[From “A Lesson from Spain”]

The Nationalist Right in Spain was divided into two camps. One of them read the Republican Left correctly. One of them didn’t:

There were two schools of thought on the Spanish Right in the lead-up to the civil war: Accidentalism and Catastrophism. Accidentalists believed that the serious issues facing the Spanish Republic were not baked into the institution itself, but rather an accident that could be attributed to the early Marxist bent of the first government[…]Conservatives could and would steer the ship in the right direction once they peacefully won political power[…]and formed a government capable of addressing the Right’s concerns regarding government attacks on the Church and private property[…]
The second group believed the Republic was a catastrophe from the start, and that there could be no saving the Republic from itself[…]The Left would never recognize any non-Leftist government, no matter how much they claimed to uphold the rule of law, because the problem was not with the Republic’s legalistic procedures but rather with the fact that the entire system was merely a facade to facilitate a Socialist and eventually Communist state that would permanently exclude Conservatives from power

These two camps were largely united in their politics but divided in how to engage in politics. One pursued reform, while the other waited for an opportunity to overthrow the system itself once enough of the Right realized that there would be no voting their way out of this mess

Most American Republicans are still Accidentalists. And like their Spanish forebears, they are both a) wrong and b) irrelevant. If even an American rump state is to survive the eventual breakup of the USA, it will be the Catastrophists who will be running the show

Fortunately for Americans, Trump is increasingly showing signs of having embraced Catastrophism