Republican Extremism And The Weakness Of Republican Leadership

The victory of David Brat over Eric Cantor was momentarily a cause for celebration, but the long term results might not be so favorable. Norm Ornstein warns that this will lead to further radicalization of the Republican Party:

First, it is clear that this moves the Republican Party even further to the right, in approach, attitude and rhetoric. Even if the overwhelming majority of incumbents, including establishment ones, have won renomination, even if broader Republican public opinion is more establishment conservative than Tea Party radical, all it takes is an example or two of the opposite to get all politicians jumping at their shadows and muttering to themselves, “That could happen to me.”

…American political parties always face a tension between their establishment and ideological wings. On the Republican side, going back more than a hundred years to the Teddy Roosevelt era, that was a struggle between moderate progressives and conservatives.

Now it is different. There are no moderates or progressives in today’s GOP; the fight is between hard-line conservatives who believe in smaller government and radical nihilists who want to blow up the whole thing, who have as much disdain for Republican traditional conservatives as they do for liberals.

In our 2012 book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” Tom Mann and I described the Republican Party as an “insurgent outlier.” That is even more true today. The energy and driving force in the party, in its House membership, media dominance, caucus and primary electorates and financial backers, is not its conservative wing but its radical side.

Ornstein is probably right that this will pull the Republicans even further to the right, but how far right can they go before even safe Republican districts are at risk? Will Republicans in these districts support any lunatic with an R after his name, or is there a limit? At the moment it appears that Brat should win, but the narrative would certainly change if the victory by such an extremists were to cause the Republicans to lose a safe Republican district.

Yesterday I noted Brat’s views on slashing spending on Medicare, Social Security, and education.  His plan to replace Obmamacare is just as absurd: “We need to also scrap employer-based health insurance, and give those incentives to individuals to carry their own portable health insurance. If we did that, the issue of pre-existing conditions largely goes away.” This makes absolutely no sense as the individual market has been dominated by insurance plans which have been the most abusive at denying coverage to the sick.

Brat’s campaign manager, Zachery Werrell, scrubbed his Facebook page after the victory but Yahoo News took screen shots while the page was still available:

From comparing George Zimmerman’s shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin to abortion to calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration and encouraging the adoption of the silver monetary standard, Zachary Werrell – one of just two paid staffers for the upstart campaign of Randolph-Macon College economics professor David Brat – sought in 2012 and 2013 to build a public profile as a socially conservative libertarian voice…

“Can someone who was outraged that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of ‘SOMETHING ANYTHING’ and who is simultaneously pro-choice explain the logical dissonance there? Ie. Why its not ok to kill someone who is banging your head into concrete but its ok to kill someone for simply existing who, through your conscious actions, you brought into the world?” Werrell had written in an Oct. 24, 2013, posting.

The month before, the campaign manager for the likely next congressman for Virginia’s 7th District – since no Democrat has represented that district since 1971 – questioned whether existing state lines were defensible. “Should sections of States be allowed to secede from a State if they feel they are un/underrepresented in the State Government?” Werrell asked. “I say yes. I derive that opinion from our first foundational document – the Declaration of Independence. What say you?”

On Oct. 25, 2013, he called for an end to the regulation of prescription drugs, citing a story from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. “Abolish the FDA!” he wrote.

On Oct. 29 of that year, it was a piece by Fred Reed from Lew Rockwell’s website on the wussification of boys that set him off. “There is a war on boys!” Werrell wrote. “Rough housing, playing soldier, etc, are all punished or medicated away. And we wonder why there is gender inequality in the classroom and in college/attendance/graduation rates.”

The Reed piece called for the end of women teachers in coed or boys’ schools. “It is time to get women out of the schooling of boys,” wrote Fred Reed. “It is way past time. Women in our feminized classrooms are consigning generations of our sons to years of misery and diminished futures.” The piece further argued that “women should not be allowed within fifty feet of a school where boys are taught” and that “Women are totalitarian. Men are happy to let boys be boys and girls be girls. Women want all children to be girls.”

Brat is far more likely than Cantor to make a major gaffe. It will be interesting to see his take on the views of his campaign manager.

If we can fantasize about a Democratic upset in this Congressional district, we might also fantasize about another upset in the general election. Peter Beinart looked at the weakness of the Republican leadership:

Cantor’s boss, John Boehner is, according to Nancy Pelosi, “the weakest speaker in history.” Less than 50 percent of Republicans approve of his performance. Over the last two years, he has repeatedly retreated in the face of opposition from rank-and-file conservatives who treat him with barely disguised disdain. Until the defeat of Cantor, his most likely heir apparent, it was widely assumed that he would soon either step—or be pushed—aside soon.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell only avoided Cantor’s fate by attaching himself to his Kentucky colleague Rand Paul, whose upstart Senate candidacy McConnell had opposed. Like Boehner, McConnell is treated with striking disrespect in his own caucus.

David Frum wonders whether the Republican leadership will ever fight back:

At some point, Republican leaders must recognize that they have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not. If they refuse to join that fight, they will be devoured anyway. If they surrender, they condemn the whole conservative project in America to the destructive leadership of fanatics (and the cynics who make their living by duping fanatics).

I never thought there was much of a chance of Grimes to beat Mitch McConnell despite being close in the polls but today Political Wire reported that “A new Magellan Strategies (R) poll in Kentucky finds Allison Lundergran Grimes (D) leading Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) by three points in the U.S. Senate race, 49% to 46%.” Perhaps a major reason that Cantor was defeated is general bipartisan disgust with the Republican leadership, and if so this just might extend to knocking out McConnell.

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