Horseshoe Theory, Zero-Sum Thinking, & GOP Populists
How 'reverse CBT' explains the populist right, too.
Have you been shocked and confused by the anger and social distrust from some political activists on the left and right? From the peak of Compassionate Conservatism, through the rise and fall of the TEA Party, and into the social media era, I’ve watched in the last four years as something that feels like a sea change has emerged on the right. Unlike previous Republican intra-party shifts that have welcomed new voters who sought greater ideological purity, this shift draws low-propensity swing voters who previously considered themselves Democrats12, (if they identified with any party at all). They are angry zero-sum thinkers, sure of nothing except that anyone not matching their energy of open anger and social distrust is responsible for their negative perception of their status compared to others. If they’d had in-person social connections, they lost them during the COVID-19 pandemic. I hypothesize that this faction is now finding social connection only in politics and during that social connection, practicing what Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff call “reverse CBT.” Furthermore, I believe that though this faction is currently small enough that it is concentrated in unchurched Blue states, it is rapidly growing. Their inexperience and distrust threaten the sustainability of the Republican Party and their zero-sum thinking inhibits the Party from providing a truly conservative alternative to progressive advocacy.
From After Babel3:
“In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen “cognitive distortions,” such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways causes depression, as well as being a symptom of depression. Breaking out of these painful distortions is a cure for depression.
What Greg saw in 2013 were students justifying the suppression of speech and the punishment of dissent using the exact distortions that Greg had learned to free himself from. Students were saying that an unorthodox speaker on campus would cause severe harm to vulnerable students (catastrophizing); they were using their emotions as proof that a text should be removed from a syllabus (emotional reasoning). Greg hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT.”
In 2020, I was working on four campaigns across two different districts and I met people at political rallies who I had never seen before. As I talked and built relationships with them, I started to identify unusual (for Republicans) patterns. These working-class voters, who were lumped in with the Populist Right as mostly poor, rural, white voters were actually very different. I believe this understanding of self-described MAGA voters is inaccurate; it’s not nearly expansive enough about the type of person likely to exhibit extreme loyalty to a particular candidate type and misunderstands the underlying reasons for this faction’s loyalty. While some of this faction’s policy preferences are similar to typical Populist Right Republican voters, I argue that there’s an additional, growing faction of Republican voters that has become active since 2020. This faction is currently most visible in highly unchurched regions of Blue states and has affected the language of MAGA but is significantly less loyal to Trump as a person than to Trump as an in-group virtue signal of loyalty. This faction should be more accurately understood as emotionally reactive zero-sum thinkers who fit the following pattern of disaffiliation:
Incredibly socially distrustful
Angry
Non-ideological (ideology is also “nothing in particular”)
Religion is "nothing in particular"
“Non-joiners”
Low-propensity voters or non-voters
(On the right): More negatively polarized against Democrats than affectively polarized against Republicans
(On the right): Affinity for religion without religious practice
(On the right): Primary Moral Foundations of Loyalty and Liberty
(On the right): Secondary Moral Foundation of Proportionality
According to the NBER Working Paper “Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides,” “zero-sum thinking is a strong predictor” of Democrats voting for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Further, they find that, “Democrats who hold a more zero-sum view are more concerned about immigration and are more strongly opposed to increased immigration. Similarly, within the Republican Party, the most zero-sum individuals are more likely to support redistribution.” This paper surveyed Americans between October 2020 and July 2023, perfectly capturing the timeframe during which I’ve witnessed the most political change among Republicans. Additionally, this paper maps out the American populations most likely to engage in zero-sum thinking.
While for decades, Democrats have been the party of the average working-class voter, this is rapidly shifting. As Politico notes, “In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won the poorest voters—those making under $30,000 a year — by 8 points, while Biden split the highest-earning voters evenly with Trump.” This chart is a perfect demonstration of horseshoe theory, with the wealthiest Americans and the poorest Americans engaging in near-equal degrees of zero-sum thinking and Americans across all income brackets engaging in some zero-sum thinking. With the poorest and wealthiest voters now almost evenly split between the Republican and Democratic parties and zero-sum thinking predicting previously Democratic voters supporting Trump, it becomes obvious that a number of these zero-sum thinkers now identify as Republicans.
The Harvard Gazette also does us the favor of breaking out zero-sum thinking by education.
In another win for horseshoe theory4, we see here that the least educated and most highly educated Americans engage in the highest degree of zero-sum thinking. Like the income measure, this one is split across parties. According to Pew Research, as of 2023, Republicans held an 8-point lead against Democrats among voters with a high school degree or less, while Democrats held a 24-point lead against Republicans among voters with a post-grad degree.
These two charts should make it clear that Republicans have now captured low-educational-attainment voters and that this faction is also disproportionately likely to engage in zero-sum thinking. This presents an extreme challenge for traditional conservatives, who have long held to philosophical and policy convictions that directly oppose zero-sum thinking, and for a Republican Party that has for decades been synonymous with embracing free global markets as good for everyone. While moderation is clearly returning for some issues: Free speech, racial equality, merit-based rewards, and policing, we are losing the battle for a market-based economy as low-propensity voters with leftist economic intuitions take over the Republican Party. If we reach a point where only Libertarians and a handful of conservative elites are worried about the long-term ramifications of entitlement spending and national debt, and no one is willing to fight to reduce the regulatory burden on industries of all types to lower consumer prices and increase innovation, and if most Americans believe that other countries should police the world instead of us, the US will be in extremely dire straits. As a friend recently said, “A healthy, functioning Republican Party would address this.”
If traditional conservatives and liberals can’t restore community that crosses socioeconomic boundaries, we’ll win some battles but lose the economic strength and pluralistic community bonds that reminds Americans everywhere that the American dream is theirs, too.
Next time, we’ll dig into the religious and ideological affinity of this growing Republican faction: They’re mostly religious ‘nones,’ who are strongly attracted to Christianity despite their lack of affiliation.
Jacobin Magazine, et al. “Commonsense Solidarity: How a Working-Class Coalition Can Be Built, and Maintained.” Jacobin, Jacobin.com, 9 November 2021, https://jacobin.com/2021/11/common-sense-solidarity-working-class-voting-report. Accessed 6 May 2024.
Nunn, Nathan, et al. “Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides.” National Bureau of Economic Research, vol. Working Paper Series, no. 10.3386/w31688, 2023, p. 134. NBER, https://socialeconomicslab.org/research/working-papers/zero-sum-thinking-and-the-roots-of-u-s-political-divides/. Accessed 06 05 2024.
Haidt, Jon. “Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest.” After Babel, 9 March 2023, https://www.afterbabel.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls. Accessed 6 May 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory