The importance of center-right

Интересная статья с не в меру провокационным заголовком. (But the click-bait did work on me.) Статья написана в предположении, что после Трампа республиканцы опять потеряют власть и на этот раз уже надолго и всерьёз – по тем же причинам, что они могли бы потерять её уже сейчас, в том числе по мнению некоторых консерваторов. Вопрос в том как они отреагируют.

In his recent study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe, the political scientist Daniel Ziblatt zeroes in on a decisive factor distinguishing the states that achieved democratic stability from those that fell prey to authoritarian impulses: The key variable was not the strength or character of the political left, or of the forces pushing for greater democratization, so much as the viability of the center-right. A strong center-right party could wall off more extreme right-wing movements, shutting out the radicals who attacked the political system itself ... If groups that traditionally have enjoyed privileged positions see a future for themselves in a more democratic society, Ziblatt finds, they will accede to it. But if “conservative forces believe that electoral politics will permanently exclude them from government, they are more likely to reject democracy outright.”

Проводятся интересные исторические параллели с адаптацией элит к изменениям в обществе и перспективам потери власти. В частности, о предверии гражданской войны и о периоде FDR и сразу после.

The Democrats lost the presidential race in 1928—but won the next five, in one of the most dominant runs in American political history. The most effective way to protect the things they cherished, Democratic politicians belatedly discovered, wasn’t by locking immigrants out of the party, but by inviting them in ...  If the center-right decides to accept some electoral defeats and then seeks to gain adherents via argumentation and attraction—and, crucially, eschews making racial heritage its organizing principle—then the GOP can remain vibrant. Its fissures will heal and its prospects will improve, as did those of the Democratic Party in the 1920s, after Wilson.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/how-america-ends/600757/