It's Impossible To Tell The Story Of The GOP Going Off The Rails Without Mentioning Traitor Greene

Some Democratic candidates are hoping that last door-to-door outreach and last minute ads about the “threat to democracy can anger and scare enough of their own base and peel off still undecided voters to counter the momentum they sense moving toward the GOP.” CNN reported “that the party has largely failed to get voters to think of GOP candidates’ election denialism as disqualifying or to convince Americans to prioritize democracy when they cast their ballots. What Democrats haven’t done, these strategists said, is connect that argument to voters’ more immediate concerns about the economy and rising costs. ‘Normal everyday Americans, it’s hard to care about this big existential thing called democracy when you’re worried about making your next rent payment or trying to buy your kids shoes,’ one Democratic strategist told CNN.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote that “in close elections, some Democrats believe this late push may be enough to make the difference, even as they worry that voter intimidation, takeovers of local election authorities and expected legal challenges may have already put them behind. Several Democrats have been running ads that, directly or indirectly, try to tie their opponents to January 6 or the kinds of election conspiracy theories that led to the mob of Trump supporters storming the US Capitol. But those haven’t been the focus of any 2022 campaign, even as some GOP nominees across the country have embraced those kinds of election falsehoods.”

Here are two ads running in Wisconsin. This first one is targeting insurrectionist coupe plotter Ron Johnson

And the second one targets J6 rioter Derrick Van Orden, an extreme right candidate for the open seat in the western part of the state. FiveThirtyEight forecasts a 53.2% to 46.8% win for Van Orden over hapless conservative Democrat Brad Pfaff for this R+4 open seat.

Yesterday, before dawn, Politico published a piece by Ally Mutnick about the crackpot MAGA candidate, John Gibbs, running in western Michigan to replace mainstream conservative Peter Meijer, who he beat in the primary. The Democrats re-nominated the loser from 2020, Blue Dog Hillary Scholten, an absolutely dreadful candidate whose only hope is that swing voters will think Gibbs is even worse than she is. FiveThirtyEight forecasts a 48.5% to 47.4% squeaker ion this D+1 district for Scholten, another Manchin-Sinema-type.

Mutnick wrote that “Gibbs is a Harvard- and Stanford-educated computer scientist and Christian missionary. He is also a pro-Trump conservative who years ago suggested that women should not have the right to vote, referenced conspiracy theories that a prominent Democrat participated in Satanic rituals and mused that the lost city of Atlantis might be buried beneath the North Pole. Whether Gibbs, a Republican congressional candidate, can sell the first version to swing voters will determine whether his party holds onto this hotly contested battleground district— and how big a potential Republican House majority could be.”

The conservative Scholten has outraised the fascist Gibbs $3,304,282 to $1,276,087 (and remember, most of his money was spent fighting Meijer in the primary). She has more than 4 times what he does going into the final lap of the race. McCarthy’s SuperPAC has spent $2,694,855 smearing Scholten while the Democrats have come in full vote to help Scholten— unlike their treatment of progressives like Michelle Vallejo— with the DCCC chipping in $2,439,665 and Pelosi’s PAC adding another $534,832. DCCC puppet the League of Conservation voters put in another $449,042 to help Scholten because, generally, they do whatever the DCCC tells them to do.

Mutnick pointed out that Gibbs “is part of a slate of controversial GOP House nominees testing what voters are willing to stomach as they vent backlash over the economy against Democratic majorities in Congress. Swing-seat matchups in several states include GOP candidates who have appeared to endorse fringe conspiracy theories, deny the validity of the 2020 election or have a pattern of questionable statements or internet postings. They could threaten the gains Republicans can make this fall— or, potentially, have their views among those that shape a future Republican House majority… ‘He’s just an extreme of what’s happened to the Republican party. He’s an extreme example of it,’ said Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee, who represents Flint, Mich. ‘Some of his past positions that he’s now trying to get himself away from don’t fit in the 21st century, let alone the 20th century in America.’… His nomination [by Trump] to lead the Office of Personnel Management was derailed in 2020 after conspiratorial tweets he wrote years earlier resurfaced. Gibbs referenced a debunked conspiracy that claimed Democratic strategist John Podesta took part in a Satanic ritual, using the hashtag #SpiritCooking.”

A post about GOP crazy wouldn’t be complete without at least a mention Georgia QAnon crackpot Marjorie Traitor Greene head of the House fascist caucus (AKA- the Gang-Greene). Don’t worry— a lot more than a mention is coming now. Writing for the Washington Monthly on Sunday, Jacob Heilbrunn reported about how the Republican fringe became the mainstream of the party. His premise is that “conspiracy theorists and far-right fanatics have long been present in the GOP; now, they’re running it.” He noted that “In his excellent new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion, Robert Draper does not delve into the GOP’s past predilection for extremism. At most, he intimates in his introduction that in writing about the Republican Party over the past two decades, he may have been overly influenced by the example of his late father— a former Marine, capitalist, family man, and lifelong Republican— to view the party with a degree of respect it has not merited. Such an upbringing has only augmented Draper’s current consternation at the GOP’s conversion from a party into a Trumpian cult. Now Draper illuminates the enduring grip of the paranoid style in the party— and Trump’s ability to gull his followers— by focusing on the aftermath of January 6. Draper, who is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, focuses on far-right House Republican firebrands such as Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert. He has traveled widely across America to interview both them and their followers. What distinguishes his account from a number of new books about the GOP— including Dana Milbank’s The Destructionists, which traces the rot in the party to the ascension of Newt Gingrich in 1992, and David Corn’s American Psychosis, which emphasizes the long-standing tradition of conspiracy-mongering in the Republican Party— is his firsthand reporting. In recounting the saga of the GOP after January 6, he explains how and why it continues to prostrate itself to Trump.”

