conservatism 
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/19/2021
The Rise and Fall of the L. Brent Bozells
by Timothy Noah
The charging of L. Brent Bozell IV with disorderly conduct for entering the Senate chamber on January 6 prompts reflection on how a series of men named L. Brent Bozell trace the evolution of American conservatism.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/22/2021
The Legacy of Rush Limbaugh (Podcast)
The Times Podcast "The Daily" looks at the career and legacy of the controversial radio host.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/21/2021
Texas Failed Because It Did Not Plan
An analysis of three interrelated failures of planning, logistics, and markets that led to the Texas electrical disaster.
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SOURCE: Informed Comment
2/17/2021
From COVID to Power Outages in Ice Storms, the Texas Republican Party has Created a Failed State
by Juan Cole
Texas Republicans have gotten out of the way of the market and preached the futility of government action. A non-winterized utility grid is the result.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/19/2021
Rush Limbaugh and the Nineties Roots of “Cancel Culture”
by Alex Pareene
Rush Limbaugh's career ended in a siloed media environment where the right occupied its own channels. But it began in a mainstream media that was eager to profit by marketing his brand of down-punching reactionary grievance.
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SOURCE: Radical History Review
2/19/2021
His Ignominy Is His Triumph: a Counter-Obituary of Rush Limbaugh
by A.J. Bauer
"You’d be hard pressed to find a better popularizer of the concept of counter-hegemonic struggle (“culture war” in the vernacular), albeit on the right, or a more “organic intellectual” of the U.S. white upper middle class."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/18/2021
We Wouldn’t Have Had President Trump Without Rush Limbaugh
by Max Boot
Rush Limbaugh stripped conservative politics of principle, policy, and argument, broadcasting a show based on "assertion, mockery, and resentment." Donald Trump's presidency has proven that this was enough.
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2/17/2021
Rush Limbaugh Dead at 70, Influenced Combative Conservatism Over the Airwaves
by HNN Staff
The talk radio host energized conservatives and disgusted others with racist, misogynistic, gay-bashing rhetoric, building a lucrative media empire and a culture of politicized resentment.
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2/18/2021
The Texas Weather and Power Catastrophe
by HNN Staff
The combination of severe winter storms and persistent cold and a deregulated energy supply system without compulsion to invest in winterization has left Texans without power, heat or drinking water for days. Senator Ted Cruz appears to have decamped to Cancun while politicians blame wind and solar power for frozen natural gas refineries.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/15/2021
McConnell’s Task: Purging the Crackpots and Bigots
by Kevin M. Schultz
William F. Buckley Jr. was able to advance conservative ideas by publicly dissociating from antisemites, Ayn Rand cultists and John Birch conspiracists on the right-wing fringes. Mitch McConnell's problem leading America's conservative party is that all those groups are back with a vengeance.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/17/2021
From Limbaugh to Trump: Rick Perlstein Explains Rush’s Real Legacy
Washington Post political columnist interviews historian Rick Perlstein on the late talk radio host's impact on political culture.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/17/2021
Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio’s Conservative Provocateur, Dies at 70
The conservative talk radio host and de facto head of the Republican Party died on February 17 after a long career of airing right-wing grievances and attacking liberals, feminists, environmentalists, Democrats, and Black political leaders.
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SOURCE: Stanford Daily
2/12/2021
A Tragic Day at the Senate
by David Palumbo-Liu
A Stanford scholar of Asian American Studies decries the university administration's dismissal of faculty complaints that the conservative Hoover Institution has produced disinformation about both COVID-19 and the integrity of the 2020 presidential election under the imprimatur of Stanford's academic reputation.
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SOURCE: Dissent
2/14/2021
Backlash Forever (Review Essay)
by Gabriel Winant
Historian Gabriel Winant reviews two recent books about the past and present of reactionary white working class politics and considers whether this tendency can be overcome.
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2/14/2021
What Becomes of a Broken Party?
by James Robenalt
The Republican Party seems to be refusing the opportunity to save itself by rejecting Trumpism. His acquittal in a second Senate trial means he will be free to demand the party bend to his will or be destroyed.
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2/14/2021
Trumpism after Trump: Beyond Fascism
by Gavriel Rosenfeld
Understanding the future of the far-right grievance politics catalyzed by the Trump presidency, it might be helpful to think of it as "MAGA-ism," a 21st century American phenomenon.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/9/2021
Rush Limbaugh is Ailing. And so is the Conservative Talk-Radio Industry
Nicole Hemmer argues that Limbaugh was instrumental in making the Republican Party captive to its voter base, a base led by the content of increasingly right-wing media.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/5/2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She's Doing
by Jamelle Bouie
Historians Lisa McGirr, Sara Diamond, and Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld argue that the Republican Party has always had to keep a porous border between itself and the hard right groups who led its activist base since the Goldwater years. The borders today seem to be dissolving.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/6/2021
History Reveals the Danger of Republicans Indulging Marjorie Taylor Greene
by Austin Nicholson
Allowing Marjorie Taylor Greene to accrue seniority and committee leadership will bring her dangerous, conspiratorial and bigoted thinking into the mainstream of policymaking.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/4/2021
How the GOP Surrendered to Extremism
by Ronald Brownstein
Historian Matthew Dallek says that the prominence of conspiracy theorists and the far right in the Republican Party's base means that there will be no move to push extremists out like there was after Barry Goldwater's 1964 candidacy.