The Forever Grievance: Conservatives have traded periodic revolts for a permanent revolution

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Commentary: Conservatives have traded periodic revolts for a permanent revolution

By GEOFFREY KABASERVICE
The Washington Post


The tea party movement was just getting started when I began writing a history of the Republican Party in 2009. I viewed the movement as the latest iteration of a basically cyclical populist phenomenon. It would push American politics to the right, I thought at the time, but eventually its impact would dissipate. The country would then swing back toward the center for a number of years until the next conservative counter-reaction.

But the tea party never really faded away. It mutated. It became the Trump movement, which is likely to dominate the Republican Party and have a major impact on politics for years to come. If the best guide to conservatism was once Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s The Cycles of American History, now it might be Leon Trotsky’s The Permanent Revolution.

Conservatism’s familiar pattern of advance, consolidation, retrenchment and renewal has vanished. In its place is something that looks like #MAGA Forever.

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The tea party cohort was notable mainly for its anti-institutionalism and breaking of norms. Its principal accomplishment was the Budget Control Act of 2011, with its spending caps and sequestrations, but its more symbolic action was the 2013 government shutdown. That negativity carried into the formation of the House Freedom Caucus in 2015. The caucus was not much more ideologically conservative than other GOP factions, but it was distinctive for its determination to destroy bipartisan cooperation, deny Obama any legislative achievements or real legitimacy, and dethrone Boehner, who appeared too willing to cut deals with the Democrats.

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The party’s constituents – especially the non-college-educated, working-class citizens who make up much of the Republican base – need the government’s help with their problems. And the party’s long-term viability may be in doubt if a strategy of mindless, implacable obstruction endangers the stability and prosperity of the country, causing too many voters to consider it an existential threat. ...........(more)

https://www.concordmonitor.com/Conservatives-choose-permanent-revolution-37622634