Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
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These norm-exploding stances raise the
specter o democratic backsliding o a
kind that seemed impossible only a few
years ago. Yet they are less a departure
from the recent history o the Republican
Party than a hastening o its march down
an alarming path.WHAT HAPPENED?
The standard explanations for the
Republican Party’s radicalization focus
on race and culture, seeing in the United
States the same forces o resentment
that have driven right-wing populism
in other rich democracies. The parallels
are real, but the right-wing backlash
in the United States looks dierent
from its foreign counterparts in at least
two respects.
First, although energized by popular
anger, the radicalized ³£¡ depends
heavily on an organized network
o powerful, well-funded right-wing
groups that are closely tied to the
Republican establishment. The billion-
aire Koch brothers, raising unprec-
edented resources from the extremely
wealthy and extremely conservative,
have built a virtual shadow party.
Through organizations such as Ameri-
cans for Prosperity, they have poured
a few billion dollars over the past
decade into grass-roots mobilization
and campaigning on behal oÊ hard-
right Republicans and hard-right
policies such as the Trump tax cuts.
The powerful U.S. Chamber o Com-
merce has undergone a massive
expansion, moved far to the right, and
become an increasingly integrated
part o the Republican Party. The
American Legislative Exchange Council
has done much the same at the state
level. Although some o these groups,state after state, Republicans have
launched systematic eorts to disenfran-
chise young, low-income, and nonwhite
voters who they worried were unlikely
to support the ³£¡. And in several
states, Republican elected ocials have
overridden voter initiatives to expand
health care (Maine), enfranchise ex-
felons (Florida), and implement ethics
reforms (South Dakota).
The radicalism o the ³£¡ means
that it is no longer a conventional
conservative party. It now displays char-
acteristics o what scholars o compara-
tive politics call an “antisystem party”—
one that seeks to foment tribalism,
distort elections, and subvert political
institutions and norms. Although these
tendencies appeared well before
Trump’s election, they have grown only
stronger under his presidency.
In short, Madison’s formula for
ensuring moderation has stopped work-
ing. Extremism on the right, rather than
provoking a moderating reaction, has
become self-reinforcing. Positions that
were once at or beyond the outer
fringe o American conservatism have
become Ãrst acceptable and then
Republican orthodoxy. More than ever
before, the Republican Party is dismissive
o climate change, hostile to both the
welfare state and the regulatory state,
and committed to tax cuts for the
rich—positions that make it an outlier
even among conservative parties in
rich democracies. Trump’s presidency
has reinforced the ³£¡’s insurgent
nature, as he and his allies have
launched attacks on the foundations o
democracy—the press, the courts,
law enforcement, the political opposi-
tion—with virtually no pushback or
even complaints from within their party.