A former Republican shared a glimmer of hope Thursday that he’s seeing a change in the national mood that could spell the demise of the MAGA movement.
New York Times columnist David French, an ex-writer for the conservative National Review, wrote that signs of positivity being seen across America are bad news not just for Donald Trump, but for his whole political movement.
Maga, he said, has thrived on anger, discontent and resentment. And without it, it won’t survive.
"I’m wondering if the mood is shifting again," he wrote. "I wonder if we’re on the front end of a change in national temperament that could be fatal for MAGA — if we’re leaving the era of the nasty snarl in favor of the broad smile."
And he added, “The era of the snarl could be at an end, and MAGA is nothing without its snarl.”
One reason he senses optimism is the theme of “joy” exploited by the Democratic Party at its convention last week. But that is not the only sign that the nation’s psyche is changing, he wrote.
“It’s not just the Harris surge that’s made me wonder about this,” he wrote in his column.
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“I’m struck, for example, by the spirit of joy that surrounded the Olympics. The opening moments of the games threatened to pull us down into the divisive mud. The controversy surrounding the opening ceremony and a performance that looked more than a little bit like a parody version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper caused the culture warriors to gear up for online combat. But the fight fizzled, quickly. The rest of America was too busy watching Snoop Dogg.”
Another example of optimism that he offered was the documented decline in the popularity of right-wing and divisive political news sites — he reported that the website The Righting which tracks news sites’ numbers shows them way down from the last presidential election.
“There is a difference between beating a candidate and sidelining a movement. After nine years of confronting Donald Trump and facing a MAGA movement that has remade the Republican Party I once belonged to, I believe that fear may be sufficient to beat Trump, but only joy can push MAGA back to the periphery of American life," he wrote.
He concluded, “I can think of few ends more fitting for MAGA than finally defeating it with joy rather than anger and teaching the next generation of American politicians that the best way to reach American hearts is with faith and hope rather than rage and fear.”
