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Abstract
This chapter addresses the question of how a man so psychologically flawed and unfit for high office as Donald Trump could be elected as President of the United States. The author points to three factors. The first was the transformation of the Republican Party from a centre-right party used to brokering policy solutions with the Democrats to a far-right insurgent outlier intent on imposing its will through manipulation and confrontation. The second involved the two-pronged revolution in communications since the 1980s as a result of the abandonment of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ in 1987 and the emergence of the Internet. Third, these developments occurred in the context of the quite startling demographic and cultural changes: the non-white population is at an all-time high and traditional mores in sexual and social relations are being challenged as never before. The concomitant ascendancy of identity politics has set the scene for the assertion of white, nativist nationalism by those who felt abandoned by the Democrats; Trump was able to exploit these changes to appeal to this rising nativist sentiment, capture the nomination and eventually the presidency.
At least the members of the Know Nothing Party knew they knew nothing.
– P. J. O’Rourke
How the Hell Did This Happen? London, Grove Press, 2017, 2
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- 1.
This applies to almost all the indicators that make up the left-right dimension including views on the general the role of government, entitlements, taxation, healthcare, abortion, gun control, capital punishment, the status of women, immigrants and ethnic and sexual minorities.
- 2.
Presumably in their efforts to remain balanced,Real Clear Politics gives equal coverage to articles in right-wing sites such asTownhall,American Greatness and theThe Washington Times as it does to liberal sites like theDaily Beast, theHuffington Post and theGuardian. Yet these are not true equivalents given that the former are much further to the right than the latter are to the left. This is a good illustration of the ideological asymmetry characteristic of media opinion in the United States.
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University of Essex, Colchester, UK
David McKay
- David McKay
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University College Oxford, Oxford, UK
Ivor Crewe
University of Essex, Colchester, UK
David Sanders
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McKay, D. (2020). Facilitating Donald Trump: Populism, the Republican Party and Media Manipulation. In: Crewe, I., Sanders, D. (eds) Authoritarian Populism and Liberal Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17997-7_7
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