In some ways, the advent of Trumpism may be the smoke of the fire that will be the rebirth of American Democracy, the final, back-breaking error which will drive home to another three or four American generations the abject error of voting in someone like Trump.
With this in mind, I submit the South Carolina GOP is a ways behind virtually everyone else:
The South Carolina Republican Party could cancel its marquee presidential nominating contest in 2020 in a move to protect President Trump from any primary challengers.
Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina GOP, said he doesn’t anticipate Trump would face a primary challenge and emphasized that the state party executive committee hasn’t held any formal discussions about the contest, dubbed “first in the South” and usually third on the presidential nominating calendar. But McKissick would pointedly not rule out canceling the primary, indicating that that would be his preference.
“We have complete autonomy and flexibility in either direction,” McKissick told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.”
Washington Examiner
Come on. There’s no way this ends well for McKissick.
- He’s so personally in the tank for Trump that he might as well get plastic surgery so he looks like his omniscient Party Leader.
- The primaries are meant to winnow out the poor candidates in order for the Party to present an excellent candidate. By eliminating the primary, McKissick perverts his responsibility.
- Either he’s not paying attention to Trump’s terminal troubles, or he’s so bought into the ludicrous fake news meme that if his hypothetical divorce were mentioned in the local media, he’d declare it false and try to kiss his ex-spouse, sans permission.
- If Trump is so fragile that he cannot withstand a primary challenge in South Carolina, then what of the declaration that “We are the party of President Donald J. Trump?” Is this just the South Carolina GOP elite trying to enforce an unwanted discipline on the base?
- Speaking of that declaration, candidate Katie Arrington, its author, did not succeed in becoming Representative Arrington; her blind embrace of Trumpism, in particular its projected ruination of the sea coast of South Carolina, is one of the primary factors favored by analysts in her defeat by Democrat Joe Cunningham, the first Democrat to represent the district since at least 2000 (Ballotpedia’s data doesn’t go back further). Many of those contests even lacked a Democratic challenger. That a declaration of Trump-adoration resulted in the loss of what should have been a safe Republican seat should have McKissick seeking better alternatives – before he loses more seats in 2020.
Yeah, this report from the Examiner made me laugh and laugh, but then my understanding is that South Carolina politics of any brand can be best understood in the context of an insane asylum. Ah, here we go:
South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum. — James L. Petigru, 1860
It’ll be interesting to see how many other state Republican organizations will fail in their responsibilities in the same way, and how many of their respective members suddenly decide to leave the Party. The general situation is already not so good, as this latest Gallup poll on Party affiliation speaks volumes:
Democrats are picking up affiliations while the GOP appears to be static. In reality, I suspect right-wing extremists are moving into the GOP, forcing more moderate members out in disgust, who then join the Independents, while more Independents join the Democrats. But sometimes even elected GOP officials will jump parties, as four recently did in Kansas. This is noteworthy, even important, because that switch in allegiance is an implicit denial of a central GOP tenet: that the Democrats are somehow evil. While I’m sure the four defectors will cast as apostates to the remaining Kansas base, if they can communicate their reasons to the base, some parts of the base may follow suit, if not in formal allegiance, then in the voting booth.
So McKissick is roughly four steps behind the political times, I’d say, and he has a lot of scurrying to do if he doesn’t want South Carolina Republicans, not to mention himself, to become a historical curiosity gaped over by a citizenry who finds their activities incomprehensible in the greater context of a secular society bent on excellence in politics, which is something we certainly don’t have in the White House and the Senate. The House remains to be seen.
