Republican Party — Bunk History

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class politics graphic of voters facing off

The Politics of a Second Gilded Age

Mass inequality in the Gilded Age thrived on identity-based partisanship, helping extinguish the fires of class rage. In 2021, we’re headed down the same path.

by Matthew Karp via Jacobin on February 17, 2021

"We the People"; US Constitution

It Would Be Great if the United States Were Actually a Democracy

The pervasive mythmaking about the supposed wisdom of the founders has covered up a central truth: the US Constitution is an antidemocratic mess.

by Aziz Rana, Chris Maisano via Jacobin on February 16, 2021

Census taker's bag from 1980

Immigration Hard-Liner Files Reveal 40-Year Bid Behind Trump's Census Obsession

The Trump administration tried and failed to accomplish a count of unauthorized immigrants to reshape Congress, the Electoral College and public policy.

by Hansi Lo Wang via NPR on February 15, 2021

A red, white, and blue star over a cropped portrait of James Madison.

America Must Become a Democracy

The authors of the Constitution feared mass participation would unsettle government, but it’s the privileged minority that has proved destabilizing.

by David Frum via The Atlantic on February 15, 2021

Civil rights era photo of young people protesting for voting rights in between black and white photos of black people lined up to vote

American Democracy Is Only 55 Years Old—And Hanging by a Thread

Black civil-rights activists—and especially Black women—delivered on the promise of the Founding. Their victories are in peril.

by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on February 11, 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just the Latest Radical White Woman Poisoning Politics

Such women have long pushed American politics to the right, and their ideas have become mainstream.

by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae via Made By History on February 6, 2021

Demonstrators at the 1970 Hardhat Riot in New York City.

Backlash Forever

It’s time to abandon the assumption that workers have a “natural” home on the center-left.

by Gabriel Winant via Dissent on February 1, 2021

This 1856 political cartoon depicts the responses of the three candidates to the results of the election. Winning Democrat James Buchanan sits reading the returns of the election while newspaper editors approach from the left. Behind them the defeated Republican candidate John C. Fremont rides off into the West. To the right the second defeated candidate, Millard Fillmore, laments his fall into the “caverns of Know-Nothingism.”

Here’s What Happens to a Conspiracy-Driven Party

The modern GOP isn't the first party to embrace huge conspiracies. But the lessons should be sobering.

by Zachary Karabell via Politico Magazine on January 30, 2021

A Record Number of Women Are Serving in the 117th Congress

Since Jeannette Rankin was elected in 1916, 352 women have served in the House and 46 in the Senate. About two-thirds entered Congress during or after the 1990s.

by Drew DeSilver, Carrie Blazina via Pew Research Center on January 15, 2021

A TV Documentary Shows the Deep Roots of Right-Wing Conspiracy

In 1964, the John Birch Society was the most active far-right group in the United States—unless you count the Republican Party.

by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on January 14, 2021

Members of the National Guard stand behind a fence outside of the U.S. Capitol building.

Impeachment May Not Work. Here’s the Next Best Way to Dump Trump

The 14th Amendment offers a remedy that is both simpler and likelier to work.

by Eric Foner via Washington Post on January 12, 2021

Man with a pistol at his hip carries the retired flag of Mississippi with a confederate battle emblem in it, and a Trump 2020 flag.

Yes, Wednesday’s Attempted Insurrection Is Who We Are

While Wednesday's images shocked us, they fit into our history.

by Gregory P. Downs, Kate Masur via Made By History on January 8, 2021

Ted Cruz.

The Dangerous Historical Precedent for Ted Cruz’s Shameless Electoral College Gambit

The Texas senator claims to be moved by the spirit of 1876, but he’s just another huckster playing a risky game with democracy.

by Matt Ford via The New Republic on January 5, 2021

The Oquirrh Mountain Temple in Salt Lake City

The Most American Religion

Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis.

by McKay Coppins via The Atlantic on December 16, 2020

The Real History of Race and the New Deal

Material benefits trumped FDR's terrible civil rights records.

by Matthew Yglesias via Slow Boring on December 11, 2020

Republicans Rediscover the Dangers of Selling Bunk to Their Constituents

Cynical public speech aimed at winning political power has consequences.

by Rachel Shelden via The Atlantic on November 25, 2020

Bush and Obama

The GOP Test

History is asking only one question right now as Trump refuses to concede. Will the Republicans decide they are no longer an American political party?

by Sean Wilentz via Democracy Journal on November 12, 2020

Broadside showing the Louisiana Returning Board entitled "The Political Farce of 1876," published by Joseph A. Stoll, c. 1877.

Undecided Candidates

An excerpt from the diary of presidential hopeful at the outset of the contested election of 1876.

by Rutherford B. Hayes via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 3, 2020

Poll Watchers and the Long History of Voter Intimidation

President Trump has called on supporters, including law enforcement officers, to monitor election sites. Voter intimidation tactics have a long history.

via Retro Report on November 1, 2020

Reagan in car

What the Rise of Reagan Tells Us About the Age of Trump

Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" charts the conservative counter-revolution that moved the US to the right.

by Nick Burns via New Statesman on October 14, 2020

People holding protest signs

On the Fight for Black Voting Rights at the Turn of the 20th-Century

A rally at Faneuil Hall in support of the Fourteenth Amendment and congressional investigation of southern disfranchisement.

by Kerri K. Greenidge via Literary Hub on October 14, 2020

Artistic photo with american flags

Richard Hofstadter’s Discontents

Why did the historian come to fear the very movements he once would have celebrated?

by Jeet Heer via The Nation on October 6, 2020

Joseph McCarthy presenting a map.

The Real Legacy of a Demagogue

A new biography of Joseph McCarthy does not reckon with the devastating effects of anti-communism.

by Dan Kaufman via The New Republic on October 2, 2020

Donald Trump and Joe Biden behind podiums during the first presidential debate of 2020

President Trump Gets the Suburbs All Wrong

His conception of what appeals to suburban voters is frozen in the past.

by Michelle Nickerson via Made By History on October 1, 2020

Photograph of people lining up to hear arguments in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Case for Ending the Supreme Court as We Know It

The Supreme Court, the federal branch with the least public accountability, has historically sided with tradition over more expansive human rights visions.

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on September 25, 2020

Abraham Lincoln

Why We Keep Reinventing Abraham Lincoln

Revisionist biographers have given us countless perspectives, from Honest Abe to Killer Lincoln. Is there a version that’s true to his time and attuned to ours?

by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on September 21, 2020

"A National Game that is Played Out," political cartoon, engraving by Thomas Nast. From Harper's Weekly, 23 December 1876, page 1044.

Who Counts?

A look at voter rights through political cartoons.

via Massachusetts Historical Society on September 15, 2020

The Return of American Fascism

How a legacy of violent nationalism haunts the republic in the age of Trump.

by Sarah Churchwell via New Statesman on September 2, 2020

What Right to Vote? There’s a Lie at the Heart of American Democracy

The centennial of women’s suffrage which guaranteed all women the right to vote — has a lie at its very core.

by Lisa Tetrault via New York Daily News on August 22, 2020

Reaganland Is the Riveting Conclusion to a Story That Still Isn’t Over

Rick Perlstein’s epic series shows political history and cultural history cannot be disentangled.

by Jack Hamilton via Slate on August 3, 2020

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