Republicans are still reaping what they sowed.
The party’s utterly disgraceful inability to choose a mayor after several attempts is a crisis of its own making. At least since the time of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has seen a strengthening of its right wing, whose mission was not to produce policy but to impede progress, and whose tactic was destruction rather than diplomacy.
We could see the beginnings of today’s version of this political extremism when John McCain chose the woefully unqualified Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. She wasn’t an intellectual, but she was decisive. The anti-Obama.
During his speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Palin said he had learned that if “you are not a valued member of Washington’s elite, some in the media consider you an unqualified candidate for that reason alone.” But, she continued with a “fast news” for reporters and commentators: “I’m not going to Washington to seek your good opinion; I’m going to serve the people of this country.”
Palin exposed a dangerous reality about the Republican base: that it was hungry for disruption and spectacle, that it would applaud anyone who pissed off progressives, that performance was far more important than competence.
Like a virus breeding variants, Palin’s fervor funneled into the Tea Party movement, which evolved into the Freedom Caucus and manifested itself among voters as “Trumpism.”
The party establishment chose to ignore those on the sidelines, figuring that the energy they generated could be beneficial and any harm they caused could be mitigated. In any case, they were only a fraction of the members and could always be outvoted.
The problem was that their influence and their profiles continued to grow. They learned a lesson from the Palin years: spectacle produces fame, which produces power, which produces influence and possibly control.
They began to wield that power. The Freedom Caucus essentially forced Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner to resign in 2015 because its members felt he wasn’t strong enough against Obama. Rep. Peter King is reported to have said, “To me, this is a nutcase victory.”
But these “freaks” were far from over. They refused to support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House because he was Boehner’s No. 2 and because Republicans were furious that he had slipped up and told the truth about the Benghazi investigation: that it was a political witch hunt designed to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.
Some of that long-standing disdain for McCarthy has undoubtedly persisted and is being manifested in this week’s failed ballots to make him president.
Donald Trump became prime proof of the synergy between fame, power and influence desired by the Republican base when he broke down the establishment’s wall of protection in 2016 and gave his supporters what they wanted: an unbridled political anarchist, an unrepentant white nationalist.
During the Trump era, the party’s Marjorie Taylor Greenes became rock stars among the rank and file, even if they were jokes among peers. Their success made the term “margin” a poor way to describe them. In many ways, they are the Republican Party.
All the while, few mainstream Republicans objected to his antics and slurs. Paul Ryan, who became president in 2015 when the Freedom Caucus made it clear its members would not support McCarthy, knew Trump was a problem but said little against him — until he stepped down.
As Tim Alberta reported to Politico in 2019, Ryan, when he was president, made a conscious decision not to “criticize” Trump, but to “help institutions survive”, “build the country’s antibodies”, and put up “guards”. He wanted, as he said, “to drive the car in the middle of the road” without letting it “fall into the ditch”.
Ryan, like many other traditional Republicans, felt that by biting his tongue, putting his head down and doing his best to work with Trump and do his job, he was protecting the country. But that silence was seen as acceptance — not just from Trump, but also from the firebrand Republicans in Congress. Now that group has become strong enough to prevent a mayor from being elected on the first ballot for the first time in a hundred years.
And they’re getting exactly what they want: more headlines, more airtime, more spectacle, and therefore more power. They are not interested in governing, but in instigating the growing desire of the republican base to lock the gears.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
