It’s Just a Little Crazy, It’s Still Good
I was listening to a podcast yesterday with the out-going Lt. Governor of Georgia, Geoff Duncan, who was hawking his new book and political organization; both of which he calls “GOP 2.0.” And I gotta say, his whole schtick just sounds…adorable.
His aim, he says, is to make a Republican party that’s just as conservative as ever, just “with a better tone.” Because, after all, the policy differences between Trumpist Republicans and traditional Republicans aren’t that big, “it’s all about the approach.” They’re “stylistic differences,” y’see, not policy differences.
Duncan insists that “the pill isn’t that hard to swallow.” “We just have to admit what he know,” he says, “which is that there was no election fraud and we need to do a better job of messaging.”
I dunno what universe this guy is living in, but it’s not this one. Don’t misunderstand — I wish he was right. I wish there was an appetite for conservative governance, but there simply isn’t. If there was a groundswell of voters who wanted what Duncan is selling, why is he choosing not to seek reelection? I mean, read the room, man.
For one thing, if you can look at the last six years of Republican politics and come away thinking that the base cares at all about “conservatism” as Duncan would define it, you’re either hopelessly naïve or deliberately obtuse. But even if we grant that Trumpists and traditionalists agree on policy — e.g., optimal tax rates, healthcare policy, government spending, foreign policy, all of it — it’s a matter of priorities.
And the priority for the Trumpists is airing grievances. The “pill” that according to Duncan “isn’t that hard to swallow” is currently the animating principle for a large swath of the party. And beyond that, it’s opposition to COVID mitigation efforts, panic about Critical Race Theory being taught in schools, supposedly anti-American professional athletes, transgender high school athletes, etc.
Point is, you have to get pretty far down the list before you encounter anything that even looks like a “policy.” (Unless you consider banning local governments from mandating masks or COVID vaccines to be a policy.)
The part of the interview that made me yell “OH COME ON!” out loud was when Duncan was recounting a story about seeing the State Patrol outside of his house providing security (on account of all the death threats he and his family were receiving) and he realized that the state troopers were protecting him from Republicans because he’d told the truth about the election. And I just…does that sound like a simple “problem of tone” to you? Is that “pill” easy to swallow? Do the people the State Patrol is protecting you from not realize that you agree on tax rates? It’s utter insanity.
Duncan went on to say that he thinks such people are only a “tiny fringe” of the party and that this is just a “temporary moment of insanity” — so, points I guess for admitting that it’s actually insanity. But I’d like to see his math for why he thinks angry election conspiracy theorists are only a “tiny fringe.” It’s hard to pin down the exact number, but somewhere between a quarter and three quarters of the Republican party believes that the election was stolen. Regardless of where the needle actually falls in that range, we’re not talking about a “tiny fringe.” We’re talking, at best, about one in four. Then he says things like Anthony Gonzalez — who I incidentally wrote about on Monday — “isn’t done.” Really? I’d take that bet. People like Anthony Gonzalez, or Geoff Duncan for that matter, have no place in the current Republican party. And the way things are going, they won’t for years.
Perhaps I just have a different definition of “temporary” than Duncan. But the rule of thumb in American politics is that a party needs to lose three election cycles in a row before it “learns a lesson” and changes course. Republicans are currently at two — they lost in 2018 and 2020. If they manage to fall ass-first into control of Congress is 2022 — which is totally plausible! — they’ll be over to paper over this insanity and convince themselves “See? We’re fine! We can still win elections!” And if Trump remains the prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024, Republicans will have learned nothing. That’s just bad, bad news.
I’m optimistic that Republicans will come to their senses eventually; I just think they’re going to have to lose a lot of elections before they do. We have to excise the truly insane people from the party before we can even begin talking about “policy” or “tone.”
“Are You Taking Notes on a Criminal Conspiracy?”
Speaking of truly insane people who need to be excised from the Republican party, Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Robert Costa received a memo in the course of research for their most recent book written by attorney John Eastman; who at the time was a member of Donald Trump’s legal team.
The memo outlined a six-point plan to overturn the results of the election and declare Donald Trump the winner. It’s pretty bananas:
The plan was to basically have Mike Pence break the law and dare Democrats to call them on it. I can’t believe this was ever put to paper, much less circulated around the West Wing as a plan. Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who doesn’t completely oppose this insanity has no business holding public office in this country. And the fact that Republicans will almost certainly re-nominate the man who precipitated it is a disgrace.
With apologies to Geoff Duncan, I don’t believe these are mere “differences in tone.” To the extent that this can be considered a “policy disagreement,” it’s pretty much the biggest disagreement we can have. Either you believe that politicians should follow the law and losing candidates don’t get to remain in office, or — somehow — you don’t.
What’s truly incredible to me is how most people hear this insane story and just shrug. Like, “yeah that sounds about right for Trump’s team.” We were one failure of Mike Pence’s porous backbone away from an honest-to-God constitutional crisis in this country, and somehow that’s not leading every news broadcast.
I feel like Major Clipton at the end of The Bridge on the River Kwai, just muttering to myself about the madness that has just transpired.
A Sad Update
I briefly mentioned last week that I had a friend whose brother-in-law was hospitalized with COVID. His wife provided an update this morning that he will not survive. The stroke he suffered due to the blood clots caused by COVID was apparently catastrophic. She didn’t state it outright, but from what I gather, he will be removed from the ventilator and they will, well, let things run their course.
He had just turned 47, and he had four kids.
It’s an unspeakable tragedy, made all the more unbearable by the fact that it was avoidable.
So please, get vaccinated. Not only for yourself, but for your family.
Trient-Weekly Trivia
Monday’s answer:
Category: Government Acronyms
Clue: The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the CPI; this index that confirms groceries, among other things, are getting more expensive.
Consumer Price Index
Today’s clue:
Category: First Ladies
Clue: In 1890, at age 5, she met her future husband in an Independence Missouri Sunday school class.
Dispatches from the Homefront
Got an email from my daughter’s daycare yesterday that there was an “unidentified stomach bug” present in the school; the symptoms of which are diarrhea, vomiting, and fever.
Oh, super.
It’s not enough that we worry about the spread of a possibly deadly disease that’s going around, we still have to worry about the normal cesspool of germs kids marinate in at school. It’s a miracle we’ve survived this long as a species.