Republicans are in 'intellectual collapse' as they push bans on everything that scares them

Republicans are facing an "intellectual collapse" — and their turn to increasingly anti-democracy and anti-free speech policies is the result of that, argued MSNBC's Joy Reid on Wednesday.

Her argument came during a discussion with political stategists Cornell Belcher and Matthew Dowd of the demand by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to enact a "national divorce" — a euphemism for Republican-controlled states seceding from the United States.

"I feel like there is a coddling of the conservative mind," said Reid. "The conservatives don't have the confidence that their ideas can be sold on the basis of presenting them as ideas. They have decided that we can't convince people to do what we want and live by our religion, so we will tell the federal government to enforce it. I don't like this book or drag shows. The thing that I feel uncomfortable with, I don't feel confident that I can convince people to come to my side, so I need the power of federal government to ban the things that make me uncomfortable."

That attitude, Reid said, looks like "an intellectual collapse and sense of defeat."

"I am really glad you brought this point up, because I have been thinking about this a lot, having been observant in politics for decades," said Dowd. "I can't remember a time when one political party or the leaders of the political party abandon persuasion. They abandon persuasion as a mode of leadership. What they decided is just like you said. They can't persuade the majority of America to move in a certain direction, which is where they want to go. I have said this as a form of Christian nationalism, they want to establish that. They no longer want to persuade. They go to force."

"Every single leader that has emerged — Donald Trump, DeSantis and others — it is not an art of persuasion, but force," he added. "When you no longer — when you abandon persuasion and go to force, democracy is afraid and broken. A major political party no longer believes in persuasion."

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