Quick take: The ouster of Liz Cheney and the downfall of political science
I started blogging in 2016, with a gone-now blog called The Unmutual Political Blog. The inaugural series was called "Trump To Political Science: Drop Dead," in which I argued, contrary to what my fellow political scientists were arguing at the time, that Donald Trump's rise in the 2016 Republican nomination contest was debunking our models of party politics. And now, Rep. Liz Cheney (R?-WY) has been ousted from her leadership position in the Republican Party Church of Donald Trump for acknowledging the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, that Donald Trump is a liar, and trying to tear down democracy itself, and Democrats, who used to call for Dick Cheney's prosecution as a war criminal are cheering for Liz.
I have no political science model for this. Authoritarian demagogs, democratic backsliding... there are elements of what is happening that have appeared in various political science writings, but the saga of Liz Cheney? The internal leadership battles in the House GOP? This is some weird shit, man. Political science models explain a lot. Not this.
They've been failing in a lot of ways. To be sure, they got 2020 right. And Trump is just a fucking liar, as always. And that's kind of the problem. But the current goings-on? There is so much that just breaks from any model.
This is insane. We don't have models for insanity. I'd say "turn to psychology," but psychology is the most bullshit-ridden discipline in all of academia. Never turn to psychology. Nope. We're just lost, intellectually speaking.
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