The GOP: Between Mainstream and Radicalized Conservatism

It has become a commonplace to describe the current state of the GOP as drifting towards increasingly questionable positions that border on the authoritarian – at least in the outlets of the ‘mainstream’ media. Up until its recent censure of the capitol riots of January 6th 2021 as ‘legitimate political discourse’ the Republican Party in the thrall of ex- and potential future president Trump has exhibited a tendency towards acrimonious extremism, be it with regard to anti-corona policies, immigration issues or women’s reproductive rights. But behind this seemingly straightforward description loom important and yet unanswered questions, the two main ones of which this paper seeks to address. First, there is the question as to how to capture the ideological trajectory and positioning of the Republican Party in the vocabulary of conservatism. Is this a party that has simply taken a turn towards more staunchly conservative positions, located more to the right of the political spectrum? Or is it conceptually feasible and also political necessary to describe this trajectory as one in which the GOP (or at least significant elements within it) has effectively left behind mainstream conservatism to move towards something that recent commentators have dubbed ‘radicalized conservatism’ but which might be more appropriately referred to as authoritarianism? Answering this question presupposes a reflection on what constitutes conservatism as an ideology, where its boundaries are located and how it relates to what lies beyond these. Second, how do we account for this trajectory? To crouch the question into a simplified dichotomy: Was the GOP ‘trumpified’ in the sense that he transformed a mainstream conservative party into one that borders on the right-wing populist or authoritarian? Or was Trump more of a symptom of the process that the GOP was undergoing and an effect of what was already transpiring in its DNA? If the latter turns out to be the more plausible interpretation, this begs additional questions: What factors can explain this ideological shift in the GOP; what role does, for example, the rise of the Tea Party in the wake of the election of Obama play; how does the Bush II administration with its well-documented corrosion of constitutional values figure in such an account? And more fundamentally, in what ways does this force us to reconsider the well-established historical narrative of the GOP as a party that had shed its ‘lunatic fringe’ during the Reagan years and positioned itself as a reliably center-right political force? Depending on what insights the inquiry yields the narrative of a chastened party that had expunged its racist elements etc. might turn out to have been ill-informed. The paper concludes with a reflection on its findings and an exploration of the implications for the condition and trajectory of center-right political forces in contemporary liberal democracies more generally.