Integrity Score 470
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Silver lining, there won’t be another form hopefully after this
Something happened last Saturday that was significant because it was unprecedented: Donald Trump spoke at a rally in the heart of Trump country—Cullman, Alabama, which gave the incumbent president more than 88 percent of the vote in 2020—and he was booed. The jeers were scattered but noticeable, enough so that Trump responded to them.
Trump had encouraged those in the audience to get vaccinated. “I believe totally in your freedoms. I do. You’ve got to do what you have to do,” Trump said, “but I recommend: Take the vaccines. I did it—it’s good.” Yet for a large number of Trump supporters in the audience, even though the former president hadn’t embraced government or private-sector mandates, he had crossed a redline.
Two days later Alex Jones, the far-right radio host and conspiracy theorist Trump courted in 2016, rebuked Trump. After playing a clip of Trump declaring that the vaccines are working, Jones responded, “BS. Trump, that’s a lie. You’re not stupid.” Jones added, “Shame on you, Trump. Seriously. Hey, if you don’t have the good sense to save yourself and your political career, that’s okay. At least you’re gonna get some good Republicans elected, and you know, we like ya. But my God. Maybe you’re not that bright. Maybe Trump’s actually a dumbass.”
These incidents are just a few of the straws in the turbulent wind, signs that something ominous is happening to the Republican Party. The GOP base may be identifying less and less with Trump personally—that was inevitable after he left the presidency—but it is not identifying any less with the conspiracist and antidemocratic impulses that defined him over the past five years.
In fact, the opposite is happening.
Not long ago, Trump was viewed as avant-garde, outrageous, and scandalous, America’s enfant terrible. His actions were viewed as so shocking and norm-shattering that he couldn’t be ignored. In today’s Republican Party, however, Trump is becoming what was once unthinkable—conventional, unexceptional, even something of an establishment figure.
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/radicalism-post-trump-gop/619891/