For the sake of our fragile democracy, let us hope and pray that the Republican cult continues to test positive for extremism. As evidenced by this week’s landslide in California – where roughly 64 percent of voters refused to oust Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and replace him with a Trumpist – there’s every reason to believe that nationwide blue turnout will continue to be robust in defense of American values.
As we sift the ashes of the GOP’s latest debacle, we can only marvel at its crackpot decision to go full MAGA by touting, for the governor’s job, a right-wing radio host named Larry Elder who opposed mask and vaccine mandates, who opposed legal abortion, who opposed a mandated minimum wage, and who, before the votes were even announced, ranted on cue about (non-existent) voter fraud – goaded to do so, naturally, by Trump Himself. Whom Elder had once lauded as “almost God-sent.”
To the delight of Democratic leaders, Trump decided to meddle in California, spreading lies about the credibility of the state’s mail-in ballots – thereby thwarting the efforts of Republican organizers to get their own partisans to vote by mail. One GOP strategist was quoted this week lamenting, “Has Trump killed mail ballots to the detriment of the party?” That’s what happened in Georgia last December, when Trump depressed Republican mail-in turnout in the two U.S. Senate elections by lying that both races were rigged. The result: Democrats won both races and took control of the Senate.
Granted, California is a blue state, so it’s not especially shocking that Newsom survived the recall effort. But one would think that Republicans, mindful of the blueness, would’ve preferred to coalesce around a candidate far less nuts than Elder – like, for instance, Kevin Faulconer, the moderate former mayor of San Diego. But no. Elder gnawed the kind of red meat beloved by the MAGA base, Fox News gave him lots of play, and that was enough. The fact that Elder had never governed anything meant absolutely nothing.
Result: The GOP crafted its own humiliation. Orange County, south of LA, used to be rockbed Republican turf, but this week 53 percent of its voters boosted Newsom. And more tellingly, the GOP paid a heavy price for its pro-death defiance of mask and vaccination mandates. According to the exit polls, 65 percent of all voters said that getting vaccinated is a “public health responsibility”; 84 percent of those folks supported Newsom. On another measure, 65 percent of all voters said that Newsom’s Covid policies (including mandates) are “about right” or “not strict enough”; roughly 85 percent of those folks voted for him.
This support for Covid mandates is not just a California thing; 58 percent of Americans reportedly support President Biden’s newly announced vaccine requirements, and even in Florida, home of Ron “DeathSantis” DeSantis, solid majorities now say that mandates are the way to go. The lesson for Republicans – assuming they’re still capable of learning any – is that pandering to the MAGA base, especially in the midst of a pandemic, is a risky extremist strategy when mainstream voter sentiment is leaning the other way.
But Kurt Bardella, a former Republican strategist who worked for two Republican congressmen, suggested this week in the Los Angeles Times that the party has become impervious to reason:
“This iteration of the Republican Party will make a lot of noise, raise a lot of money, generate a lot of headlines, and ultimately lose. It’s what happened nationally in the 2018 midterms. It’s what happened in the Louisiana and Kentucky gubernatorial races in 2019. It’s what happened with the presidential race in 2020 and it’s what happened in the Georgia Senate races that delivered the Democrats a majority in the Senate in January. Time and again, Republicans have run to the extreme right, pandering to the politics of fear and division, only to lose. They have mastered the ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory, leaving behind a party that year after year is growing more radical, and also becoming smaller and smaller…If recent history is any indication, the GOP will continue the failed cycle of learning the wrong lessons from defeat and continue its embrace of extremism and conspiracy that will serve to only alienate it further from the mainstream of this country.”
Works for me.
Gavin Newsom, basking in his landslide, warned: “We may have defeated Trump, but Trumpism is not dead in this country.” True that. But if the extremists wish to alienate themselves further, they’re welcome to do so.