What the Republican ripple’ tells us about calcification of US politics

Over the decades, the Left has acquired a reputation of conducting savage recriminations when things don't go its way.

- SWAPAN DASGUPTA

The charge is justified. In some rarefied Marxist circles, for example, debate still rages over the Popular Front strategy that produced mixed results in the battles against fascism in the 1930s. These bouts of intellectual savagery amid adversity were partly responsible for the Left's marginalisation in countries such as France and Italy where it once enjoyed formidable support. It was responsible for Britain's Labour Party turning its back on the socialist modernism that paid rich dividends under Tony Blair and embracing the fringe, with predictable consequences.

Fratricidal warfare, alas, isn't confined to the Left any longer. With the rise of an ideological Right, coinciding with the triumphs of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, this Marxist disease has contaminated the hitherto amorphous pragmatism of conservative forces. We may see an explosion of these impulses in the US in the coming two years.