Here’s a question: Why would a political party run on a national abortion ban? Or taking away access to emergency contraception? Or stripping healthcare from millions of Americans? Or deporting 15-20 million people? Or undermining workers’ rights? Or making student loans harder to repay?
I mean, even if a party wanted to do these things, you would think they would try to hide it from voters—like in the old days when winning elections meant having a platform that at least looked like it would benefit people.
And why would anyone campaign on the promise to centralize power in the presidency, fire civil servants who could hold the president in check, and dismantle popular agencies in order to undermine popular programs and impose these unpopular policies?
Advocating a hostile agenda like this would be political malpractice in any other year. Yet that’s what Republicans are doing in 2024.
It’s called Project 2025, and it is being run out of the Heritage Foundation with the support of a host of right-wing organizations.
As the progressive Center for American Progress puts it, Project 2025 is “meant to serve as a road map for a far-right presidential administration”—making it the “how to” manual for Trump’s dictatorial longings:
While its policy proposals are sweeping and would affect nearly every facet of American life, its overarching goal is clear: to lay out an authoritarian playbook that would destroy the system of checks and balances our forefathers designed when they sought freedom and popular sovereignty almost 250 years ago. In dissolving the American idea, the plan’s extremist policies would give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.
Most people are unaware of this radical blueprint for permanently implementing Trumpism as a governing philosophy. But it is finally getting some attention. And not a moment too soon.
John Oliver took an in-depth look at the proposal. And its authors—incredibly—are appearing on television to talk openly about it.
Why such a draconian plan? Why be so public about it? And why do it now?
Because just like the right-wing billionaires we talked about on Monday, the culture warriors who have labored for decades to impose their values on the country are watching public opinion turn away from them.
Back in the Reagan days they held the high ground in values debates. They could count on the country to rally behind appeals to “family values” and could depend on pro-life voters to show up for pro-life candidates. That was before they succeeded in overturning Roe, and before demographic changes made their positions anathema to two generations of voters.
The entire right-wing social project could go into eclipse if Joe Biden is re-elected. They have to make sure that doesn’t happen by securing the White House and making sure they never relinquish it.
This is an all-or-nothing moment and Project 2025 acknowledges it.
Like the right-wing billionaires willing to support Trump at any cost, the right-wing social agenda can no longer survive democracy. So democracy has become expendable.
Abortion provides a high-profile case study of what’s happening here.
Abortion wasn’t a polarizing issue until social conservatives intentionally made it into one. When Roe v. Wade was decided, there was no discernible partisan difference between abortion supporters and opponents. Republican First Lady Betty Ford praised the decision.
It wasn’t until right-wing leaders latched on to the divisive nature of the issue to rally support for Republican candidates that the abortion issue landed in the middle of the culture wars.
To attract Catholic and Evangelical voters to the Republican camp, socially conservative activists engaged in a campaign to cast abortion as a fundamental moral issue. Opposition to abortion became a non-negotiable part of the Republican platform, and Republicans went on to win a lot of elections.
Fast-forward to today, and we find ourselves in a country that’s shifted away from the Reagan-era values agenda. Today’s voters are more likely to see abortion as a right that protects women’s reproductive health than view it through the life-centered values prism that was prevalent in the Reagan years.
Although attitudes vary over when abortion should be permitted, there is no doubt that Americans believe it should be legal. Only roughly one in ten voters believe it should be illegal in all circumstances.
Yet making it illegal in all circumstances is the position taken by advocates for Project 2025. And they’re open about it.
The entire right-wing social project could go into eclipse if Joe Biden is re-elected. This is an all-or-nothing moment and Project 2025 acknowledges it.
The authors of Project 2025 are telegraphing their disrespect for the electorate. They don’t care what people think or what they want because public opinion won’t matter once they hold the reins of power.
They are broadcasting their intention to lead the country in their direction regardless of what happens in November. If they can’t win the election the old fashioned way, they will reject any results they don’t like as illegitimate. Because they do not recognize the legitimacy of opinions that don’t align with their objectives.
Having reached a crisis point for their movement, they are no longer holding anything back. They’re telling us what they intend to do, and that they don’t intend to let something trivial like public preferences stand in their way. They see the country moving away from them, and they’ve decided they’re not going to let that happen.
So tomorrow, as we celebrate the 248th birthday of this imperfect experiment of a country, we do so knowing that some of our neighbors are unhappy enough to want to break free of the democracy they’ll be celebrating.
They want to abandon the constitutional mechanisms which have unevenly protected our rights throughout the years— institutions fashioned to require compromise to get things done—because those mechanisms are preventing them from getting what they want.
MAGA is not a majority. But passionate minorities can prevail if they are not met with sufficient opposition. Our system of checks and balances works when countervailing interests are expressed. That’s how the process is designed.
Fortunately, we have a tool to put the brakes on MAGA ambitions. We have an election. And with that election we can provide a check.
We can use the election to say no to autocracy. We can make sure everyone we know will know to say no to autocracy.
We can talk to people about Project 2025. About Donald Trump’s diminished state. About how he is a convicted felon who is running for his life.
We can take comfort in knowing that the Biden campaign is doing what it can to draw out these contrasts, aided by pro-democracy organizations and grassroots organizing efforts. We can take comfort in knowing we are hardly alone.
We can act with the urgency of the moment.
We can make the next four months an exercise in national education so that everyone we know recognizes how their independence is on the line. And we can have confidence that people will reject what Trump and his party are selling once they realize what it is.
Because if people wanted the MAGA agenda, then MAGA wouldn’t need to overturn democracy to get it.
Wishing you an enjoyable, safe, and happy Independence Day.
The Wolves and Sheep podcast will return in two weeks.
As with all human groups, so-too is politics…95% of the participants do not actually participate, and 5% have all the resources and control. No surprises here.