We’ve talked about team politics before, wherein loyalty to Party suppresses your own good sense; it’s part of the larger phenomenon of tribalism. This has at least a couple of results, such as the ascension of the incompetents up the ladder to high office, and the attempted removal of those who might actually try to exercise their good sense in service to party and/or nation. The latter is happening now in Alabama, as Politico is reporting:
Alabama GOP Sen. Richard Shelby is confronting a fierce backlash from conservatives over his refusal to support Roy Moore in last month’s special election — with Moore backers pushing a censure resolution and robocall campaign targeting the powerful lawmaker.
Moore’s supporters are furious with Shelby over his remark days before the Dec. 12 election that he “couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” a controversial former state judge who was facing allegations of child molestation. Instead, Shelby said he would write in the name of another unnamed Republican.
Moore’s backers say the comments from the 83-year-old dean of Alabama’s congressional delegation effectively delivered the election to Democrat Doug Jones, and now they’re fighting back.
This week, three Moore supporters submitted a resolution to the Alabama Republican Party executive committee calling for Shelby to be censured. It argues that Shelby “publicly encouraged Republicans and all voters to write in a candidate instead of voting for the Republican Candidate Judge Roy Moore,” and that his “public speech was then used by the Democrat Candidate in robocalls to sway voters to not vote for Judge Roy Moore.”
The move came after a pro-Moore outside group, Courageous Conservatives PAC, ran robocalls last month describing Shelby as a turncoat and calling on him to resign.
“Sen. Richard Shelby stabbed President Trump and conservatives in the back,” said one of the calls, which urged listeners to call his office and complain. “Tell Shelby you’ll never forget his disloyalty to President Trump and the Republican Party for his treasonous actions. Tell Shelby he’s betrayed his trust to Alabamians and he should resign his office. Call now.”
While one might immediately suspect the GOP tribal motives of the attackers, those last two paragraphs really puts their nasty little motives into focus, doesn’t it? A senior GOP, no, THE senior Alabama GOP member, a man who should, and did, express a leadership opinion in unequivocal terms, and rather than respect his opinion and, perhaps, offer a rebuttal, the Moore supporters choose the tribal option – off with his head!
Because they – and their deeply flawed candidate, who’d wreck the United States if he could have his druthers – think they’re smarter than a man whose spent years in politics.
I think we’re going to be seeing shit like this for years to come from the GOP, as it perceives its problems being insufficient loyalty, rather than inferior candidates. Quite literally, in point of fact, the Party really has little chance to generate superior candidates, because that requires admitting that the candidates who’ve the charisma, or the boot-licking abilities, to climb the ladder are, in fact, inferior – and when it’s always team politics, that’s a hard thing to do. No one will vote against someone on “your” team.
And it may be one of those self-reinforcing trends, because as more and more members decide they can’t stomach a candidate, say so publicly, and get run out of the Party, it will face more and more failures – and will blame it on the failure to be loyal to the Party, and thus respond with more and more loyalty requirements, which will result in more inferior candidates, blah blah blah.
But this may take a while – a few years, at least. And they’ll never really figure it out, because for a while team politics was quite successful, even if the resultant GOP-controlled Congresses have been unimpressive – or even disgraceful. But as candidates get worse and worse, the process will go, and in the person of Moore and Trump is already beginning to go, from positive to negative.
