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Outsiders view: That wasn’t a coup attempt in the sense of grabbing governmental power. It *was* a coup for control of the Republican party – and appreciating this should bring home why and how it’s dangerous
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In and of themselves, events in DC yesterday don’t look much like other events labelled as ‘coups’, in that it wasn’t about seizing govt. power directly, at least with any strategy. Very little in what those involved actually did suggests an immediate goal of seizing control
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Instead, it was performatively about *confronting* govt power with race-based entitlement, contempt, and a claim to alternative power: ‘doesn’t matter what you do, we’ll be here and will hurt you if we want’. An ugly, ugly protest, but not in itself about power grab
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(and if you think yesterday’s events were a direct power grab, wait until you hear about decades of voter suppression, gerrymandering, aggressive corporate/billionaire lobbying, and violent suppression of labor and social movements)
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What’s more striking to me is how much of the threat message is actually directed at Republicans: support the Donald, or feel our wrath. This is a trend of vicious hostility towards other wings of the party that goes back through the Tea Party movement and beyond.
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Trump’s instrumental goal seems to be his own role as figurehead/leader of the party (perhaps for legal self-protection), for which he mobilises his base against rivals or anyone who he classes as disloyal to him in the party, as much as against Dems or anyone else.
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This is so dangerous because in a 2-party system, 1 party is terrified of a large part of its own support base. It cannot win electorally without them, and must pander to them or face relentless hostility. But, it also cannot now win *with* them through fair democratic means.
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This is the bind that McConnell and all of the other enablers seem to recognise: The Trump coup within the Republican party means that their only way of retaining/winning power is by systematically undermining processes and institutions of democracy.
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The dismantling of democratic process and institutions thus becomes a party-wide project of self-preservation, not just a Trump project, because Trump’s goal in this is first and foremost to become the party (in fact, the Trumps said as much yesterday).
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So, in trying to explain/describe struggles between groups, we need to look also at how they shape and are shaped by struggles within groups. Understanding yesterday’s events as a *within*-party coup underlines the bigger reasons why they’re so dangerous
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