The Atlantic
The modern Republican Party does not tolerate criticism of its once and current leader.
Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty
One of the many Republican principles that Donald Trump obliterated was what was known as Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” Like several of the stone-tablet dictates (the prohibitions on committing adultery and bearing false witness come to mind), this directive was lightly followed and rarely enforced politics is a rough sport. But Reagan’s edict served the purpose of keeping internal GOP disputes from getting out of hand. Candidates and party leaders (including a former vice president named Dick Cheney) regularly used the line as a way to de-escalate intraparty fights.
The Atlantic
America’s Second-Worst Scenario
So far, cumulative acts of civic virtue have saved the republic. But the constitutional order is still in danger.
Updated at 7:18 p.m. ET on January 17, 2021.
The next time an insurgent mob arrives to sack the Capitol, if one happens to try between now and Inauguration Day, mere strength of numbers will not overwhelm the defenses. In the 10 days since the January 6 assault on Congress, the Secret Service has overseen the establishment of an instant “green zone,” fortified by eight-foot steel barriers and patrolled by some 20,000 National Guardsmen. Those are real bullets in the magazines of their Army-issued M-4 assault rifles, not at all the standard gear for maintaining civic order.
The Atlantic
Trump’s threats aren’t performative he’s pointing a loaded gun at democracy.
January 5, 2021
Shutterstock / The Atlantic
If people “define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas wrote in 1928. That sociological insight often referred to as the Thomas theorem offers the best way to think about this peculiar moment in American politics.
It’s what the “senior Republican official” quoted by
The Washington Post in early November, on how to respond to President Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of electoral fraud, failed to understand. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” the official asked.