Is the GOP about to crack?
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| RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 |
Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel found herself in a quandary while speaking to voters Saturday at a GOP event in Georgia, caught between urging them to vote in the upcoming runoff that will decide control of the U.S. Senate while also maintaining that the results of the Nov. 3 presidential election couldn’t be trusted. The meet-and-greet descended into a fiery “public airing of grievances,” according to a CNN reporter who was there. One voter asked, “Why should we trust this [runoff] election when it’s already been decided?” McDaniel responded, “It’s not been decided. This is the key. It’s not been decided.” McDaniel urged attendees to vote in January even as they shouted that Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was corrupt.
Festivus came early in Georgia, and at the worst possible time.
As soi disant and soon-to-be-gone "president" Donald Trump continues to tilt at windmills in his fool's errand to steal the election from Joe Biden, his fulminations about the untrustworthiness of the electoral system is putting Georgia Republicans in a pretty pickle. If they say that he's right, and the elections were inherently corrupt, then why should voters go out and support such a flawed system? If they say he's full of it, and urge voters to come out on Jan. 5, 2021, they risk the Wroth of Mauron. Steve Inskeep, in his New York Times op-ed, is correct that Trump's influence as a one-term loser will wane. Probably. Maybe.
The thing is that, yes, Trump is a one-term loser. But there has never been a one-term loser like Trump, with a virulent, right wing populist movement behind him. He got people to vote who had never voted, or only rarely. These people have no loyalty to the Republican Party; their loyalty is to Trump. We saw this in 2018 when they didn't turn out for the midterms when Trump wasn't on the ballot. And now, his smashing of all norms in continuing to contest an election he lost might be the proverbial straw on the proverbial camel's back.
If the Georgia election is even marginally affected by the disaffected, we'll have Senators Ossoff and Warnock in the new year. Those people haranguing Not-Romney in Marietta are not a small minority. Her entire event was dominated by them. Will they swallow their bile and turn out and vote? Most will. But it's possible to see a good enough number of them deciding that everything is utterly corrupt and withdrawing from participation in electoral politics.
As I've written, Trumpism predated Trump. The GOP has been on a path towards fascism for decades. It became the home for the famous paranoid style of American politics. 2016 was the party's last chance to say "no" to it, and not give in to Trump's blandishments. But that ignores the very potent reality that Republican voters were yearning for a Trump. He embodied all the animus which Republicans had been stoking since the 1960s and the Civil Rights Revolution. Little Lord Lindsey Graham could prattle all he wanted to that if his party elected Trump, it would be wiped out and deserved to be so. We saw what value he held for his own words. But he wasn't wrong.
Will the GOP survive Trumpism? What we're seeing in Georgia are cracks in the GOP edifice, between voters loyal to the party, and voters loyal only to Trump. If the party is seen as not offering sufficient fidelity to the one-term loser, what reason would those voters have to come out for it? Let's face it: Trump is done. He's not going to run in 2024. His family isn't going to take over the party apparatus. And he's certainly not going to form his own party; that requires work, which isn't his métier. And, of course, he'll be a bit busy fending off prosecution and bankruptcy. But he'll keep fleecing the rubes, and enraging them against a party which failed him. He has no concern for the party, or the country, only for his own ego.
For most of us, bit by bit, as new fights arise under a Biden Administration, Trump will fade from view. But not for his most ardent supporters. And while there are not enough of them to win an election, there are enough of them to prevent Republicans from winning. Tangled webs formed for short-term political gain might just strangle the party.
Those whom the gods want to destroy have their supposed prayers answered. The GOP wanted a Mussolini. Just remember his fate, and that of his party.