Really interesting polling data here. Of course, this is the finding that especially stood out to me--about 80% of GOP county chairs endorse the "republic, not a democracy" meme that the John Birch Society tried to inject into the nation's political bloodstream in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
New at Tusk: Trump and Haley backers view their party, their country, and their world with such stark differences, it's really no surprise no one has unified the party behind them yet.
The John Birch Society did not *invent* the "we're a republic, not a democracy" meme of course. The American fascists of the 1930s and 40s were quite fond of it as well. This screenshot is of 1946 testimony by Robert Edmondson included in his book "I Testify Against the Jews."
If I had a nickel for every time I've encountered the "we're a republic, not a democracy" meme in my research into the Oregon far right ca. 1935-2000 I'd be a rich man. I can't stress enough how absent that line was from mainstream discourse. bsky.app/profile/seth...
Here's a series of cartoon panels that Huss's friend, and chair of the Marion County GOP Betty Freauf, sent out to the many people on her mailing list in the 1980s. FWIW, in 2016 Freauf published an article saying that HItler was one of the good guys, like Jesus.
Here's that "we're a republic not a democracy" line as articulated by Kenneth Brown of Gervais, Oregon in 1940. Brown was an "America First" Silver Shirt fascist who ran in the Republican primary with the goal of restoring the US to the White Christian Republic he claimed it was meant to be.
Another "we're a republic, not a democracy" line, this one from a 1954 white supremacist and antisemitic newsletter published in Memphis, TN. This copy was owned by a Portland fascist named Grace Wick.
To give you a flavor of what sort of publication this was that promoted the "we're a republic, not a democracy" meme 4 years before the John Birch Society was founded, here's a representative page from that Jan. 1954 edition. The caricature is of a "globalist" sneaking Marxism in via "liberalism."
