WaPo notes a veteran Republican’s analysis of the problems the Republicans didn’t overcome in the recent 2019 election cycle in Virginia, where the state House and Senate were lost to the Republicans for the first time in a generation:
“We need candidates who can run strong campaigns with a conservative agenda that actually people are attracted to and not repelled by,” said Dick Wadhams, the former state party chair in Colorado who has also worked in Virginia. “That may sound trite, but I’d swear sometimes people act like they have never heard such a thing.”
Wadhams is a long-time Republican who evidently is a little slow in understanding how the Republicans have changed over the last few decades, because he appears not to understand how his own party has become the Party of Absolute Truth. In other words, his last phrase, but I’d swear sometimes people act like they have never heard such a thing, is not only mostly true, but also anathema. Change is not acceptable to the most holy, ya know.
As Goldwater forecast so long ago, the party has been taken over by those who believe they have the truth, the whole truth, and anyone who disagrees with them is evil. If my reader has doubts, they should consider the recent draconian abortion laws passed in Alabama and other red states, which are basically theology dressed up in camouflage; the frantic flaying of powers from the governorship by a lame duck meeting of the Wisconsin state legislature after the Scott Walker (R-WI) lost his re-election bid to Tony Ever (D-WI); the threat to ignore the will of voters in Kentucky in the recent gubernatorial contest lost by incumbent Matt Bevins (R-KY) to Andy Beshears (D-KY); and the proposal of AZ GOP chairman Dr. Kelli Ward, who suggests an electoral college system be implemented at the state level for gubernatorial elections, as such systems magnify the power of the rural population at the expense of the city populations.
It’ll be interesting to see how quickly the Republicans adjust to the reality that some of their political positions are simply not acceptable to most Americans. I suspect what we’ll see is a gradual change as the more theological Republicans die off from old age, and then as the party begins to change, the more rigid Republicans leave in protest. But how quickly will this happen? Hard to say.
