How the Right Lost Its Mind
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17. Ben Howe, “I Lied to Myself for Years About Who My Allies Were. No More,” RedState, May 2, 2016, www.redstate.com/aglanon/2016/05/02/i-lied-to-myself-for-years/.
18. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Capella, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
19. Matthew Sheffield, “Donald Trump, Mainstream Conservative: Those Who Have Long Stoked the Flames of Populism Should Not Be Surprised by the Results,” American Conservative, June 10, 2016.
20. Philip N. Howard, Gillian Bolsover, Bence Kollanyi, Samantha Bradshaw, Lisa-Maria Neudert. “Junk News and Bots During the U.S. Election: What Were Michigan Voters Sharing Over Twitter?” Data Memo 2017.1. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. www.politicalbots.org.
21. John Markoff, “Automated Pro-Trump Bots Overwhelmed Pro-Clinton Messages, Researchers Say,” New York Times, November 17, 2016.
22. Danny Westneat, “UW Professor: The Information War Is Real, and We’re Losing It,” Seattle Times, March 29, 2017.
23. James Poniewozik, “In Conservative Prime Time, It’s Now Fox and Enemies, New York Times, May 3, 2017.
24. Charles J. Sykes, “If Liberals Hate Him, Then Trump Must Be Doing Something Right,” New York Times, May 12, 2017.
2. CONFESSIONS OF A RECOVERING LIBERAL
1. These quotes are taken from an unpublished manuscript: Jay G. Sykes, “The Levelled Society: The Legacy of Liberalism,” 1976.
2. Charlie Sykes, “The Trump Temptation,” Right Wisconsin, August 15, 2015, www.rightwisconsin.com/opinion/perspectives/the-trump-temptation.
3. Peter Wehner, “Why I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump,” New York Times, January 14, 2015.
3. THE ATTACK ON THE CONSERVATIVE MIND
1. “GOP Quickly Unifies Around Trump; Clinton Still Has Modest Lead,” Public Policy Poll, May 10, 2016, www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/05/gop-quickly-unifies-around-trump-clinton-still-has-modest-lead.html.
2. Ilya Somin, “What No One Talks About During Election Season: Voter Ignorance,” Forbes.com, November 3, 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/03/what-no-one-talks-about-during-election-season-voter-ignorance/#2eb1b1dc3a22.
3. Nicholas Kristof, “Lessons from the Media’s Failures in Its Year with Trump,” New York Times, December 31, 2016.
4. Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, No. 6 (1999), psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf.
5. David Dunning, “The Psychological Quirk That Explains Why You Love Donald Trump: The Popularity of the GOP Front-runner Can Be Explained by the Dunning-Kruger Effect,” Politico Magazine, May 25, 2016.
6. James Hohmann, “The Daily 202: Trump’s Pollster Says He Ran a ‘Post-ideological’ Campaign,” Washington Post, December 5, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/05/daily-202-trump-s-pollster-says-he-ran-a-post-ideological-campaign/5844d166e9b69b7e58e45f2a/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.16974f4ebdab.
7. Matt K. Lewis, Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots) (New York: Hachette Books, 2015), 105.
8. Kevin Williamson, “Translating ‘Make America Great Again’ into English,” National Review, January 24, 2016.
9. Ibid.
10. Nahema Marchal, “‘White Anchor’ Tomi Lahren Under Fire for Suggesting the Clintons Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich,” Heat Street, October 24, 2016, heatst.com/politics/white-anchor-tomi-lahren-under-fire-for-suggesting-the-clintons-murdered-dnc-staffer-seth-rich.
11. Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Tomi Lahren: Young, Vocal and the Right’s Rising Media Star,” New York Times, December 4, 2016.
12. Jamie Weinstein, “Tomi Lahren on Conservatism, Her Support for Trump and Her Influences,” Daily Caller, October 23, 2016, dailycaller.com/2016/10/23/tomi-lahren-on-conservatism-her-support-for-trump-and-her-influences/#ixzz4YzMq8QoR.
