The Fantasy of a Sane GOP Majority

Many in the media, political pundit class and even the few truly sane Republicans continue to cling to the myth - fantasy is a better term - that hidden beneath the surface the majority of Republican Party supporterd are sane and reasonable.  This despite poll after poll that shows that such is anything but true. The result is continued false equivalence in the media which refuses to admit and expose the reality that the base of the GOP is about as sane as a  bunch rabid dogs and just as likely to attack people.  The further result is a continued threat to democracy itself in America.  With the Republican National Committee having basically endorsed the January 6, 2021, insurrection as "legitimate political discourse" despite its dancy around the issue, it should be obvious that sanity - and loyalty to the U.S. Constitution - have been flushed down the toilet.  The prospects for changing the GOP from within is a fantasy as well.  Only sustained election defeats by Democrats and/or coalitions of Democrats and independent voters has the ability to force a return to sanity within the GOP.  For now, the crazies, religious etremists and white supremacists control the GOP and the media and pundits need to grasp this reality.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this relity.  Here are highlights:  

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that “there is a pretty large lane of sane Republicans” who could support a presidential candidate like him if he ran in 2024. I suppose that depends on one’s definition of “large.”

In reality, the sane lane remains a narrow fairway in the GOP. My colleague Philip Bump notes: “Pew [Research Center] found that only about 1 in 3 Republicans think Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and only about 14 percent of them say he definitely won, which he did. In other words, six out of every seven Republicans are unwilling to say that Biden definitely won.”

To understand the swell of anger and lunacy that has washed over her party, one need only see the grass-roots reaction to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), censured this month by the Republican National Committee for participating in the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Cheney recently told the New York Times: “I’m not going to convince the crazies and I reject the crazies. I reject the notion that somehow we don’t have to abide by the rule of law. And the people right now who are in the leadership of our state party, I’m not trying to get their support because they’ve abandoned the Constitution.”

Hillary Clinton deserves an apology from the political class for their faux outrage over her statement in 2016 criticizing some Republicans as “deplorables.”

Hogan acknowledged in his CNN interview, “To say it’s legitimate political discourse to attack the seat of our Capitol, and smash windows, and attack police officers, and threaten to hang vice president, and threaten to overthrow the election, it’s insanity.” But that is precisely what the RNC did in its censure resolution.

And as Cheney’s fellow censured Republican, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), explained on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” there is a faction of the GOP that is “way too big” rooting for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I think it’s an affection for authoritarianism,” he surmises. “And I think Vladimir Putin has done a decent job of engaging in culture battles and culture war, and he is seen as the person defending, in essence, the culture of the past. And so it’s very frightening.”

Kinzinger went on . . . . I thought that every person when they swore an oath had some version of a red line they would never cross.” In some welcome advice for the media, he added:

Every Republican has to be clear and forceful on the record. Do they think January 6 was legitimate political discourse? Don’t let them avoid it. Don’t let them hem haw and don’t let them transition to some other subject they’d rather talk about. This is an answer every one of them have to give, and then we can move on once they’re clear and on the record. But this is definitive to our democracy. How do you feel? Was it legitimate?

Kinzinger singled out RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for pretending that the RNC censure resolution’s use of “legitimate political discourse” was not referring to Jan. 6 insurgents. . . . . “We’re looking at the corruption that led up to the moment and what happened since. . . . Marco Rubio knows that. Ronna McDaniel knows that. All these folks know it. But they’re trying to kind of pass around it because they don’t want to tick off the base.”

Shorter: Cowardice is still the order of the day in the GOP. There are a few brave souls in the party, but the censure motion, consistent GOP rhetoric and polling tell us that MAGA Republicans are firmly in control. It’s not even close.

Here’s an idea: Rather than perpetuating the fantasy that there is a sane GOP electorate waiting for a savior, why not band together in a national, pro-democracy coalition to deprive the MAGA party of power? In Utah, for example, Democrats are effectively forgoing a nominee to challenge Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) so as to form a coalition with Cheney-Kinzinger-Hogan-type Republicans and independents in support of conservative independent Evan McMullin. Cheney could consider a similar independent run to squelch the possibility of a MAGA candidate taking her seat.

Our democracy is too fragile to pretend there’s more than one sane and pro-democratic party. We must be realistic about the true state of the GOP so we can start devising strategies across ideological lines to run the MAGA “crazies” out of power.