UNTANGLING THE MAGA REBELLION NETWORK

The Role of "Intense Policy Demanders" in MAGA Politics

Ah, one does not have to be a believer to wish for this.

“Many of the most important state policy innovations originate with “intense policy demanders”—organizations that fiercely advocate for policies on issues they care about, such as interest groups, activists, policy entrepreneurs, advocacy coalitions, constituency-mobilization organizations, and donor consortia.”

THE MYTH OF THE LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY¹

Intense policy demanders have arguably been one of the most effective elements in the MAGA rebellion’s arsenal of Lawfare weaponry.

In November of 1923 a charismatic and gifted orator named Adolf Hitler, at 34-years old, staged and led a small scale rebellion in the city of Munich located in Bavaria, Germany.

Working as a Munich-based army intelligence operative, he investigated, in 1919, a recently formed political group called the German Workers’ Party, which he joined and quickly transformed into the National Socialists German Workers’ Party, or Nazis.

After building the Nazi movement into a credible force on the local scene, Hitler sought to use Munich as a springboard to national power in his ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. Following the putsch’s failure and his own brief incarceration, Hitler retained Munich as party headquarters—against much internal opposition—when he reconstituted the Nazi movement and began a new assault on power, culminating in his appointment to the German Chancellorship in January 1933.²

Hitler’s incarceration which took place in Landsberg prison was essentially a house arrest that lasted nine months, and it was during this time that he wrote, or more accurately dictated to “Rudolph Hess, a loyal member of the German National Socialist Party and fellow revolutionary,” the first volume of his autobiographical political manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle.)³

As described by Lothar Machtan in his controversial biographical study of Hitler, The Hidden Hitler:

Detention in the fortress at Landsberg had made a different man of him. When he was prematurely released in December 1924, he resumed his political career with renewed vigor and self-confidence, certain that he alone could dictate the objectives and orientation of the volkisch camp. This presupposed a change in political strategy whose ideological structure he had laid down in Mein Kampf. In the place of his “old revolutionary” stance, he now advocated the legal, parliamentary route to power.⁴

While I am most certainly a medically deaf individual, I can assuredly hear the many questions that my readers might have; all of which can be summed up as—What is he talking about? Is he talking about MAGA or Nazi politics? And what does all this have to do with laboratories of Democracy and intense policy demanders?—to which I will say that sometimes history and the present really do rhyme with remarkable rhythms from past times to present times.

There is a great deal to unpack here, but be that as it may be these essays are intentionally short with regards to reading time, so today I want to focus on just some common elements between MAGA and Nazi ascensions. As I move further into this series and return to this particular line of study that focuses on intense policy demanders it is my intention to use these lines of thought to help put together not only the MAGA rebellion network, but to also use them to help put together the 3D jigsaw puzzle of America’s MAGA problem that I first wrote about on November 11.⁵

First I want to bring up Machtan’s work one more time and moving back one chapter from the above quote to take note of the following with regards to Hitler and his rise to dictatorship:

The reasons for his meteoric rise were not only structural; without the patronage of certain men who helped to promote him in the right circles at the right time, it would have been quite impossible. Who were these patrons and what motivated them?⁶

The very first individual that should come to mind with MAGA in view of individual patronage that supports getting the right people into the “right circles at the right time” is Leonard Leo. While the first organization that should come to mind with regards to intense policy demanders is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Each of these two entities in the full schema of MAGA qualify as intense policy demanders. Now with regards to Leo I have written about him previously and am already working on other writings that focus on his part in the matters under discussion.

For today I want to focus briefly and specifically on ALEC because next to Leo it holds a near full equivalency to him in terms of being a creating element of intense policy demanders’ enablement to actually change the political landscape from a liberal to extreme conservative positioning. And I especially want to draw attention to the organization’s determined efforts to create a situation whereby MAGA aligned politicians and forces are conducting their war on the “liberal dominance” that Leonard Leo has declared his singular intention of “crushing” in his long game to supplant American governance with a thoroughly entrenched conservative minority rule, by way of forcing by use of the legal pathway to power, in much the same way as Hitler realized that was his best most effective course of action, to attain to complete control and power.

Perhaps the best way to introduce readers to ALEC is with an excerpt from THE MYTH OF THE LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY:

After ideas for new policies have been formulated, intense policy demanders provide everything legislators need to transform those ideas into policy. Most significantly, they draft model legislative text that can be introduced in state legislatures with minimal additional effort. By providing “ready-to-go text,” they dramatically reduce the work required of state officials interested in passing a particular policy. In recent years, this technique has been deployed by a wide range of groups—from the NRA to the Giffords Law Center, from corporate lobbies to labor unions, from Lambda Legal to Focus on the Family. As a recent report concludes, model legislation has “driv[en] agendas in every statehouse and touching nearly every area of public policy.”

