him into power despite his election loss, praising january 6th. people who criticized donald trump are watching their careers die. people who stand up for democracy are becoming pariahs in the gop. extremism has been a litmus test for the party and that is moving the base towards, i fear, an inevitable slide towards authoritarianism. you mention there are no counter availing forces here. the opposite. people who are moderate i m not talking about politically moderate or on the partisan scale, but sort of intellectually, culturally moderate or want to moderate extremism. it is not a reward structure. it s the opposite of that. exactly right. and i think there is a phenomenon going on right now with the stardom that comes with authoritarianism extremism. it had been amplified by the breakdown of party control and
nothing to check tauthor authoritarianism. even more important than the ones at the beginning. no counter availing forces. the rise of social media. i m always hesitant to put all the blame on social media. the medium, as it were. i think if there weren t a receptive audience, it wouldn t be effective. it is easy to blame facebook for marjorie taylor greene. why not talk about the masses of people who want to be susceptible to her? you re absolutely right. it s not just social media. it is institutional factors like how you win an election in america. because of gerrymandering or because of primaries that amplify the voices of extremists, the people who vote like clockwork in primaries, the reward structure is to become more extreme. the only way to lose a lot of these competitive districts is
the party and there is a reward structure for lawmaker whose go along with this. if you look into the straw poll, many of the people who rank highly on the list, like ron desantis and ted cruz, have backed up or not directly condemned this lie about the 2020 election. there is definitely a reward structure in this. in terms of trump s hold on the party, though, you see it from the messaging perspective, especially as he s starting to take much more public posture over the course of these next few weeks and months leading up to the midterm elections this is the message that he is choosing to lead with. a backwards looking message about what happened in 2020, hoping that that s enough red meat to actually fire up the base to go vote again in the upcoming midterm elections it may be a different plan than people like the rnc and other republican groups would like to lead with, but undoubtly, trump is the person with the biggest reach and easily the biggest megaphone, still definitely the h
it s hard to believe but when barack obama announced he was running for president in february 2007 there was no iphone, twitter had just been launched and this thing called politico was less than a-month-old. by the time the 2012 campaign rolled around, politics and journalism and media had collided, a big bang that completely changed the conduct and coverage of political campaigns. peter hamby writes with instagram and iphones and a journalistic reward structure in washington that often prizes speed and scoops over context, campaigns are increasingly fearful of the reporters who cover them. any perceived gaffe can become a full-blown narrative in a matter of hours, if not minutes, thanks to the velocity of the twitter and national reporters. so does that make campaign