Last time I talked about a Nazi in Illinois who had managed to win the GOP nomination for a seat in the House of Representatives, but he’s not the only example of the Republican run to the right. WaPo discusses the mass embarrassment felt by the Virginia GOP after a former Minnesotan by the name of Corey Stewart won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat currently held by former VP candidate Tim Kaine by embracing Southern statuary, attacking immigrants, and refusing to disavow white supremacists:
Stewart’s elevation has some lifelong Republicans questioning their political identity.
“I am extremely disappointed that a candidate like Corey Stewart could win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate,” former Republican lieutenant governor Bill Bolling tweeted on the night of Stewart’s primary win. “This is clearly not the Republican Party I once knew, loved and proudly served. Every time I think things can’t get worse they do, and there is no end in sight.”
Rory Stolzenberg, who began identifying with the GOP as a fourth-grader and had a seat on the state party’s governing board in his early 20s, plans to vote for Kaine.
“When the debate is between bad policies and fundamentally un-American policies that betray the democratic ideals that this country was founded on, it’s not even a choice anymore,” said Stolzenberg, 26, a Charlottesville entrepreneur. “I question whether I’m still a Republican, but I think it’s important that we don’t surrender the party to people like that.”
It’s not trickery, it’s a matter of numbers and attitude of the base. Stewart claims he’s not a supremacist, but he appears to be repulsing traditional members of the Republican Party.
I think there’s a clue here, though:
Fissures opened anew the next year when Dave Brat, a little-known professor with a tea party following, toppled then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, with help from Breitbart News. Divides between Cantor and his supporters, and Brat and the tea partyers still resonate four years later.
And Brat then won the seat, despite being little-known. That’s the key, little-known, because it implies the Party’s levers of party have been usurped by the extremists.
That’s something to think about, for the moderate Republicans. How long will they stick around?
