“Elected Republicans who are not bigots are generally cowards in the face of bigotry. And that is a shocking, horrible thing.”
Michael Gerson
In 2012 Barack Obama won re-election with as emphatic a victory as the split US polity could possibly dish out. Obama won 332 electoral votes and garnered 51.7 percent of ballots cast, a more than 5 million vote advantage. Worse for the GOP, most every demographic pegged to become more influential in the coming years – women, young people, minorities, college-educated whites, suburban voters, independents – went for the incumbent in a big way.
In short, the result fully validated what the equally decisive rout of 2008 clearly illustrated: America’s most critical electoral trends were leaving the GOP behind. The party either had to stop treating most of the nation’s voting blocs as adversaries of its flyover white base of support or enter future national campaigns up against it from the start. At the very least, unless a bigger tent was built, the Presidency could become unattainable. At worst, Republicans could become a permanent minority on Capital Hill, doomed to always be outside looking in for the indefinite future. Bleak prospects indeed.
But while the rational actor model may have presented such either/or certainties, Roger Ailes and the Fox/AM juggernaut he guided saw things quite differently. It’s only a numbers game, get out more of ours and keep away more of theirs… simple formula. If the prevailing storyline isn’t helping, create another one. If too many voters are against us, discredit their votes. Why accept the indignity of needing the support of those you despise when you can cancel them out? It’s not voter suppression, it’s preventing fraud. They aren’t growing sectors of the voting public, they are deploying illegals, felons and Black city political machines who are unfairly tilting the playing field.
That the GOP so readily adopted voter suppression and the lies required to justify it established beyond question it had been devoured by Fox/AM. What was a tiger it had been struggling to tame for its own benefit since the Tea Party took shape, now belched out the remnants of any decency Republicans once at least considered. All that remained was angry White vs. everybody else; the only thing open for debate was the proper means to an end, the direction was clear.
Brad Raffensperger, a Georgia millionaire and prominent Republican, was all in with that program. During his 2018 primary race, which led to his election as Georgia’s Secretary of State, Raffensperger enthusiastically pledged to reduce elections bureaucracy and aggressively enforce voter ID laws, well-understood subtext for making it more difficult to vote. In fact, in 2020 voting rights groups sued Raffensperger in federal court after he refused to print paper sources for registration and absentee information to be used to back up “poll pads,” which had failed previously and caused massive lines at inner-city polling places. By word and deed there was never any question but that Raffensperger was a loyal instrument for Trumpie Governor Brian Kemp’s ever more outrageous voter suppression agenda.
Of course, the nation witnessed after November 3rd there was a limit how far Raffensperger would go. Working the refs and employing various schemes to make it harder for minorities to vote was one thing, outright post-election fraud and criminality another. When the unhinged Trump demanded the latter, Raffensperger looked into the abyss and found character. For that he has been rightly praised by most all except the GOP, whose objectives he loyally pursued until continuing to do so became an overt felony. Now the party plans to remedy that heresy, both with legislation fully informed by the lies he resisted, and a primary opponent whose platform is simple: I would have done whatever Trump demanded even before he demanded it.
Jody Hice makes an impressive case for the crown as most loathsome member of Congress. He is the total package. A self-described “constitutional conservative,” Hice makes a habit of falsely citing various founding fathers to legitimate gibberish. Moreover, he is also a self-righteous Christian blowhard, always ready and willing to pass judgement on those living their lives at odds with his bigoted wretchedness. Whether he is condemning pro-choice proponents as “worse than Hitler” or declaring Islam “does not deserve First Amendment protection,” equating gays with pedophiles and gay marriage with bestiality or touting a husband’s “authority” over his wife, Hice is $174,000 a year of taxpayer-sponsored worthlessness. Now he wants to be Georgia’s next Secretary of State. His platform? Trump says votes, I say… how many?
In fact, Hice is about as capable of overseeing a state election apparatus as his biggest fan was to sit behind the resolute desk. It’s a marriage made in hell, which is all this GOP seems interested in consummating. Next to Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, Raffensperger is at the top of Trump’s get-even list. Hice makes no effort to present himself as anything other than the vehicle to indulge that sociopathy. Peach state voters are going to be given the choice of a competent incumbent, fully committed to the GOP’s efforts to discourage and outright purge Democratic votes, or an ignoramus offering nothing more than the promise of whatever lengths of corruption are required to get the job done, on-demand criminality.
Georgia is near identical to what’s on offer within both chambers of the GOP on Capitol Hill. In the House, the battle is all but over, as the Trumpist Borg – dozens of Hice-like mutations – now dominate the caucus, rabid nihilists with no interest in either competent governance or democracy. In the Senate it’s the McConnell camp of craven competence vs. the Cruz-Johnson posse of just much more craven. Both groups are on the same ship, going in the same direction, but the mutineers don’t care much about sailing, only making sure their Bligh is captain because others will do the swabbing if he is.
Who is winning? Well, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt has been as loyal a McConnell lieutenant as any and he’s throwing in the towel. The early GOP primary favorite to replace him? Disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens, who is now intent on reforming his image by living the big lie with monastic devotion. Greitens has been attacking Blunt – who just this week was in a shouting match with Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar defending GOP voter suppression initiatives – on the Fox/AM circuit. Blunt “didn’t defend President Trump enough” says Greitens. Even worse, Blunt was co-chair of the bi-partisan Inaugural Committee, a cardinal sin that just can’t be forgiven.
Meanwhile, the scrum who seek to replace retiring Ohio “moderate” Rob Portman apparently all headed south to kneel before Trump in Florida. Reports have filtered out of an Apprentice-like session of backstabbing and trash-talking, the necessary self-abasement for an endorsement all four are certain is the golden ticket. There are two words to describe such a spectacle… North Korea. Imagine if he had lost by only 5 million votes like Romney!
The Republican Party’s survival and the well being of American democracy has become a zero-sum equation. What unifies the GOP is the seditious proposition that its electoral fortunes depend on the successful suppression of minority voters. What divides it is the purpose of the enterprise. One group ties its ambitions to a bankrupt governing philosophy meant only to serve the upper brackets, the other to the nihilist sociopathy of a Fox/AM Frankenstein. One understands destroying the game ends their relevance. The other is simply rabid and totalitarian, concerned only with the enemy du jour of its Fuhrer. The greatest fear of Trump’s election was that a fluke would become a political class dependent on patronage he would abuse his office to promote. That happened and now it fully infests the GOP. The condition is terminal for either the Republican Party or America. Both can not endure at the same time anymore. BC