There’s Only One Group to Blame for How Republicans Flocked to Trump
And it’s not “the media.”
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Ever since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, an industry of rationalization and justification has thrived. The theme is clear: Look what you made us do. The argument is simple: Democratic unfairness and media bias radicalized Republicans to such an extent that they turned to Trump in understandable outrage. Republicans had been bullied, so they turned to a bully of their own.
No aspect of that theory has been more enduring than what I’ll call the . The Republicans nominated a good and decent man—so the argument goes—and the Democrats and the media savaged him. Republicans respected norms, Democrats did to savage the GOP for Trump?
