The Republican party is ill, and the disease comes from deep within. Where are the elected wing-nuts coming from? The voters are choosing them, suggesting that the GOP voters are responsible for the illness affecting the party.
There are people researchers describe as “chaos generators,” people attracted to chaotic situations. Within the GOP, low-conscientiousness conservative (LCC) individuals actively post and share misleading information online. Researchers define conscientiousness as “the tendency to regulate one’s own behavior by being less impulsive and more orderly, diligent and prudent” (see: Of Pandemics, Politics, and Personality). There are low-conscientious people across the political spectrum. However, Donald Trump and Trumpism encouraged the LCC conspiracists to be loud and proud. It’s pretty clear Trump himself is an LCC.
With the impulsive and reckless LCC contingent running the show, the GOP primaries are vulnerable to disruptors in the mould of Trump.
Republican leaders need to be speaking out at every opportunity, loudly endorsing center-right candidates and opposing the Big Lie that Trump won in 2020. The “establishment” GOP must try to reclaim the narrative. But, that won’t happen among House leadership. It might be possible in the Senate since members must win statewide races.
The 2022 Republican primary elections have already become a circus freak show. For all its biases, I have checked the data reported by Media Matters on the 2022 announced candidates:
Among these 52 current or former candidates who have previously endorsed or given credence at some level to the conspiracy theory or promoted QAnon content:
- Twelve are from Florida, nine are from California, five are from Texas, three are from New York, New Jersey, and Arizona, two each are from Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio, and there is one each from Maryland, Rhode Island, Oregon, Tennessee, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Vermont, Alaska, Georgia, and Colorado.
- One of the candidates, in Florida, ran for a special congressional election held in January 2022.
- Forty-six are Republicans, one is a member of the American Independent Party, and five are independents.
- Thirty-five previously ran for Congress in 2020. Two previously ran for a state legislative seat in 2020.
Digging through the data, I noticed some interesting trends among the conspiracy-embracing candidates.
First, many extremists run in sure-loss races. The establishment doesn’t back a candidate in opposition +20 races. If one party’s dominance is that great, no reasonable person wants to waste time and money campaigning. However, a conspiracy believer will run just to promote the conspiracies to a wider audience. Yes, you are going to lose, but you might get to stand on a debate stage in front of an audience. There are five sure losers running in California, and they each want to be included in debates.
You know debate moments will find their way onto social media. These fringe candidates live on social media, where other LCC individuals will spread the content.
Once you let these candidates run, they find a crack into some local offices: school boards, city councils, county commissions, boards of supervisors, and so on. Numerous obscure elected boards exist, and these candidates will gladly run for those seats. The 35 of these people who ran (and lost) previously will find some path into an office and into the party. The party is (in theory) the voters, so once elected you cannot deny that someone is an elected Republican (or whatever).
Six of the 52 are trying to run outside the two major parties. Those are doomed candidacies that intend to “spread the word” of whatever nonsense they promote.
There is no good solution to the hijacking of either major party by fringe candidates.
Republican Senators are rallying to the defense of Sen. Mike Rounds, who called out the fringe. The House leadership is silent. The divisions are getting deeper.
House seats are prone to extremes since they represent lopsided partisanship, even in states without gerrymandering. This is The Great Sort at work.
What many analysts don’t overlook is that the fringe of the GOP isn’t liked in Washington. As they say, there are two types of Senators: Those who dislike Ted Cruz…. and Ted Cruz. Cruz couldn’t win a secret ballot vote for any leadership post, but he doesn’t care. He’s not there to lead. Nor, in the House, is Marjorie Taylor Greene. She doesn’t care about legislating. Cruz outright distorts and manipulates, whereas MTG seems to be a True Believer in conspiracies. Cruz speaks in legalism: “We need to ensure election integrity because some voters have doubts.” He dances around responsibility. Greene parrots the conspiracy theories, without shame.
I know, getting long here, but I want to share a warning I’m seeing in polling and focus groups: Moderate voters, largely disengaged from media, now say they will vote for a GOP candidate over any Democrat. When asked why, they cite issues that are not being emphasized in the media or in Washington, and many that nobody in DC controls.
Democrats in the safe urban districts just won’t listen to moderate voices from elsewhere. Likewise, Republicans ignore urban concerns.
Nothing feels worse than knowing, based on a lot of data, that sane progressives (with whom I do disagree) will lose to the freak show. I can prepare charts, present reports, and tell Democratic county and state campaigns whatever the data reveal… and it will not matter. It will all be ignored. The freak show keeps winning.
What if there is a “Red Wave” election? That’s when the nutcases slip through and win those long-shot races in +10 to +15 Democratic districts.
Democrats in Texas and Arizona went leftward, even as the state dynamics in both suggest a center-right swing. Suddenly, you have the real possibility that Arizona eventually has two GOP Senators. The WV Democratic Senate seat is lost the moment Joe Manchin retires.
Democrats nationally are at a low in self-identification: Republicans: 31%, Democrats 27% – Gallup. Neither party has a third of voter support. Neither. Favorability for both is below 40% in every major poll and in focus groups.
There was a time when Democrats and Republicans sought to expand their parties. Now? They play to ever-shrinking base voters because of our primary systems. The primary voters often choose the eventual winners, especially in House races.
The House is a mess, which is why I support repealing the Apportionment Act and raising the seats via a “Smallest State has two” district map. California would suddenly have 80 seats. Of course, Texas would increase its delegation, too. Smaller districts are harder to gerrymander. Until we increase the House seat count, even “geometric districts” favor the GOP, due to the urban concentration of Democrats.
What’s happening to the GOP could happen to the Democrats. It’ll start with local races and end up a national problem.
The voters are the problem because partisans are increasingly isolated from other perspectives. The voters will keep sorting themselves and this will continue to empower the fringe candidates.
