I asked Rubin which group did more damage to his own party:
If/when the Democrats lose a big midterm, I think it is likely that the Team will face a lot of criticism for pushing progressive policies that are not popular enough with voters (police reform) compared to with policies that have more public support (expanding Medicare, for example).
However, Rubin countered, Biden will also be held accountable if Democrats are hit hard in November:
In this day and age it is unreasonable to expect that you can be a figure of FDR without the kind of stable and substantial majority in Congress he benefits from. The result of being an experienced politician is that you should anticipate this and plan accordingly.
In contrast, Rubin continued:
There is little evidence that Republicans like Gosar and Greene are doing any short-term damage to the Republican Party – the long-term damage is less obvious. And one way we can tell that Republican leaders (and voters) wasted no time removing a member whose behavior didn’t hurt the party’s brand: Madison Cawthorne. The fact that this did not happen to Greene or Gosar or other members of MAGAish suggests that they are not considered sufficient of a problem.
Frances Leea political scientist at Princeton, argued in an email that extremists can in fact play a constructive role in legislative proceedings:
While not defending the exaggerations and sophistry some of the members you list have engaged in, it’s worth remembering a few examples:
Massie has staunchly opposed the continued use of proxy voting in Congress for more than two years during the pandemic as undermining tradition and institutional character. For those of us who have long worried about the large percentage of members being only in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday, are those scenarios off-limits?
Is there any value in Massie’s insistence on holding public debates before Congress passes the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a stance that has drawn stiff opposition from the government? President Trump?
Lee admits:
Members who incite violence against other members or the organization cannot be opposed. But I would encourage a tolerant attitude towards legally elected representatives, even those whose views are far from mainstream. It is always worth considering what their constituents see in them and what, if anything, they contribute to the debate. Such members make Congress a more fully representative body.
Michael B. Levywho served as chief of staff to former Senator Lloyd Bentsen, a Democrat of Texas, points out, “There are many similarities in that both groups live and die by primaries because of their counties. they are one-party counties and don’t have to worry much about the average voter in their state. “
Beyond that, Levy continued, there are significant differences: “The Squad’s agenda is a left-wing agenda of basic international social democracy, participation in an expanded social welfare state to an expanding field of cultural liberalism and identity politics.”
Levy writes, The Squad, “while willing to attack members of their party and support candidates in primaries against their party’s incumbents, continues to show allegiance to the basic democratic rules of the system as a whole.”
In contrast, Levy argues, “The MAGA caucus has a less coherent ideology, even if it has a distinctly angry populist undertone.” That might just be temporary, Levy suggested,
as more and more intellectuals try to create a consistent “inclusive” style of thought alongside protectionism, cultural and religious traditionalism, and an isolationist but foreign policy according to nationalism. Arguably theirs is also a variant of identity politics, but that is less explicitly stated. As far as I can tell, they don’t have a consistent approach to economic policy or the state of well-being.
Two scholars have been very critical of developments in the Republican Party, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, co-author of the book “It’s even worse than it looks: How the US Constitutional System collided with the New Politics of Extremism,” both were much more critical of the MAGA caucus than the Rangers.
Mann was adamant in his email:
MAGA Caucus is anti-democratic, dictatorial and completely separate from reality and truth. The team accepts opposing views well within democracy. What’s striking about the MAGA Caucus is that they’re closer to the Republican mainstream these days, given that Republican officials are reticent about challenging Trump. We worry about the future of American democracy because the entire Republican Party is gone. Crazy extremists have taken over one of our two major parties.
MAGA team, Ornstein wrote via email, including
true believers, people who think Trump has won, that there is widespread voter fraud, the country needs a caudillo, we have to crack down on transgender people, critical racial theory is a bad thing plague swept the country and beyond. The team is definitely on the leftmost side of the party, but they don’t have authoritarian tendencies and views.
Ocasio-Cortez, Ornstein writes, is “intelligent, competent and handled her five minutes of questioning in committees like a master.”
William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings and co-author with Elaine Kamarck, also of Brookings, of “The new politics of evasion: How ignoring swing voters could reopen the door for Donald Trump and threaten American democracy,” wrote by email:
How does one measure “peak”? By two yardsticks – detached from reality and threats to the democratic process – the nod to the MAGA mob for the Rangers, whose extremism is confined to the policy sphere. I could argue that Team‘S policy stance – destroyed the police, abolished ICE, instituted a Green New Deal – did more damage to the Democrats than the MAGA mob did to the Republicans. President Biden was forced to roll back these policies, while leaving Republicans unharmed. By refusing to criticize – let alone – MAGA’s extremist representatives, Donald Trump has established his party’s regime. A majority of Democrats with ranks and records disagree with the Rangers’ views. There is no evidence that Republicans are troubled by extremism within their own ranks.
I asked Galston what it meant for Marjorie Taylor Greene to win the dropout on May 24 with 69.5% of the primary vote.
He replied:
Trumpians have a strong majority in the Republican Party, and in many areas the fight is seen as the strongest Republican candidate. This is especially true in bold red counties, where winning the nomination equates to winning the general election. A similar dynamic is evident in the workplace in deep blue counties, where the most left-leaning candidates often have the upper hand. Candidates like these are rarely successful in swing districts, where the swings between moderate and independent voters determine the winners of the general election. In both parties, there has been a shift away from candidates interested in the governance process, and toward candidates with distinct skills rather than legislation. I could hypothesize that in an age of hyperpolarization where grid locking is the default option, the preference of those who talk more than those who do can be oddly rational.
They may be more talkative than doers, but if the current projections suggest that Republicans win control of the House on November 8, 2022, the MAGA faction will be in a position to take power. real force.
