Republicans Return to Their Happy Place: Full-On Crazy
They did this with white nationalist-adjacent Rep. Paul Gosar’s bizarre and disturbing anime video (which depicts him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). They did this with Sen. Ted Cruz’s attack on Big Bird. And they did this with threats aimed at the 13 House Republicans who broke ranks and voted for the infrastructure bill. (After Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to them as “traitors” and posted their names and phone numbers, Rep. Fred Upton received death threats.)
The threats against these 13 Republicans are obviously beyond the pale, even if I’m sympathetic to conservatives who feel frustrated with their actions (National Review called bailing out Dems “political malpractice”). But just as you might criticize the 13 Republicans for disobeying the maxim “Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself,” their critics are making the same mistake. Democrats, as recently as a week ago, were in the process of committing political suicide. Cruz, Gosar, and Greene effectively looked at the mess Democrats were in and said, “Hold my beer!”
Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg has made the observation that neither party wants to be a majority party. Instead, both major political parties seem hell-bent on achieving minority status. This assessment rings true, but it deserves an asterisk: You can’t really blame the party leaders or the party apparatus for most of the problems. Social media and other innovations have made it much harder for leaders to maintain message discipline. Most of the crazy things attributed to both “parties”—things that may rightly turn off normal Americans—are the result of freelancing.
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The interesting thing is that these actors in both parties cannot leave well enough alone. This is true both in terms of silly things and in terms of substantive policy decisions. Six months ago, Joe Biden was riding high. Then, he decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, and all hell broke loose. In the intervening months, he has maybe had one or two good news cycles. Maybe. And the really crazy thing is that the withdrawal was largely a disaster of his choosing. All he had to do was nothing.
Likewise, Republicans couldn’t revel in the Virginia victory for a few days without changing the narrative.
Again, the desire to meddle is the perfectly rational result of perverse incentives. There is money and attention and TV segments and Twitter buzz to be had for the politician willing to say or do outrageous things. So some of this is calculated and performative. Some of the craziness, though, is sincere. And some of this is simply the result of failed or unwise assumptions about what the public wants.
Whatever the motivation, crazy has consequences—the worst get on top. . ."
READ MORE Matt Lewis, Senior Correspondent
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