When identity politics trumps the Constitution | The defining feature of the Trump-era GOP, scholarship suggests, is a bias toward the in-group that overrides nearly every value fundamental to our democracy

From G Elliott Morris (formerly of *The Economist* and *538*, now independent):

>Since 2011, surveys showed Republicans (particularly but not only the party’s elite opinion leaders) had increasingly defined their movement as one that opposed different left-leaning groups, particularly gay, trans, Black, and Muslim Americans. Republicans’ favorability ratings for these groups sank lower and lower from 2012 to 2024, and became increasingly predictive of primary and general election voting patterns.

>By 2020, political scientists started calling these people “ethnically antagonist,” and showed they held views on a range of liberal values that were incompatible with democracy. The ethnic antagonists were more likely to agree with statements such as “strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules to get things done” and “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it,” for example:

https://preview.redd.it/cqadycstlpqf1.png?width=598&format=png&auto=webp&s=ef60634d1792898ab8810e970affdd48b0e79e35

>The defining feature of the Trump-era GOP, scholarship suggests, is a bias toward the in-group that overrides nearly every value fundamental to our democracy. The overriding psychology in the GOP today is “factionalism,” an us-vs-them mentality that places loyalty to the in-group — and the in-group’s leader — above all else.

>Factionalism is what makes Republicans who decried Barack Obama’s “executive overreach” in 2012 support the president illegally deploying the National Guard/Marines to Los Angeles to “suppress” nonexistent violent riots. Factionalism is what makes it OK, apparently, for Trump to call some groups of American citizens “Marxist vermin,” who pose so grave a threat to the country that federal troops need to “liberate” cities from their local “socialist” leaders, by force.

>And factionalism is what drove Republicans to completely abandon their supposed devotion to free speech this week.h