Like most of you, I try to stay away from political hyperbole. I'm beyond tired of media carnival barkers who frame every election as the most important in American history.
But the next cycle looks to be unprecedented, and by that I don't mean that the stakes are higher than ever. Forget stakes. If you're invested in the outcome of any race - federal, state or local - because you see some kind of "one last chance" to ensure the survival of a recognizable American experiment, you're suffering from a grave illusion.
Abe Greenwald at Commentary expresses it with appropriate starkness:
what voters face isn’t really a 2020 do-over. That election pitted a hated loudmouth against a stale functionary. The choice was uninspiring but clear. We’re now looking at something worse—a cockeyed zombie reboot with both potential nominees profoundly degraded and on the verge of self-destruction. In 2020, Americans of good conscience could vote for either Trump or Biden on grounds that didn’t necessarily flirt with the dishonorable. That’s no longer true.
Democrats we know about. We see every day what they're imposing in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and Springfield: implementing policies that favor play-like energy forms over normal-people forms that are abundant and cheap, inserting DEI and ESG into every conceivable arena of government, education and commerce, and letting cities decay into cesspools in which such basic concepts as private property and human dignity are completely unknown.
But Republicans have elbowed aside anybody who's not a coward, nut, or sycophant:
After Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time, a handful of Georgia Republicans at the heart of the case issued a sharp political rebuke of the former president. Ex-lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan argued that Republican voters should assess the damage Trump has wrought and “hit the reset button.” Gov. Brian Kemp refuted Trump’s false election claims and said, “The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”
But they were lonely voices in their party.
As Trump on Tuesday said he would be exonerated and planned to offer a more detailed rebuttal next week, some of his rivals in the Republican presidential primary echoed his attacks on the Fulton County prosecutor, even as they sidestepped the substance of the allegations facing him. “I think it’s an example of this criminalization of politics,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. Only longer-shot hopefuls were directly critical of the former president.
And top congressional GOP leaders such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and one of his lieutenants, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, rushed to defend Trump from what they portrayed as an unfair prosecution. “Americans see through this desperate sham,” said McCarthy on social media late Monday.
The diverging responses were a testament to the deep and uneven divide within the GOP over the former president and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Much of the party has stuck by Trump, the runaway polling leader in the 2024 primary race, with many officials and politicians wary of crossing him and his enthusiastic base. As some of them try to occupy a middle ground, a smaller though vocal minority that is critical of the ex-president has persisted, forcing the party to grapple with enduring frictions over an issue many would rather not talk about in the lead-up to the next presidential election.
“There’s only one position to take on what played out yesterday in the Fulton County courthouse, and that is, it’s disgusting,” said Duncan, one of the last witnesses to testify before the Fulton County grand jury, in a Tuesday interview. “To think that we are going to stand behind somebody that’s in that level of trouble — times four — is ridiculous,” added the former lieutenant governor, who was one of the state officials whom Trump contacted as he urged them to take steps that would reverse his Georgia loss.
The operative term here is "uneven." The Brian Kemps, Brad Raffenspergers and Gabriel Sterlings are not shaping the party's future.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Wednesday railed against the recent indictments of former President Trump for his efforts to remain in power following the 2020 election, and accused prosecutors of being motivated by political bias.
“He’s being prosecuted in a way to make challenging an election a crime just for him,” Graham said in an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity.” “You can claim you were cheated if you’re a Democrat. If you claim you were cheated as a Republican, they’re going to try to put you in jail.”
Graham also repeated an argument Trump and his team have been making, claiming Trump cannot not get a fair trial in a district that did not support him in the 2020 election. He downplayed the significance of the charges and claimed Trump was being charged for “telling people to watch a network show about the election.”
We're getting the same dog vomit from House Republican leadership:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) flocked to former President Trump’s side in the wake of his latest indictment in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state.
“Justice should be blind, but Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election,” McCarthy wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Now a radical DA [district attorney] in Georgia is following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career.”
Not that he has a chance to knock the Very Stable Genius out of his frontrunner status, but the number-two presidential candidate is also on this page:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called the indictment against former President Trump in Georgia an example of a “criminalization of politics.”
“I think it’s an example of this criminalization of politics,” DeSantis said while on a press call with New England media. “I don’t think this is something that’s good for the country.”
A lot of observers are touting Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin as the emergency alternative in case Trump's already-grave legal troubles worsen. It's true that he has handled issues in his state deftly, drawing a contrast with DeSantis's pugnaciousness. Folks seem to like the results; he has a 57 percent approval rating.
But the poor judgement he showed during the midterm election cycle ought to make us skittish:
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin spent Wednesday sharing a stage with Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Why it matters: Lake is a 2020 election denier who refuses to say if she will accept the results in her own race if she loses.
- And Youngkin is one of a handful of potential GOP presidential hopefuls to personally distance themselves from Trump's lies about the election while actively campaigning for candidates who promote them.
What they're saying: At their first campaign stop together, Youngkin called Lake "awesome," praised Arizona's rejection of daylight saving time and called Democrats "agents of chaos" who ruin everything they touch.
Meanwhile, Lake praised Youngkin as "a total rockstar."
🤨 When an attendee shouted, "Youngkin-Lake in '24" from the back of the room, Youngkin paused, raised an eyebrow, then pointed back at Lake and said, "That's your call," per NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard.
And what he had to say about why he did it speaks volumes:
Ahead of the trip, Youngkin framed his support for Lake as a matter of supporting his party.
- "I am comfortable supporting Republican candidates," Youngkin said during an interview in Austin late last month. "And we don't agree on everything. I mean, I have said that I firmly believe that Joe Biden was elected president."
Zoom out: Youngkin's approach puts him on similar footing as Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, who have also rejected Trump's election claims but are now campaigning for candidates who promote them.
Every stinking Republican with any influence is on board with the we-gotta-drag-our-brand-across-the-finish-line mentality.
There is no hope for either of our political parties.
Yes, the United States is a geographically vast and demographically diverse country, and its two-party system has worked to sift the various figures, movements and ideological novelties that arise down to two candidates for various offices that most people find palatable. But that arrangement is broken now. There's no one running for anything who deserves a modicum of our respect.
A dismal state of affairs, but we didn't get here overnight.
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