The New Republicanism: "Illiberal" Democracy

Americans are used to hearing that this is the most important election of their lifetime. It’s the real thing this year, or the end of what Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance calls the “late republican period,” and a political reversal on a broad scale.

If the Trump restoration succeeds, a President Donald Trump and Vice President Vance are clear in their direction: They intend to barrel through the balance of powers that has sustained America’s government for more than two centuries.

The Republican ticket agrees that a strongman is needed and required to win America’s culture war. The presidential nominee has spoken of the need for “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The running mate would, in his words, “seize the administrative state for our own purposes.”

These people are serious. They have taken the Republican Party on a 180-degree turn from the familiar small-government conservatism. In the words of Sen. Vance, spoken on a podcast, “If we are going to push back against (liberalism), we have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

https://www.postalley.org/2024/08/15/the-new-republicanism-illiberal-democracy/