Trump is the price that America must pay for allowing direct primaries
The USA has become more populist in its idea of democracy, and so it now follows the path of so many dead democracies before it, empowering a demagogue.
Trumpism, Begala wrote in an email, “is more of a cult of personality, which makes fealty to the Dear Leader even more important. How else do you explain 16 G.O.P. senators who voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006 all refusing to even allow it to be debated in 2022?”
Begala compares Senator Mitch McConnell’s views of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 — “America’s history is a story of ever-increasing freedom, hope and opportunity for all. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 represents one of this country’s greatest steps forward in that story. Today I am pleased the Senate reaffirmed that our country must continue its progress towards becoming a society in which every person, of every background, can realize the American dream” — to McConnell’s stance now: “This is not a federal issue; it ought to be left to the states.”
Republican politicians, in Begala’s assessment,
have deluded themselves into thinking that Trump and the big lie can work for them. The reality is the opposite: Republican politicians work for Trump and the big lie. And they may be powerless to stop it if and when Trump uses it to undermine the 2024 presidential results.
This is the price that America must pay for implementing direct primaries back in the 1960s and 1970s — we’ve destroyed the power of the political parties, and so we’ve empowered people like Trump. If we the Republican Party was still allowed to choose it’s own candidates, it never would have allowed Trump anywhere close to the seat of power. It is well known that Republican elites despise him. But the USA has become more populist in its idea of democracy, and so it now follows the path of so many dead democracies before it, becoming more and more populist until finally a demagogue can take power and end democracy.