Party transformations follow a predictable six-stage evolution — recoil, squint, rationalize, submit, amplify, and purge. Each stage has language you can hear long before you see it in the votes. Republicans just finished the full cycle. Democrats might be starting it.
Watch how the language shifts, stage by stage, for signs of whether recent socialist wins are an anomaly, or the start of something bigger and broader.
- Stage 1: Recoil. Denounce, by name. Lindsey Graham called Trump a “kook” who was unfit for office. Ted Cruz called him a “pathological liar.” That was 2016. Both later defended him against the exact words they coined.
- Stage 2: Squint. Support without looking. “I haven’t seen the tweet” became the go-to response of House and Senate Republicans in Trump’s first term when they were asked about the latest storm. Some did the binary dodge: “The other side is worse.”
- Stage 3: Rationalize. This is the “yes, but” stage: “I don’t love the style, but the judges … the tax cuts … the border … He’s a fighter.” This is where accommodation becomes the norm, and the need to win trumps style or tactics.
- Stage 4: Submit. Dissent becomes career-ending. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said on the floor that Trump “bears responsibility” for Jan. 6. Two weeks later, McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace. In less than three years, he’d been ousted as speaker. Silence becomes life-and-death survival.
- Stage 5: Amplify. Fully adopt the vocabulary, the style, the maximal claims. Try to out-Trump Trump. After privately calling Trump “America’s Hitler” in 2016, JD Vance is now vice president. And routinely seeks to show his Trumpiness. That’s almost every Republican now.
- Stage 6: Purge. Actively work to oust anyone who disagrees. You either fully accept and amplify, or get exiled. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — gone. This year alone, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was beaten in a Trump-backed primary, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) chose retirement over humiliation, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) drew a primary challenger (and lost to him) after voting with Trump 99% of the time.
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The counterpoint: Socialism is widely seen by most elected Democrats as political poison. So this moment could prove fleeting. Four reasons for this:
- Socialism has no enforcer yet. Trump ended careers personally. An idea can’t, unless someone becomes the idea. Mamdani endorsing, campaigning and toppling incumbents is what an enforcer looks like in beta. But it’s hard to see Bernie Sanders or AOC taking this national.
- The far left has no Fox News synchronizing base and elites. In fact, it’s safe to assume The New York Times, The Atlantic and MS NOW will resist socialism, at least initially. But watch for the formation of a media ecosystem to counter them. Politics is downstream from information flow and currents.
- Transmission is slower. Democratic voters, broadly speaking, are institutionalists. Republican voters wanted demolition. Submission to an insurgency may have a lower ceiling on the left.
- Socialists need to clear general-election hurdles, as Trump did. If socialist nominees cost Democrats swing seats in November, expect the Iraq-style reversal and recoil to come roaring back.
Interesting… But as near as I could determine these stages are anything but “predictable”. My research suggests this is the first time such a classification has been proposed. Political “science” (for some definitions of science) does study these sorts of things but this analysis and classification system is new. Via Grok:
Political science does study related phenomena—party realignment, factional capture, elite defection and conformity under primary incentives, populist takeovers, and the dynamics of movement entry into parties—but these are typically analyzed through historical comparison, voting data, network analysis, or game-theoretic incentives rather than a fixed six-stage sequence.
I would love to know the future of socialism in this country. But this analysis methodology has not been proven to be a good predictor.
I’d be very surprised if the same pattern applied to the left. Taking Seattle as an example (again), Sawant was big for a while, but never got past the recoil stage…nobody squinted and decided she was a good idea. The KCRHA burned through millions and the homeless problem is arguably worse, so now rather than squinting we’re disbanding it. And now Wilson is turning out to be so completely incompetent that nobody’s gonna get on her bandwagon (viz her complete mis-handling of the Seattle Center shooting). She’ll be lucky to make it through her entire term.
One thing conservatives have going for them is a tendency towards more organizational and ideological discipline…there’s much more willingness there to conform and be a good soldier (and as noted above, to purge those who aren’t). Socialists have demonstrated little such discipline (at least locally) other than a strong talent for rank incompetence. And purging. They do like their purging.
Yes, they do love their purging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
Prior to Trump, the Rs have been terrible at party discipline, and even now they are pretty bad (witness the difficulties Trump is having trying to get the SAVE act passed, etc.).
OTOH, the Dems have had good party discipline, particularly when they have a majority, and when one steps out of line they primary their own more often than the Rs do (though neither do this very often).
“The far left has no Fox News.”
Made me spit my coffee!
Yes, you have to pity the collectivist/statist/authoritarians for their complete lack of a propaganda arm.
All that the poor creatures have are ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, CNN, MS-NOW, the Washington Post, the New York effin’ Times et friggin’ cetera.
And of course, the j-school trained barking seals on Fox itself, who report the regular news just like every other collectivist propaganda arm; their only exceptions are the opinion shows, and even there it’s not worth watching since they’re mostly garbage.
And of course, the statement that “Democrats are institutionalists” clearly reflects their demands to eliminate any controls on criminals (no prisons, no police) and their latest ones to destroy the Supreme Court and kill the US Constitution. Yup, clear signs of supporting institutions.
I’m starting to think that half of the population of this country is seriously mentally ill, and treating it with drugs that make their condition even worse.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing reading through this. Some good ideas, and some “er, wut?!” things that are clearly inaccurate.
Yeah they have hundreds. Like Fox News, they are basically Establishment players who will protect their own rice bowl.
Nobody knows nothing, or something similar.
William Goldman said it about making a hit movie.
We can be smart, wise, foolish or stupid, but none of us can predict the future.
It’s why communism doesn’t work, the knowledge deficit. It’s why markets work.
I work locally where I can make a difference, every day in as many ways as I can.
Let’s work hard and have trust in our fellow citizens. NOT subjects. I do remind people of that.