The Closing of the Republican Mind

The election of President Trump has coincided with a reaction among Republican voters against open-mindedness, open borders and an open society in general — not to mention a growing hostility to cognitive elites. …

Countless analyses have demonstrated that Trump won the election by combining support from traditional Republican voters with a surge in backing from constituencies that contemporary economic and cultural developments have left behind.

But Trump did not campaign against economic elites. Instead, he built a fire under animosity toward what has been called “the creative class” by Richard Florida, the demographer; the “plutonomy” by three analysts at Citigroup; and the “cosmopolitan class” by Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale. CONT.

Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times