• The Republicans won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives in 2022, but have been unable to elect a speaker due to a group of 20 far-right Republicans backing their own choices.
• The chaos suggests that Republican leadership does not have the skills it needs to govern, and the roots of their current worldview lie in the Reagan Revolution of 1980.
• The Republican Party has been purged of traditional Republicans and replaced with ideological fellow travelers, and their policies have concentrated wealth upward and hollowed out the middle class.
• A new era is pushing the Reagan era aside, with Republicans recognizing that it is our democratic government and the rule of law that protects their investments, and that maintaining the government will take basic laws and the skills to negotiate and pass them.
Published January 4, 2023. Visit Letters from An American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post.
