I think the answer is something like this. In the Obama era, the GOP was an ideologically extreme party that regularly subordinated partisan interests and also civic responsibility to ideological demands. (See, e.g., threatening to default on the debt.) (1/n)https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1390425519334645760 …
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In the Trump era, the GOP has gone a very long way toward subordinating ideological demands to partisan interests. But it has also gone far further in terms of subordinating civic responsibility to partisan interests. (Most egregiously in the attack on the Capitol.) (2/n)
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Subordinating ideological demands to partisan interests is kind of the definition of moderation for a political party. So in that sense, the hyper-partisanship of the Trump era *has* been moderating. (3/n)
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But subordinating civic responsibility to partisan interests is, when it goes far enough, how you get a dictatorship, or a civil war, or some other breakdown in civic order. (4/n)
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In an academic sense it’s an interesting question whether it had to be this way. I strongly doubt a responsible moderate critical of the Iraq war and defensive of middle-class entitlements could have won the nomination, which Trump did. (5/n)
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But it’s not wrong to note that Trump both opened up space for heterodoxy and policy innovation *and* made the GOP far more extremist in its partisanship in a way that is distinctly and alarmingly dangerous. (6/6)
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That's an interesting frame. Let me think on it.
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