How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

Second, unlike past episodes of extremism, this wave reached into the upper ranks of the Republican Party. With the exception of the McCarthy period, the two major parties had typically kept such intolerance of each other at the margins for more than a century. Neither Father Coughlin nor the John Birch Society had the ear of top party leaders. Now, open attacks on President Obama’s legitimacy (and later, Hillary Clinton’s) were carried out by leading national politicians. In 2010, Sarah Palin advised the Republicans to “absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible.” They did. Republican senators, governors, and even presidential candidates mirrored the language of the fringe, and they were joined by Republican donors who viewed the Tea Party movement as an opportunity to push the GOP into a harder line against the Obama administration. Well-funded organizations such as Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity and political action committees such as the Tea Party Express and Tea Party Patriots sponsored dozens of Republican candidates.