The problem with right-wing "regime" talk

When major politicians like DeSantis bandy about trending terms like “the Regime” it signals to the edgier and often younger parts of the base that they too reject the compromises that tame conservatives—those “beautiful losers”—have made, their norms and their guardrails. Instead, it hints at the more combative and more radical politics of the New Right. “The Regime” also hints to QAnon followers that the user is on the level.

But the mainstreaming of “the Regime” shows an alarming loss of trust in the foundations of liberal democracy.

At the most basic level, calling the stable, democratically elected Biden administration “the regime” demonizes the right’s political opponents. The United States isn’t behind the Iron Curtain. The only other article with the Federalist’s “The Regime” tag is about Venezuela’s Maduro regime. You get the point. In America’s increasingly polarized environment, the right’s use of “Regime” talk further divides by refusing to acknowledge the Democratic party as legitimate.

In functioning democracies, it is vital that political blocs accept their opponents’ electoral victories as definitive and their existence as licit. That was the miracle of the Revolution of 1800, and that’s the basis of democracy. Mainstreaming “Regime” talk is mainstreaming the end of democratic trust.