Egypt’s political legitimacy crisis, which began weeks ago with a powergrab by President Mohamed Morsi that granted him sweeping powers and insulated him from judicial review, spiraled further into violence today. By day’s end, tanks were deployed into Cairo’s streets to clear out demonstrators, after protests outside the Presidential palace erupted into fights between protesters and supporters armed with clubs and firebombs. Reacting to what is now widely seen as a major blunder by Morsi, three advisers to the Muslim Brotherhood-linked President have resigned. The government’s violent crackdown is raising fears that Egypt’s Arab Spring will have succeeded not in liberalizing the country or institutionalizing democracy, but in replacing a Western-oriented relatively secular strongman for an Islamist strongman hostile to the interests of the United States and its allies.