13. Marc Fisher, “Donald Trump Doesn’t Read Much. Being President Probably Wouldn’t Change That,” Washington Post, July 17, 2016.
14. Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds., Reagan in His Own Hand (New York: Free Press, 2001).
15. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: New York Review Books, 2008), xv.
16. Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1955).
4. THE CONSERVATIVE IDEA
1. William F. Buckley Jr., The Unmaking of a Mayor (New York: Encounter Books, 2015), xiv.
2. Ibid., xiii.
3. Ibid., 144.
4. Ibid., xvii.
5. “Publisher’s Statement,” National Review, November 19, 1955.
6. Ibid.
7. Lee Edwards, “The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism,” Heritage Foundation, January 22, 2007.
8. Ibid.
9. George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976). See also: George Nash, “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Then and Now,” National Review, April 26, 2016.
10. Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (New York: Hillman Books, 1960), 7.
11. Ibid., 7.
12. Ibid., 8.
13. E. J. Dionne, Why the Right Went Wrong (New York: Simon & Schuster), 462.
14. Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, 9.
15. Matthew Continetti, “The Coming Conservative Dark Age,” Commentary, April 12, 2016.
16. William F. Buckley Jr., Up from Liberalism (New York: Hillman 1959), 192.
17. Matthew Continetti, “The Coming Conservative Dark Age.”
18. Whittaker Chambers, “Big Sister Is Watching You,” National Review, December 28, 1957.
19. William F. Buckley Jr., National Review, 12 (1962), 88. See also William F. Buckley Jr., “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me,” Commentary, March 1, 2008.
20. William F. Buckley Jr., “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me.”
21. Matthew Continetti, “Crisis of the Conservative Intellectual Column: How Populism Displaced Conservatism in the Republican Party,” Washington Free Beacon, October 21, 2016, freebeacon.com/columns/crisis-conservative-intellectual.
22. Ibid.
23. Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 241.
24. “Why the South Must Prevail,” National Review, August 14, 1957.
25. “Foul,” National Review, April 18, 1956.
26. Quoted in Alvin S. Felzenberg, A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) 159–60.
27. Continetti, “Crisis of the Intellectual Column.”
28. Ibid.
29. Alvin S. Felzberg, A Man and His Presidents, 299.
30. Ibid. 274.
31. Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right, xvi.
32. Ibid., 253.
33. Ibid., 264.
34. Ibid., 272.
5. STORM WARNINGS
1. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, “The Party of Sam’s Club: Isn’t It Time the Republicans Did Something for Their Voters?,” Weekly Standard, November 14, 2005.
2. Ibid.
3. David Frum, “Republicans Must Change to Win,” Financial Times, May 7, 2008.
4. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, “The Party of Sam’s Club.”
5. John Avlon, Wingnuts: Extremism in the Age of Obama (New York: Beast Books, 2014), 35.
6. Ibid., 41.
7. Ibid., 146.
8. Ibid., 45.
9. Ibid., 123.
10. Charles J. Sykes, “Fall Reckoning: The Voters Exact Vengeance upon the Disdainful Democrats,” Wisconsin Interest Ma
gazine 19, no. 3 (November 2010).
11. Michael Murray, “Tea Party Protests: 14-Year-Old Wisconsin Activist Reacts to Hecklers,” ABC News, April 21, 2011, abcnews.go.com/US/tea-party-hecklers-14-year-wisconsin-tea-party/story?id=13421116.
12. Patrick McIlheran, “Rep. Gordon Hintz Says He’s So (Expletive) Sorry,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, March 1, 2011.
13. “WTDY Host John ‘Sly’ Sylvester Insults Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.” Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp-DFsUvYn0.
14. Scott K. Walker, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge (New York: Sentinel, 2014), 61.
15. Michael Savage, “Savage Predicts ‘A Revolution in This Country if This Keeps up Because the White Male … Has Nothing to Lose,’” Savage Nation, August 21, 2009.
16. John Avlon, Wingnuts, 48.
17. David Frum, “When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?,” New York Magazine, November 20, 2011.
18. Charles J. Sykes, “Time to Confront Crackpots,” Wisconsin Interest Magazine 22, no. 1 (April 2013). www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis?utm_term=.thBXrODwx#.laEMdaBNR.
19. Nicole Duran, “Ryan Warns GOP Wisconsin Could Turn Blue Again,” Washington Examiner, December 19, 2016. See also Bill Glauber, “Paul Ryan Thanks Charlie Sykes for Lifting Conservative Ideas,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 19, 2016.
20. Matt K. Lewis, “How Paul Ryan Went from Wingnut to RINO: The Surprising Reasons Why the Onetime Conservative Wunderkind Is Now Considered a Traitor by Many on the Right.” Daily Beast, October 26, 2015.
21. Josh Feldman, “Palin in 2010: ‘I’m Very Impressed with Paul Ryan,’ ‘He Is Sharp, He Is Smart’,” Mediaite, May 8, 2016, www.mediaite.com/tv/palin-in-2010-im-very-impressed-with-paul-ryan-he-is-sharp-he-is-smart/.
22. Ibid.
23. Alex Griswold, “Coulter: I Don’t Care If Donald Trump Performs Abortions in the White House,” Mediaite, August 16, 2015, www.mediaite.com/online/coulter-i-dont-care-if-donald-trump-performs-abortions-in-the-white-house.
24. Matt Vespa, “Poll: Paul Ryan’s Approval Collapses, More GOP Voters Say Trump Best Represents Their View of the Party,” Townhall, October 21, 2016.
25. Sahil Kapur, “Poll Shows Republicans Less Committed to Trump in Defeat: Just 24 Percent of Republicans and Those Who Lean That Way Say Trump Should Be the Face of the Party Nationally if Clinton Wins,” Bloomberg, October 20, 2016.
6. THE PERPETUAL OUTRAGE MACHINE
1. Paul H. Jossey, “How We Killed the Tea Party,” Politico, August 14, 2016, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164.
2. Matea Gold, “Tea Party PACs Reap Money for Midterms, But Spend Little on Candidates,” Washington Post, April 26, 2014.
3. Kenneth P. Vogel, “The Rise of ‘Scam PACs’: Conservatives Sound Alarms About Self-Dealing Fundraisers,” Politico, January 26, 2015, www.politico.com/story/2015/01/super-pac-scams-114581.
4. Ibid.
5. Brian Sikma, “Scam PACs Enrich Vendors, Waste Donor Dollars: Little to No Money Goes to Where it Claims It Will,” Right Wisconsin, August 30, 2016, www.rightwisconsin.com/opinion/daily-takes/scam-pacs-enrich-vendors-waste-donor-dollars.
6. Brim, Sikma, “Faux Tea Party Groups Enrich Vendors, Waste Donor Dollars,” Media Trackers, August 29, 2016.
7. Vogel, Kenneth P. “The Rise of ‘Scam PACs.’”
8. Ibid.
9. Quoted in Matt K. Lewis, Too Dumb to Fail, 131.
10. David French, “Conservative Scams Are Bringing Down the Conservative Movement,” National Review, August 15, 2016.
11. Charles C. W. Cooke, “Against the Dangerous Myth That the GOP Has ‘Given Obama Everything He Wanted,’” National Review, May 6, 2016.
12. Ibid.
13. E. J. Dionne, Why the Right Went Wrong, 3.
14. Andrew Blasko, “Reagan and Heritage: A Unique Partnership,” The Heritage Foundation, June 7, 2004, www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2004/06/reagan-and-heritage-a-unique-partnership.
15. Ibid.
16. Paul Blumenthal, “Jim DeMint, Heritage Foundation Merger Brings Politics to Forefront,” Huffington Post, December 7, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/07/jim-demint-heritage-foundation_n_2258631.html.
