Inside Team Trump's Shrewd Strategy to Kill Democracy
Rachel Bitecofer at The Cycle: Many times Iāve asked you to imagine what it would be like, what your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about contemporary America would be like, if you were one of the 100 million plus Americans who canāt name their own stateās senators. VoxĀ dropped a recent piece that is firewalled, but I want you to read this short excerpt from their reporting:
Now, donāt focus on the particular demographics of this particular disenchanted voter. She could be anyone: a man, a woman, old, young, Black or White. Believe it or not, there are even college educated Americans who have this kind of limited, simplistic frame for interpreting political events. Anyhoo, that is a long wind up to get to what I want to talk to you about today which is the sensitivity of the low information public to lies intended to radicalize them.
Team Trump has a shrewd strategy to use obviously illegal executive orders to prepare the MAGA base for rebellion when they are inevitably struck down. An important concept from Introduction to American Government courses is something called the Expectations Gap. The Expectations Gap refers to the gap between what a president must promise to win election (especiallyĀ to win their partyās nomination) and what he or she can actually deliver through a system intentionally designed to make governing very hard. Unless a president is extraordinarily lucky, like FDR who governed through two crises and used both to reshape the size and scope of government, a president is doomed to over promise and under deliver. All of them.
And that is during the best of times. These are not the best of times. Back in late 2009, early 2010, Republicans developed a keen strategy to try toĀ make Barack Obama a one term president. That strategy was designed to increase the expectations gap by purposefully obstructing major legislation to deny Obama legislative wins. Its a strategy that benefitted Republicans politically so much, it became their go-to strategy throughout the full 8 years of Obama and for 4 years of Joe Biden, with one recent exception: Bidenās Infrastructure bill. They architects of the GOPās opposition strategy had no idea at the time, but their strategy to starve the public of good government went on to play a key role in creating both the MAGA movement (right wing populism) and the Bernie Sanders movement (left wing populism). When people see their government canāt deliver solutions to their problems (or are told hyperbolic lies like Death Panels) they go a little crazy. And as demonstrated above, few voters have the sophistication to understand that Barack Obama failed to deliver on immigration reform because the Republican House simply refused to allow a vote on it.
[...] Thereās just one problem: most of the executive orders Trump has issued to āfinally achieve results for the American peopleā are illegal. Some are so grotesquely illegal they haveĀ Supreme Court justices gaspingĀ at the lunacy of the arguments coming out of what were once well-respected government lawyers. MAGA doesnāt know it yet, but most of Trumpās executive orders will never have the force of law. They will die quick deaths by a judiciary that overall seems inclined to protect the Constitutionās separation of powers system and maintain the power of the courts to review and determine the legality of actions taken by the Congress, the President, and the states. Unfortunately, Team Trump has been radicalizing the MAGA base for weeks in terms of the legitimacy of the courts.
Donald Trumpās executive orders are all about setting the MAGA base for rebellion when and if they get struck down.









