aberration, not representative of the Republican Party as a whole. (Biden’s refusal to admit what he was facing may be one reason his response to the Ukraine smear has seemed so wobbly.)

[dgauss]

3. I've seen plenty of posts touting the "horseshoe" theory.

Basically, as I understand the horseshoe metaphor, the right and the left both have their extremists and somehow they circle around like a horseshoe to meet at some point point where they are nearly the same thing: extremism. So something like Medicare for All (the "extreme left" ) is equivalent to the most radical and destructive ideas on the right.

[DrFunkenstein]

4. By Moving Hard To The Right, What Is "Centrist" Has Moved With Them

Which was the plan all along.