17. Zeke J. Miller, “Hidden Hand: How Heritage Action Drove DC to Shut Down: Harnessing the Power of the Tea Party, the Political Action Arm of the Once-esteemed Heritage Foundation Has Perfected the Art of Disrupting DC, Whatever the Cost,” Time, September 30, 2013.
18. Ibid.
19. Kenneth P. Vogel and Mackenzie Weinger, “The Tea Party Radio Network,” Politico, April 17, 2014.
20. Matt Fuller, “Heritage Action Leaves GOP ‘In the Lurch’ on Government Shutdown,” Roll Call, July 31, 2013.
21. Pete Dominick, “Mark Levin–Ron Johnson Fight Explains the Shutdown Perfectly,” Daily Beast, October 18, 2013.
22. “Limbaugh Bashes GOP ‘Establishment’: ‘Embarrassed’ to Be Associated with ‘Lunatic’ Cruz,” Mediaite, October 17, 2013.
23. “As Sequester Deadline Looms, Little Support for Cutting Most Programs,” Pew Research Center, February 22, 2013, www.people-press.org/2013/02/22/as-sequester-deadline-looms-little-support-for-cutting-most-programs.
24. “In U.S., Support for Tea Party Drops to New Low,” Gallup Poll, October 26, 2015, www.gallup.com/poll/186338/support-tea-party-drops-new-low.aspx.
25. Neil King Jr. and Scott Greenberg, “Poll Shows Budget-Cuts Dilemma: Many Deem Big Cuts to Entitlements ‘Unacceptable,’ but Retirement and Means Testing Draw Support,” Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2011.
26. Caleb Howe, “Donald Trump Is Talk Radio’s Frankencandidate,” RedState, August 30, 2016, www.redstate.com/absentee/2016/08/30/trump-talk-radios-frankencandidate/.
II. THE POST-TRUTH POLITICS OF THE RIGHT
7. THE ALT REALITY MEDIA
1. David Bauder, “Divided America: Constructing Our Own Intellectual Ghettos,” Associated Press, June 16, 2016.
2. Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman, “Study: Breitbart-led Right-wing Media Ecosystem Altered Broader Media Agenda,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 3, 2017.
3. Matea Gold, “The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a Populist Power Base Was Funded and Built,” Washington Post, March 17, 2017.
4. Ibid.
5. Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right, xiii.
6. Ibid.
7. Howard Kurtz, “Evangelical Outrage,” Washington Post, February 6, 1993.
8. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Capella, Echo Chamber, x.
9. “Yes, I’d Lie to You: Dishonesty in Politics Is Nothing New; But the Manner in Which Some Politicians Now Lie, and the Havoc They May Wreak by Doing So, Are Worrying,” Economist, September 10, 2016.
10. Multiple authors, “Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False and Misleading Information at an Alarming Rate,” BuzzFeed, October 20, 2016, www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis?utm_term=.tfZLVla9z#.suLnW5Ne1.
11. Olivia Solon, “Facebook’s Failure: Did Fake News and Polarized Politics Get Trump Elected?,” Guardian, November 10, 2016.
8. THE POST-TRUTH POLITICS OF THE RIGHT
1. Caitlyn Dewey, “Facebook Fake-news Writer: ‘I Think Donald Trump Is in the White House Because of Me,’” Washington Post, November 17, 2016.
2. Cited in “Yes, I’d Lie to You.”
3. twitter.com/kasparov63/status/808750564284702720?lang=en.
4. I discussed this in Charles J. Sykes, “Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying,” New York Times, February 4, 2017.
5. Jeremy W. Peters, “Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media,” New York Times, December 25, 2016.
6. Margaret Sullivan, “It’s Time to Retire the Tainted Term ‘Fake News,’” Washington Post, January 8, 2017.
7. “Facebook’s Fake Fix for Fake News: Liberal Fact-checkers Are Not the Way to Ensure a More In
formed Public,” Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2016.
8. Matt Shapiro, “Running the Data on PolitiFact Shows Bias Against Conservatives,” Federalist, December 16, 2016, thefederalist.com/2016/12/16/running-data-politifact-shows-bias-conservatives.