[NewRepublic] In one way or another, the scholars and journalists in The New Republic’s special May issue all examine the state of democracy here or abroad. It is their work to diagnose and prognosticate, to analyze and warn. And to them, the situation is plain: Our system of government is crumbling. Around the world, autocracy looms. The tasks ahead could not be more urgent. But what of the people who are not necessarily glued to the news, whose jobs do not require them to track, in detail, every grotesque new contrivance of the Republican Party, every vain counter by the Democrats? How worried are they?
Interestingly, the Republican rank and file is split about what January 6, 2021, represents. Although most Republicans in our poll described the events of that day as patriotic, a hefty minority said what happened was an insurrection—a dissensus, it should be underscored, that isn’t reflected among Republican Party leadership, which has been overwhelmingly reluctant to condemn the incident. "I don’t know whether we should take a lot of comfort in knowing there are still 43 percent of Republicans who think that was wrong," Molyneux reflected, "or despair that it's only 43 percent."
Poll results at the bottom of the link. |