How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

Such attacks have a long and dishonorable pedigree in American history. Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, and the John Birch Society all adopted similar language. But the challenges to Obama’s legitimacy were different in two important ways. First, they were not confined to the fringes, but rather accepted widely by Republican voters. According to a 2011 Fox News poll, 37 percent of Republicans believed that President Obama was not born in the United States, and 63 percent said they had some doubts about his origins. Forty-three percent of Republicans reported believing he was a Muslim in a CNN/ORC poll, and a Newsweek poll found that a majority of Republicans believed President Obama favored the interests of Muslims over those of other religions.