Republican Elites View Their Base a Rubes As They Parrot Trump's "Stolen Election" Lies

The other night Der Trumpenfuhrer's niece, Mary Trump, a licensed psychologist, appeared on MSNBC and laid out her explanation of why her uncle, a mentally unstable malignant narcissist is refusing to admit that he lost the 2020 presidential election. As Mary Trump noted, for the first time in his life Donald Trump has been slammed in the face by something he can't lie and bluster his way out of. Add to that his pressing debts and the likely criminal prosecutions he faces in New York State and his irrational behavior becomes more understandable.  A totally different story applies to Congressional Republicans and some within the Trump regime who are jumping on board Trump's barrage of lies about the election.  While Trump would like to manage a coup to stay in power, other Republicans know this is not going to happen and that Trump's lawsuits are all like dead on arrival.  Instead, there sole focus is to keep Trump's base - especially in Georgia riled up in the hope that they will (i) give money, and (ii) go to the polls on January 5, 2021, if the live in Georgia and vote for the GOP candidates whose election contests will decide control of the U.S. Senate.  As a column in the Washington Post by a former Republican lays out, the Republican elite view their base as country bumpkin idiots and fear they will stay home in January if not sufficiently stirred by the "stolen election" lie.  Their cynicism and hypocrisy is stunning. Here are column highlights:

A central tenet of the outlook of many conservatives is that “elites” look down upon them and regard them as bigoted, uneducated rubes. Well, they have a point: That’s exactly how Republican politicians and the revenue-generating, right-wing media machine regard them.

It was not the Democratic nominee who thought suburbanites would be afraid of integration; that was President Trump. Using George Soros — a Hungarian Jewish immigrant — as a slur and anti-Semitic code word is a right-wing tactic; Democrats have no such Jewish bogeyman. It is Trump who believes fear of immigrants is what motivates his base; Democrats trust voters to understand that immigration is essential to the United States. And it is Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) — not Democrats — who are convinced that constituents will buy into the anti-Ukrainian Kremlin agitprop that they dish out in generous portions.

Republicans’ contempt for the masses is nowhere more obvious than in the latest Trump scam — his claim of a “stolen election.” I have zero doubt that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and every Republican senator knows the election was definitive. Biden won. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who said he has “nothing to congratulate” Biden for, must figure members of his base are so ignorant and irrational that they will think better of him if he practices election denial. And when educated senators call on election officials to count only “legal” votes — as is always the case — they must think bamboozling and enraging voters is the way politics is practiced.

The entire GOP strategy for the Georgia Senate elections apparently centers on a belief that Georgia voters are irrational and will rise up in fury because they think they have been wronged — again — by conniving Democrats. The Post reports: “Fear over losing the Senate majority by falling short in the upcoming runoff elections for two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia has become a driving and democracy-testing force inside the GOP, with party leaders on Tuesday seeking to delegitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory as they labored to rally voters in the state.”

Georgia’s Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler seem convinced that ideas and political philosophy do not motivate voters. Seething, blind resentment is what they need to instill in voters (hence their letter calling for the resignation of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state). McConnell seems to agree. The Post reports: “For McConnell, as well as Perdue and Loeffler, keeping in step with Trump — and with the White Republicans in Georgia who are loyal to him — is paramount as they go about trying to win the seats, according to GOP aides and Republican strategists interviewed Tuesday.”

Democrats, meanwhile, operate under the assumption that voters are not idiots. Per the Post: “The first ad by [Georgia’s Democratic Senate nominee Jon Ossoff] for the runoff campaign asserts that his priorities, if he joins the Senate, will be managing and fighting the coronavirus, helping small businesses and passing an infrastructure bill.” In other words, Ossoff thinks voters are rational, appreciate policy choices and expect politicians to address real-life concerns. It’s almost as if he does not think politics is performance art for self-pitying cultists. How quaint.

Meanwhile, Raphael Warnock, the other Georgia Democrat preparing for a Senate runoff election, “has talked up his rise from being one of 12 children growing up in the Savannah projects to running the church the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. [preached at] as a platform for national change.” Hope, change, progress. He is not selling hate or fear.

Republicans’ leap into anti-democratic conspiracy theories, climate change denial and economic illiteracy (selling protectionism and fear of immigration) reflects their abiding belief that politics is about inflaming ignorant people — or making people ignorant about the real choices they have. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (a product of Stanford and Yale Law School), Cruz (Princeton and Harvard Law School), Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (Harvard and Harvard Law School) and the rest of the possible 2024 Republican contenders are not stupid. But they apparently think their voters are, and they think their political careers depend on voters’ irrationality, bigotry and gullibility.

The MAGA voters are right: Many politicians and media personalities regard them with contempt. But they come from their own party and movement, and they are laughing all the way to the bank. There is nothing they think their voters won’t buy.

Meanwhile, another column notes that Trump's contesting of the election results may have another goal: lining Trump's pockets.  Once again, the calculated effort believes donors will be too stupid to read the fine print.  Here are highlights:

President Trump isn’t really trying to overturn the election. He’s simply running one more scam before he leaves office that would enable him to enrich himself.

That’s the way it appears, at least, from the scores of fundraising emails his campaign has sent out since the election. He seems to be asking for funds to challenge the election, but the fine print shows that the money could let him line his own coffers. The tin-pot-dictator routine looks more as if it’s about passing the tin cup.

But at the provided link to the “OFFICIAL ELECTION DEFENSE FUND,” the legalese at the end says something rather different:

Sixty percent of the contribution, up to $5,000, goes to “Save America,” Trump’s newly created leadership PAC. And 40 percent of the contribution up to $35,500, goes to the Republican National Committee’s operating account, its political (not legal) fund.

Only after reaching the first maximum would a single penny go to Trump’s “Recount Account,” and only after reaching the second maximum would a penny go to the RNC’s legal account.

If members of the GOP base fall for this, then perhaps the views of the Republican Party elite towards the base are accurate after all.