The result has been a decoupling between party orthodoxy and democratic values, said Stuart Stevens, a veteran Republican adviser and Trump critic who has worked on five presidential campaigns.
“The Republican Party has adopted an attitude that if democracy helps them be in power, then, fine, they’re for democracy. If it blocks them from being in power, they’re against democracy,” said Stevens, whose book about the president’s takeover of the GOP is titled “It Was All a Lie.” “I don’t even think it’s that they are afraid of Trump. I think it’s that they think that this is going to further their ambitions.”…
But, critics say, the party’s willingness to side with the president’s unprecedented attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters could serve to normalize a kind of anti-democratic response to losing an election that is more familiar in developing nations than the United States. That could be Trump’s lasting legacy, Richardson said.
“We have never before had a party that is just explicitly rejecting the idea of an American democracy,” she said. “It is absolutely an attack on our democracy.”
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