[The Soup Nazi]

From Fareed Zakaria's newsletter:

Whither the GOP? Whither America?

Besides vaccine excitement, America’s other big story is the end of the Trump presidency, and commentators are a bit disturbed by how it’s going. At The New Yorker, Susan Glasser writes that as Republicans actively support (or stay quiet about) President Trump’s demand to “#OVERTURN” his election loss, their behavior is the most shocking thing to her. At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein writes of fears that the “Republican Party is on a continuum toward the kind of ‘democratic erosion’ visible in other countries, including Turkey under Recep Erdoğan, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, or, in the most extreme example, Russia under Vladimir Putin. In those nations, a party that wins office through a democratic election then seeks to use state power to tilt or completely undermine future elections.”

Assessing that what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics” may be here to stay, in conspiracy theories and animus toward a purported “deep state,” Edward Luce writes for the Financial Times, of the Republican Party: “There is one simple test of whether Mr Trump’s grip will loosen. Mr Trump looks set to boycott Mr Biden’s inauguration next month. If senior Republicans follow his lead, the party will remain his. If they ignore him and show up, his spell will have broken.”