The Corruption of the Republican Party. George Packer
The GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.
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The corruption I mean has less to do with individual perfidy than institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. Political corruption usually trails financial scandals in its wake—the foam is scummy with self-dealing—but it’s far more dangerous than graft. There are legal remedies for Duncan Hunter, a representative from California, who will stand trial next year for using campaign funds to pay for family luxuries.* But there’s no obvious remedy for what the state legislatures of Wisconsin and Michigan, following the example of North Carolina in 2016, are now doing.
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Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy, and will be for years to come.
Much moe at the link. It's an interesting article.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/how-did-republican-party-get-so-corrupt/578095/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_term=2018-12-14T10%3A00%3A04&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3zut7NcJ2Z3IfHAu4oouVaeGvq2QzWDo9X-AKHzvBgvgGCdVn0jhcmNoI
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