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Jonathan Rauch

Friday 19th of April 2024

2018 midterm elections They [people] should vote against Republicans in a spirit that is, if you will, prepartisan and prepolitical. Their attitude should be: The rule of law is a threshold value in American politics, and a party that endangers this value disqualifies itself, period. In other words, under certain peculiar and deeply regrettable circumstances, sophisticated, independent-minded voters need to act as if they were dumb-ass partisans. Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, “Boycott the Republican Party” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Energy According to congressional testimony by Armond Cohen of the Clean Air Task Force, meeting all of the eastern United States' energy needs might require 100,000 square miles of solar panels (an area greater than New England) or more than 800,000 square miles of onshore windmills (Alaska plus California), versus only a bit over 500 square miles of nuclear power plants (the city of Phoenix, Arizona). Given the amount of real estate that solar and wind farms usurp, efforts to place them are running into entirely predictable local resistance, which will only increase as the easiet and cheapest sites are picked off. Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic, March 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Criticism seeks to engage in conversations and identify error; canceling seeks to stigmatize conversations and punish the errant. Criticism cares whether statements are true; canceling cares about their social effects. Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge © 2021 Kwiple.com
Republican Party A certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity. The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it's the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We're thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump's enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to … vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, or until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former). Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republican Party (1) The GOP has become the party of Trumpism. (2) Trumpism is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. (3) The Republican Party is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. If the syllogism holds, then the most-important tasks in U.S. politics right now are to change the Republicans' trajectory and to deprive them of power in the meantime. In our two-party system, the surest way to accomplish these things is to support the other party, in every race from president to dogcatcher. Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republican Party The second unforgivable sin is Trump's encouragement of a foreign adversary's interference in U.S. electoral processes. Leave aside the question of whether Trump's cooperation with the Russians violated the law. He at least tacitly collaborated with a foreign intelligence operation against his country–sometimes in full public view. This started during the campaign, when he called upon the Russians to steal and release his opponent's emails, and has continued during his presidency, as he equivocates on whether foreign intervention occurred and smears intelligence professionals who stand by the facts. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has confirmed his nominees, doggedly pursued its agenda on tax reform and health care and attacked–of course–Hillary Clinton. Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Republican Party So why have we come to regard the GOP as an institutional danger? In a nutshell, it has proved unable or unwilling (mostly unwilling) to block assaults by Trump and his base on the rule of law. Those assaults, were they to be normalized, would pose existential, not incidental, threats to American democracy. Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes © 2018 Kwiple.com