Jonathan Bernstein: “What is available to those wishing to differentiate themselves from mainstream conservatives are nonsense and nihilism. Come up with something crazy enough, or destructive (including self-destructive) enough, and maybe the bulk of the party won’t follow them, allowing them to ‘win’ the True Conservative game. This has been going on for some time, with partisan polarization turning the party more and more conservative, and removing first the liberal Republicans and then the moderates and eventually anyone but the very conservative, forcing the fringers to find more and more dubious ways to prove that they and only they are True.”
“The key point here is that there is no counter move available to the rest of the party. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can say that they oppose such-and-such a policy because they are liberals, not socialists. There’s no parallel move for the Republican congressional leaders, Kevin McCarthy in the House or Mitch McConnell in the Senate. That doesn’t mean that mainstream conservatives always go along, but within the norms of the party they’re not allowed to call anyone too conservative, let alone any more negative characterization.”
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