Draper sets the stage for January 6 by highlighting a number of instances of right-wing violence that presaged it. One arrived on December 4, 2016, when a heavily armed 28-year-old man named Edgar Maddison Welch drove from North Carolina to attack a pizzeria in Northwest Washington, D.C., called Comet Ping Pong. The owner of the pizzeria, James Alefantis, had been mentioned in the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, which ignited a frenzy of speculation about the pizza joint’s putative role in a pedophile ring led by Clinton. Welch, a devotee of 4chan, fired off several shots in the pizzeria as he searched for a torture dungeon that did not exist. He was arrested. No one was injured. The incident seemed faintly ridiculous at the time. But the lunatic mind-set that inspired “Pizzagate,” as it was called, never really went away. Indeed, almost a year later, an aspiring Facebook influencer instructed her followers about a new conspiracy website showing, she wrote, “that John Podesta is a pedophile and pizza gate is real.” Her name was Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Draper, who devotes much attention to Greene, is clearly fascinated by the improbable rise of this gym owner to household name, and the wanton disregard for truth that animated and propelled it. Greene’s explanation of her life, he writes, amounted to “an artisanal blend of truth, untruth, and omission.” He reports that her father, Bob, also had a penchant for exaggeration, claiming that he had been nominated for a Nobel Prize. Marjorie herself would assert that she had “run a hell of a successful construction company,” when in fact she ran a CrossFit Passion gym. By 2017, she had sold the gym, had a lot of free time on her hands, and tumbled into the world of internet conspiracies. She became obsessed with unlocking supposed hidden truths that elites were trying to conceal from her about the homegrown traitors, globalists, and communists who were trying to pervert America’s true destiny. Greene, who had declared that Muslims don’t belong in government and that George Soros was a Nazi, quickly became the “it girl” of MAGA World. The COVID-19 crisis became a star-making opportunity, tailor-made for her to peddle dangerous assertions, including that the virus was man-made and “not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.” She also introduced three articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, whom she branded a “pseudo-dictator.” (Perhaps she thought it would have been better had he been a real one.)

As with more than a few Trump confederates who railed about a stolen election, the conspiracy theories and the grift ended up shading nicely into one another. Greene, for instance, blew off attending a Justice for J6 rally. An adviser to her told Draper, “What does it get her? It doesn’t get her more support. It doesn’t get her more fund-raising dollars.”

One rally she did attend took place at the Orlando World Center Marriott on February 25, 2022. It was held by the America First PAC, headed by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, an admirer of Benito Mussolini. When Greene appeared, Russian President Vladimir Putin had just invaded Ukraine. Seconds before she took the stage, Draper writes, the attendees shouted, “Pu-tin! Pu-tin! Pu-tin!” in honor of the invasion. Greene’s appearance there amounted to a recruiting mission. Fuentes, Draper writes, “possessed something Greene and [Paul] Gosar both wanted: an energetic base of young right-wing Christians who craved a patriarch.”

If an uneasy mix of grift and ideological passion characterizes much of the MAGAverse, Gosar, who served as Greene’s mentor in Congress, seems like more of a right-wing purist. According to Draper, Gosar was a true believer long before the fictions he promulgates became widespread. In 2015, he was the sole legislator to refuse to attend the historic address of Pope Francis to Congress, condemning the pope’s “socialist taking points.” The August 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Gosar declared, was financially supported by Soros, who had “turned in his own people to the Nazis.” He was an early adopter when it came to the Big Lie. On November 4, 2020— the day after the election— he drove from Flagstaff to Phoenix, Arizona, where he walked through downtown in a navy jacket and jeans, clutching a white megaphone in his left hand. Several staffers and allies accompanied him. After he reached the county recorder’s office, Gosar shouted to several hundred assembled Trump supporters, “Patriots! They’re not gonna steal this election from us, are they?”

Gosar’s ad hoc protest has the distinction of being the very first “Stop the Steal” rally in America. His efforts did not stop there. On November 7, his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, drove to a private airstrip several miles from the Phoenix airport where he and several others watched as men in suits loaded large boxes that they were convinced contained illegal ballots onto an airplane. (The Korean Air flight they recorded, of course, was never found to contain any ballots.) “As it would soon become clear,” Draper writes, “Paul Gosar’s suspicions were shared by tens of millions of conservative Americans. That their beloved Donald J. Trump might somehow be a historically unpopular president— one whose Gallup approval rating never topped 49 percent at any point during his four-year term— was a reality from which right-wing media and self-segregation had thoroughly buffered them.”

Why did the GOP sink to these depths? Draper offers some useful reminders of the lengths to which party elders went to connive at Trump’s criminal actions during his presidency, granting enough legitimacy to some of the earlier grifts and effectively ensuring that they were powerless to stop later ones.

…Draper recounts that the morning after Michigan Representative Fred Upton voted to impeach Trump over January 6, he had breakfast with Arthur C. Brooks, the former president of the American Enterprise Institute. “You know, Fred,” the perennially optimistic Brooks said, “former presidents tend to fade away. It’s going to happen with Trump too.” Upton responded, “No, it’s not. Not with this guy. I still think he’s going to be our next nominee.”

Whether he is the nominee in 2024 or not, Trump, like Goldwater, has fundamentally altered the Republican Party for years, if not decades, to come. The party’s candidates are aping his refusal to concede defeat, demonizing Democrats as an internal subversive enemy, and embracing a variety of hallucinatory conspiracy theories as the ticket to electoral success. In focusing on Trump’s enablers in Congress and elsewhere, Draper helps to show why the fringe became the center in the GOP— and why it isn’t going away anytime soon.