Republicans Are Lemmings
A winning rhetorical strategy will attack Republicans’ core strengths (see “Break the Republican Party, Save Democracy”). The Party’s greatest strength is that its voters vote Republican no matter what.
This blind loyalty clashes like plaid and polka dots with Republicans’ self-proclaimed devotion to individual liberty. People who make a fetish of “freedom” think and speak with a unanimity that dictators wish for from their followers.
Such loyalty leads to foreseeable disasters. W. and Trump bungled everything they touched, yet Republicans supported them to the end. Before Russia was the enemy; now Russia should be a friend. Zygotes have a right to life but not people killed by poverty, guns, and pollution. Climate change is a vast global conspiracy. Republicans follow their leaders into one absurdity after another
Republicans aren’t aware of these contradictions. They think of themselves as highly principled. They believed X strongly yesterday, and today they believe the opposite of X just as strongly. So where’s the inconsistency?
However Republicans explain it to themselves, they always wind up supporting what other Republicans support. When it serves the Party, they all pivot at the same time, never admitting to changing their views.
To explain this groupthink, commentators point to the closed universe of Fox News and right-wing media and to disinformation from corporations, Russia, and China. What commentators miss is that Republicans want to think alike. Polls shows that the private opinions of many Republicans differ from the Party’s positions. Publicly, they still vote in lockstep.
Republicans tune into right-wing media to be told what to think. It’s not that they’re unaware of reality—most Republicans also listen to mainstream news. They simply choose to believe what other Republicans believe, however absurd, and use every mental trick to rationalize their choice.
Democrats and center/left commentators should attack this contradiction between Republicans’ belief in individual liberty and their lemming-like behavior. This should be the continuous baseline for any campaign to save democracy from a malignant Republican Party.