Yesterday I read about Idaho Republicans manning the ramparts to defend the extremists from … the more extremists, and calling the Democrats on their red emergency phone. Today I see long time conservative Jonah Goldberg is, well, essentially giving up:
Perhaps there’s another way. The primary system is the GOP’s Achilles’ heel because it makes a mere plurality of the vote a de facto majority of the vote. A recent Pew survey found that 44 percent of Republicans want Trump to run again. As 2016 showed, that’s more than enough to win the nomination in a crowded field. The same dynamic explains why Republican congressional candidates kowtow to Trump—they’re afraid of his primary voters. And right now, there is no countervailing pressure within the party.
So why not create pressure outside of it? Specifically, a third party with a simple, Reaganite conservative platform combined with a serious plank to defend the soundness of elections? For simplicity’s sake, think of it as a GOP minus the Trump personality cult.
If a Republican candidate met its requirements, a new party of the right could endorse the Republican, the way New York’s Conservative Party does. If not, a non-Trumpy candidate could play the role of spoiler by garnering enough conservative votes in the general election to throw the election to the Democrat. [The Dispatch]
So real Republicans can spoil the run of the MAGA-ites without actually voting for those evil creatures of Hell Democrats. Erick Erickson likes it but doesn’t think it’ll work:
As I see it, the problem is a lot of us used to be not of the establishment, but of the part of the conservative movement the establishment took seriously and we had some serious ideas ( or at least guys like Jonah do). Now, to stay in power, the party establishment (which really has not changed) has to listen to Aunt Flo who thinks the vaccine has a microchip in it and Uncletifa who thinks the CIA used Hugo Chavez’s ghost to hack into voting machines and that Ashley Babbit is a martyr while George Floyd got what he deserved.
It’s all rather unseemly and embarrassing particularly because we all know the establishment guys don’t believe any of it, but nod sincerely and act as if they believe it. Of course, the establishment guys didn’t really believe us either. They are professional head patters.
Frankly, therein lies the rub and it is why I can grin and bear it. The establishment guys will say and do whatever they can to stay in power. The people most willing to believe the crazy are the least likely to get elected and the people most proficient at lying to the crazy are the ones who stay around. They are, after all, the ones the party revolted against and led to Trump. But those guys are still the ones in charge. They’re really good at theater and surviving. It is one of the least appreciated aspects of the Age of Trump — all the people who the base wanted to purge by bringing in Trump are still the ones in charge.
A bit opaque.
Goldberg may not see this as defeat, but I think that if his scheme were to work in the short term by helping to defeat extreme right candidates wearing MAGA hats, in the long term the conservatives would become a fragmented set of two or more parties, each led by its own charismatic power-seeker.
And they’d hate each other. Make no mistake, Goldberg’s proposal is hardball politics at its core, and, culturally, the far-right conservatives, animated as many or most of them are by religious beliefs, would be bitterly resentful of anyone or any organization that deprived them of their “rightful” victory. Need I say the bitterly resentful find it difficult to work with their enemies?
Attempts to lure members of one party to another party would be met by resistance from the leaders, whether grifters or true believers, who would have to find reasons that would stop such a migration; fortunately, religion is fecund territory for creating stories to keep members loyal.
After a few years of getting their butts handed to them by the Democrats, the parties would begin to coalesce into a single Party. There’d be members who’d vote as directed, because toxic team politics, so useful to the leaders, would survive; there’d be members whose loyalty would be begrudging, and not necessarily vote as directed all the time. And there’d be non-members who realized that the competency presumably offered by the Democrats is more important than loyalty to any single issue.
But I suppose Goldberg’s long term goal is not clear. If it’s simply for the Republicans he favors to gain power long term, well, I don’t think it would work. If it’s to teach the Republicans a lesson, culturally I don’t think they’re prepared to learn it.
I wanted a herd of golden calves, but this one, from Chabad.org but otherwise uncredited, is far too charming to ignore.
But I think the real far-right extremist “conservative” problem is demographics. The youngsters who have not yet invested their emotional and other capital into ideas and institutions are watching and learning from the behaviors and results of their elders. That’s why new generations are so loathed by the old generation – not because of their supposed moral turpitude, but because the new generation often rejects the golden calves of the old generation. People hate having their holy water spat in.
That red line isn’t doing well.
A few will buy into Republican ideals and institutions, but most are going to watchful enough to reject the Republicans. They see a crashing climate and a conservative industry that rejects inconvenient scientific findings, whether they be evolution or climate change – and, for the young, climate change will be real and, if any of a number of phenomenon such as the Siberian and California wildfires continue, quite painful – that is, existentially threatening. They see rampant lying and unrestrained power-seeking and a political culture that’s OK with that. They see the evangelicals voting for the Prince of Mendacity, the former President, and have to wonder about the morality inherent. Heck, locally a Young Republicans (I think that’s the name) leader has been arrested for sex trafficking, and that brought down state Republican chairperson Carnahan. The behaviors, taken together, are a little astounding.
The demographics are not at all promising.