One witnesses the full panoply of these services in ALEC—an association of right-leaning state legislators, private companies, conservative think tanks, and philanthropies. ALEC has roughly 2,000 legislator members—just under one-third of all state legislators nationwide. It’s a veritable one-stop shop for conservative policy formation. Its various committees draft model state legislation, which it then promotes through publications and lavish events. It also offers bill tracking, research, and expert witness services to state lawmakers willing to champion its proposals. Put simply, ALEC’s work makes lawmaking easier, particularly for lawmakers who are relatively inexperienced or who work in less professionalized legislatures. From 2003 to 2013, roughly three percent of all legislation sponsored by Republican state lawmakers nationwide relied on ALEC model bills. The importance of ALEC-sponsored bills, moreover, far exceeds their number, as many such laws have effected dramatic changes to state policy. In recent years, legislatures have enacted ALEC-formulated proposals to retrench social programs such as Medicaid and unemployment insurance; lower taxes on the wealthy and businesses; limit the ability of unions to collectively bargain; pare back access to abortion; and expand the rights of gun owners.⁷ [Pgs. 2208-2209]

For me the standout detail from the above excerpt that easily and readily applies to the current crop of MAGA Congresspersons is the fact that “Put simply, ALEC’s work makes lawmaking easier, particularly for lawmakers who are relatively inexperienced or who work in less professionalized legislatures.” One of my first thoughts when I read that sentence is how the election of many MAGA politicians who are clearly and obviously of lower intellectual capabilities are in all likelihood the preferred choice of legislator for the hidden beneficiaries behind so much of the push to create a Christian nationalist society.

As noted earlier in the report—excerpted from above—

policy innovations are often devised and then propagated by third-party organizations connected to state officials through political networks. For many of the most important state policies, these organized interests are the true “laboratories of democracy,” as they catalyze policy experimentation in several crucial ways. They inform public officials about important social issues; propose solutions supported by bespoke research; provide model legislative text and talking points tailored to local conditions; create electoral incentives and social connections that conduce to policy experimentation; and use the federal government’s power to spark state innovation. State officials aren’t so much the scientists responsible for many of the most important policy innovations as they are the test subjects on which the real laboratories of democracy can experiment.⁸ [Pg. 2192]

Now as can be seen ALEC plays an outsized role in creating intense policy demands that serve MAGA interests (To be perfectly clear when I discuss MAGA I am also discussing conservatives, as MAGA has now for all purposes taken over the Republican Party the traditional nexus of conservatism) with that in mind it is important to also remember that all the laws that ALEC succeeds in enacting via its mechanisms also are all still subject to the judiciary branch of government; this is where Leonard Leo plays his own outsized role in supporting and creating intense policy demand sustainment and supportive judicial validation. In order to understand Leonard Leo’s vision that has led him to the power he wields in shaping today’s political landscape with the goal of creating tomorrow’s government an excerpt from an extensive and detailed report published by ProPublica this past October 11 will help readers to glimpse his long game plan:

Decades ago, he’d realized it was not enough to have a majority of Supreme Court justices. To undo landmark rulings like Roe, his movement would need to make sure the court heard the right cases brought by the right people and heard by the right lower court judges.

Leo began building a machine to do just that. He didn’t just cultivate friendships with conservative Supreme Court justices, arranging private jet trips, joining them on vacation, brokering speaking engagements. He also drew on his network of contacts to place Federalist Society protégés in clerkships, judgeships and jobs in the White House and across the federal government. He personally called state attorneys general to recommend hires for positions he presciently understood were key, like solicitors general, the unsung litigators who represent states before the U.S. Supreme Court. In states that elect jurists, groups close to him spent millions of dollars to place his allies on the bench. In states that appoint top judges, he maneuvered to play a role in their selection.⁹

As I mentioned somewhere above there is a great deal to unpack here, and so with that in mind I am going to pause here for this line of study subtitled—The Role of "Intense Policy Demanders" in MAGA Politics. So this will be continued.

I realize that I do not need to remind all that our liberal democracy’s very existence is on the line with this next upcoming national election year. While it might seem like much of what I am writing about are things we all should have been aware of much earlier than now, I would like to encourage you to persevere and learn as much as you can from all these things, because no matter what the results of next year’s elections are what we learn today will be incredibly valuable for whatever comes in the many long months ahead of the election and just as importantly after the election no matter which way it goes.

I know that for myself I will not just give in and roll over and play dead just because MAGA cretins think they can cheat and deceive their way into power.

I will fight MAGA until my last breath is exhuasted from my body.

Robert J. Rei, December 16, 2023

“Our current ‘state’ is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already, I hear you object, and we don’t need you to reproach us for it yet again. But, I ask you, if you know that, then why don’t you act? Why do you tolerate these rulers gradually robbing you, in public and in private, of one right after another, until one day nothing, absolutely nothing, remains but the machinery of the state, under the command of criminals and drunkards?”

Sophie Scholl

1. “THE MYTH OF THE LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY” Charles W. Tyler & Heather K. Gerken, December 2022, Columbia Law Review, (Vol. 122 Issue 8, p2187-2240, 54p) https://columbialawreview.org/content/the-myth-of-the-laboratories-of-democracy/

2. "Where ghosts walked: Munich’s road to the Third Reich” David Clay Large, 1997, W.W. Norton & Company, New York NY. Pg.XII

3. “1925 Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is published” History, A&E Television Networks, LLC., Undated, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mein-kampf-is-published

4. "The Hidden Hitler” Lothar Machtan, 2001, Basic Books (A member of the Perseus Books Group) New York, NY, (originally published in German by Alexander Fest Verlag, Berlin) (Translator John Brownjohn)

5. The puzzle of America’s MAGA problem

6. See note 4

7. See note 1

8. See note 1

9. "We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority” Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein, and Ilya Marritz, October 11, 2023, ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority