The Unholy Alliance — A Symbiosis of Hate and Power

Fascism doesn’t need a majority. It just needs a lever, a loophole, and a cult of personality.

This is an except from “The Pragmatist Awakening: Restoring Decency and Democracy One Republican Primary at a Time,” a new book from Michael Braderman.

To fully grasp how we arrived at this moment in American politics, we must confront a deeply unsettling truth: the ideological heirs of the Ku Klux Klan have not just found a foothold in the Republican Party—they’ve become a driving force behind it. What was once relegated to the political fringe has, through a slow and strategic infiltration, become central to the party’s identity. Their priorities—rooted in racial grievance, authoritarianism, and a yearning for social dominance—now shape the direction of the party and, by extension, the country.

At the center of this transformation is Donald Trump—a man who doesn’t just lead the Republican Party, but who, in practice, serves as the de facto Grand Wizard of the KKK’s modern political incarnation. He may not wear the robes or speak in overt slurs, but his actions and rhetoric have given this movement its most effective platform in generations. He almost certainly harbors racist beliefs, even if he stops short of the open declarations that once defined white supremacist leadership. Instead, he has mastered a more insidious form of communication: coded messages and strategic ambiguity that stoke the fires of racial resentment while shielding him from direct accountability.

This relationship between Trump and the extremist base is symbiotic. He gives them validation; they give him power. He knows what they want, and they know he’s willing to deliver it—not out of ideology, but out of ambition—though his willingness to repeatedly invoke racial resentment suggests something deeper than mere calculation. Even after the violence of January 6, he defended them, excused them, and ultimately pardoned many of them—framing the insurrectionists not as criminals, but as victims. It was a loyalty loop, sealed with clemency. A president shielding his foot soldiers.

And in this arrangement, Trump plays both roles: president of a once-great democracy and figurehead of its most dangerous undercurrents. His MAGA movement may not call itself the Klan—but the beliefs, the tactics, and the goals are unmistakably familiar. His language is always just calculated enough—designed to mobilize white nationalists while keeping others from walking away.

This is the sinister brilliance of the arrangement—not just in how it empowers extremism, but in how it allows decent, well-meaning Republicans to rationalize their continued support. For some, it’s because they quietly share the views of white nationalists—even if they’d never admit it publicly. They’re not marching in rallies or posting hate online, but the underlying beliefs are there. And Trump, by empowering those movements, gives their worldview permission to thrive. Others may be blind to their own prejudices—unaware of how deeply ingrained their assumptions about race, culture, and power really are. They empathize with the resentments driving white nationalism, without realizing how much of that same resentment lives within themselves.

And then there’s a third group—lifelong Republicans who don’t harbor racist views and may even find Trump’s rhetoric distasteful, but who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. The brand is too toxic, the partisan loyalty too deeply ingrained. So they reach for justification: taxes, immigration, law and order, the stock market. Trump gives them just enough policy-sounding cover to latch onto—something they can say to their friends, to their families, and most importantly, to themselves. It’s not that they believe he’s a good man.

It’s that voting for a Democrat would mean confronting a painful truth—not just in front of others, but even more importantly, when they look at themselves in the mirror. For many, that’s the hardest part. It would mean admitting to themselves that the beliefs they’ve championed, defended, and woven into their identity for years were misguided. And that’s a reckoning many people are simply unwilling to face.

Some part of them knows it—but self-preservation kicks in. And ego does the rest. Because to face it would be to admit they just wasted the last ten years following a man who led them nowhere.

The Political Cheat Code – How Democracy Got Hacked

— He didn’t rewrite the rules—he just weaponized them.

How did we get here? How did the party that once beat back fascism abroad become a safe harbor for its echoes at home?

The answer is simpler—and scarier—than most people think: primary elections.

In red states and reliably Republican districts, Republican politicians don’t fear Democrats. They don’t lie awake at night worrying about the general election. They fear one thing: being primaried from the right—specifically, by a highly concentrated bloc of MAGA extremists or a challenger handpicked by Trump himself. And with good reason. In today’s GOP, failing to demonstrate absolute loyalty to Trump is a career-ending move. It’s understood—often without needing to be said—that even a hint of defiance can invite a primary challenge and end a political career. That fear shapes everything.

That fear drives everything. It shapes how they vote, how they speak, and who they dare to criticize (or not). The far right base has become the gatekeeper, and crossing them is political suicide.

This is why Republicans no longer feel like Reagan Republicans. It’s not that they don’t exist. It’s that they can’t survive.

Primary elections in America are often decided by just 10 to 15 percent of the electorate. And in Republican primaries, that sliver of voters is almost exclusively composed of the party’s most ideologically extreme members. With Democrats excluded from participation, and moderate Republicans largely absent, the loudest voices are the only ones that matter—and those voices demand purity, vengeance, and unwavering loyalty to Trump, not the Constitution. Moderate candidates don’t stand a chance because moderate voters don’t show up in large enough numbers. These primaries don’t just tilt the playing field—they define it entirely. In district after district, it is the most extreme Republican candidate who survives the primary and advances to the general election, often unopposed or virtually guaranteed to win.

This is how the radicalization of the Republican Party happened.

When politicians are terrified of losing their seat, they stop leading and start pandering. They look for the loudest voices, not the wisest ones. They hug the base and abandon the center. And most importantly, they surrender their authority to the angry mob—keeping the title, but forfeiting the power that once came with it.

We’ve watched it happen: Members of Congress—elected representatives in a co-equal branch of government—publicly debase themselves to stay on the good side of a man who once tried to overturn an election. They won’t cross him, because he has the one thing they fear most: the power to trigger a primary challenge. And if an incumbent refuses to surrender their power, Trump will find someone who will—because the angry mob that dominates Republican primaries gives him the leverage to do so, rewarding replacements who show absolute loyalty and help drag their grievances, resentments, and extremist ideals into the mainstream of American politics.

He doesn’t need to run the party with ideas or policy. He runs it with fear. One angry post from Trump can end a political career overnight. A single Truth Social tirade or whispered endorsement of a primary challenger is often all it takes. The message is unmistakable: cross him, and you’re finished. So Republicans fall in line—again, and again, and again.

This isn’t strength. It’s submission. It’s a wholesale abdication of their constitutional duty as members of a co-equal branch of government. These are elected leaders acting not as representatives of the people, but as foot soldiers for one man’s ego. They cling to their titles while ceding their authority, offering loyalty not to the Constitution, but to a figure who undermines it at every turn.

The Cheat Code That Broke the Party

Trump’s rise didn’t come from political brilliance, but from something far more dangerous: his ability to exploit the system itself. Whether it was his idea or that of more tactically savvy operatives like Steve Bannon or Roger Stone, Trump has discovered a political cheat code. By gaming the structure of America’s primary system, he’s figured out how to consolidate power in a way that is perfectly legal, yet deeply corrosive to democratic norms.

The cheat code works like this: threaten incumbents with primary challengers who will show greater personal loyalty to Trump, and suddenly, those incumbents fall into line. The fear of losing in a primary overrides any commitment to the Constitution or separation of powers. What we’re left with is a political culture where impeachment becomes impossible—not because the facts don’t warrant it, but because the remedy itself has been neutered. Republicans may feign confusion on many fronts, but one thing they understand with absolute clarity is who shows up to vote in their primaries. Republican incumbents know the rules of survival: if the MAGA base turns on them, their career is over. If they’re seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump, there’s always someone even more radical waiting in the wings. Over time, the Republicans who once postured as extremists just to survive were replaced by those who didn’t have to pretend—true radicals for whom extremism wasn’t an act, but a core conviction.

That’s how the transformation takes hold—not all at once, but one primary, one purge, one loyalty test at a time. The incentive to posture gives way to the necessity of belief. And when extremism becomes the baseline, even good-faith governance becomes a liability.

We saw a glimpse of this dynamic play out in early 2024, with the collapse of a bipartisan border security bill. The legislation, co-authored by Republican Senator James Lankford and supported by President Biden, was a serious and comprehensive attempt to address border enforcement and immigration policy. In another political era, it would have been championed by Republicans as a significant win. It included tougher enforcement mechanisms, expedited asylum procedures, and increased resources for border personnel—concessions Democrats were willing to make in the name of compromise.

But Donald Trump intervened. He saw the bill not as a governing opportunity, but as a political threat. If Republicans passed a serious solution to the border crisis, it would rob him of a key campaign issue. So he told congressional Republicans to kill it—and they did. Not because they believed it was bad policy, but because they were terrified of being seen as disloyal. Trump made it clear: support this bill, and you risk a primary challenge. And just like that, legislation that could have addressed one of the nation’s most intractable problems was dead on arrival.

But this example, as brazen as it is, doesn’t fully capture the extent of what Trump’s cheat code has enabled. He can smother policy he doesn’t like. He can defy the law itself with impunity. He can face multiple criminal indictments and continue to dominate the Republican Party. He can incite a violent mob to attack the Capitol and still command the loyalty of lawmakers who were under siege that day. He can hoard classified documents, obstruct justice, tamper with witnesses, and attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters—and instead of being ostracized, he’s rewarded with the party’s deference.

Different Incentives, Different Outcomes

Reform ideas like jungle primaries, ranked-choice voting, and campaign finance reform would help. They would change the incentive structure and force politicians to appeal to a broader slice of the electorate.

We’ve already seen how this could work in Alaska, where a system combining a nonpartisan jungle primary with ranked-choice voting discourages extremism and rewards candidates who can build consensus. Under this model, politicians are incentivized to speak to a broader cross-section of voters rather than pandering to a narrow, ideological base. The result is a healthier political environment—one where reason is rewarded over rage.

Unfortunately, for such a system to take hold nationally, every individual state would have to enact similar reforms, or we would need a constitutional amendment to standardize the process nationwide. Given today’s hyper-partisan political climate, neither scenario appears remotely likely in the near future, if ever.

In America, the general election gets all the attention. But in many places—especially red states and reliably Republican districts—the real contest happens in the primaries. And the reason primaries are so distorting is simple: hardly anyone votes in them. The most ideologically extreme voters do. And they’re the ones politicians are most afraid of.

This is why meaningful legislation on issues like women’s reproductive rights or gun safety, where 80% of Americans support reform, so often fails. Republican politicians aren’t beholden to the majority of the national electorate or even the majority in their own state or district but to the narrow, ideologically extreme slice of their base who dominate low-turnout primaries.

Republican politicians, desperate to keep their seats, will contort themselves in any direction they must. Their goal is not governance. It’s survival. And as long as the path to victory runs through an extremist primary base, the GOP will continue to spiral further into radicalism.

The moral compromises are breathtaking. This isn’t just ideological drift—it’s a wholesale transformation. Leaders who once warned about Russian aggression now echo Kremlin talking points. Self-proclaimed fiscal hawks shrug off trillion-dollar deficits.

Champions of limited government now cheer executive overreach.

The party that proudly signed anti-tax pledges now scrambles to justify Trump’s reckless tariffs—insisting, somehow, that tariffs aren’t taxes. Spoiler alert: they are.

The same politicians who once carried pocket-sized Constitutions in their breast pockets now appear perfectly comfortable backing a president who tramples that sacred document at every turn.

Why? Because he controls the primary lever. The cheat code isn’t just about influence—it’s about immunity. The threat of being “primaried” has become a shield that protects him not only from political consequences, but from legal and constitutional ones as well. Trump has turned the fear of losing office into a get-out-of-jail-free card. And that fear, more than any ideology or loyalty, is what keeps the Republican Party under his thumb.

In today’s GOP, power has become the only currency that matters. Integrity is just collateral damage—spent without hesitation when ambition is on the line.

Politicians follow incentives: voters, donors, and the looming threat of defeat. And when Republican incumbents realize their greatest risk isn’t a Democrat in November, but a MAGA challenger in the spring, they adapt. They chase outrage, not outcomes.

If we want the system to produce better leaders, we need to change what the system rewards. That means reshaping the electorate in primary elections. The current incentive structure drives politicians to cater to the loudest and most extreme voices in their base. To shift outcomes, we must disrupt that dynamic—by broadening the pool of primary voters and forcing candidates to appeal to a more diverse, more representative coalition. Nowhere is the impact of these structural incentives more visible than in the U.S. Senate. We don’t have to imagine what this would look like—we’re already seeing it, in a few isolated but instructive cases.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska stands as a vivid example of how structural incentives shape political behavior. Representing a state that reliably leans Republican—not the deepest red, but certainly not purple either—Murkowski governs in a way that reflects her electorate without surrendering to its most extreme elements. In a normal political environment, we would expect her positions to align with a center-right constituency. And that’s exactly what she delivers. She doesn’t vote like a Democrat—nor should she be expected to. What makes her unique is that Alaska’s top-four jungle primary, ranked-choice voting system frees her from the ideological chokehold of a closed Republican primary. It allows her to be a principled conservative without having to pander to the far-right fringe. In her case, the system worked exactly the way a healthy democracy is supposed to.

And yet, a look at Alaska’s other senator—Republican Dan Sullivan—reveals the limits of structural reform. Like Murkowski, Sullivan operates under the same election format. But he legislates very differently. Where Murkowski shows independence, Sullivan embraces orthodoxy. He has avoided open conflict with Trump, voted in line with the party, and maintained a conspicuously low profile. The difference isn’t in the system—it’s in the person.

This contrast underscores a critical truth: while voting systems shape incentives, they don’t create integrity. Murkowski has the space to lead with conscience, and she chooses to use it. Sullivan has the same space—and chooses concealment. It’s likely he holds many of the same extreme views as his MAGA-aligned colleagues, but instead of amplifying them, he masks them—branding himself as a moderate, avoiding the spotlight, and governing from the shadows. His strategy appears calculated: stay bland, stay quiet, and stay in office. But it’s a delicate balancing act. If he’s ever exposed as an extremist—and if his incumbency and name recognition aren’t enough to protect him—he could find himself vulnerable in a system specifically designed to penalize candidates out of step with a more moderate electorate.

In this sense, Alaska’s system rewards moderation, but it doesn’t guarantee it. Sullivan may have needed centrist appeal to win initially, but now that he’s in office, he benefits from the stability of name recognition and incumbency. He can drift rightward with little consequence—as long as he stays quiet about it. This reality reveals why early intervention is so important. Once officials become fixtures in the political landscape, dislodging them—even in a system built to reward broad appeal—becomes exponentially harder.

It’s plausible that many of Murkowski’s Republican colleagues in the House and Senate quietly envy her. They might long for the political freedom she enjoys, wishing they could govern according to their true principles rather than their fears. But it’s also possible that many of those more moderate voices have already been cleared out—purged in earlier cycles—leaving behind a core of true extremists who neither desire Murkowski’s independence nor admire it. Some may even resent her for it. The paradox is damning: to admit that would be to risk everything. Even hinting at dissatisfaction with Trump can trigger the very threat they dread—a primary challenge from the right.

We’ve already seen the consequences. The moderates who stood their ground are gone—replaced not by stealthy survivors, but by true believers. The Overton window hasn’t just shifted. It’s been shattered. Voices once considered fringe now walk the halls of Congress, some openly sympathetic to extremist groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, or the Three Percenters. These aren’t Republicans compromising their principles to survive. In many cases, these are their principles.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine offers yet another instructive contrast. Unlike Murkowski, Collins does not benefit from the Alaska election format. But she does represent a blue state—where Republicans know that nominating an extremist would almost certainly cost them the seat. Geography, in this case, fills the role that structure plays in Alaska. Collins survives because she is seen as the only kind of Republican who can hold that ground. Like Murkowski, she has occasionally broken with her party—opposing some of Trump’s judicial nominations and pushing back on key pieces of legislation. And while she doesn’t go out of her way to provoke him, she’s also not a reliable foot soldier. Still, Trump seems to tolerate her—not because she offers the kind of unwavering loyalty he typically demands, but because he understands that in a state like Maine, she’s more useful to him than the alternative: a Democrat. The details differ, but the lesson is the same: when the incentives align, moderation becomes viable.

At this point, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are political unicorns within the Republican Party—not necessarily because they’re wired differently, but because the electoral incentives they face are fundamentally different from those of nearly all their GOP colleagues.

Braderman

Michael Braderman is a lifelong advocate for reason, civic responsibility, and a deep belief in democracy. He's not bound by political tribes, and while he's been a registered Democrat for most of his adult life, he started as an independent and rejects extreme partisan labels. Braderman sees the world through a pragmatic lens, prioritizing facts, fairness, and functionality in government over ideological viewpoints.

His book, The Pragmatist Awakening, wasn't written for partisan gain, but from a genuine desire as an American to restore decency, democracy, and sanity to our political process. Rather than focusing on defeating Republicans in general elections, Braderman’s strategy is to reform the Republican Party from within by changing who wins their primary elections. He champions strategic civic engagement in reliably Republican districts, where Democrats typically can't win, to help nominate principled, pro-democracy conservatives over extremist candidates. For him, this work isn't about political purity; it's about protecting the republic.

Having witnessed the Republican Party's drift away from logic, truth, and democratic norms, Braderman felt compelled to act. His aim isn't to transform the GOP into the Democratic Party, but to help bring it back to reality. He firmly believes that America cannot function without two healthy political parties, and The Pragmatist Awakening is his blueprint for achieving that.

Professionally, Braderman has dedicated over 30 years to professional recruiting. After graduating from the University of Delaware, he honed his skills in the agency world before moving into corporate recruiting for some of the world's leading technology companies. He's built a career helping organizations grow by identifying and recruiting world-class talent globally. One can order “The Pragmatist Awakening: Restoring Decency and Democracy One Republican Primary at a Time,” here.