Lots in this @Bencjacobs piece, including:
“In Cobb County, Romney won with 55.5 percent of the vote in 2012, but Biden won with 56.3 percent in 2020” https://t.co/OLkPg2favi
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) September 21, 2023
Author Ben Jacobs is a feelthy liberal (he was working for the Guardian when Montana’s rightwing soon-to-be-governor Greg Gianforte physically attacked him)… but Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, who posted the tweet above, is *not*. Are the vibes shifting? A long, anecdote-heavy piece, from the New Republic:
… After the 2016 election, there was a vogue in the media to understand how Donald Trump had possibly managed to win the presidency despite scandal after scandal. He received almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton—an early sign of the limits of his electoral might—but because most pollsters and experts had predicted a Clinton win, there was a desperate scramble across the Rust Belt to find the once Democratic voters who had cast a ballot for the Republican. Blue-collar diners from Allentown to Youngstown were swarmed with reporters determined to discern the secret of Donald Trump’s appeal.
In hindsight, that phenomenon may be eclipsed by another one: Republicans deserting their party precisely because of Trump, forming a demographic now familiarly known as “Never Trump Republicans.” Whether it was his xenophobic remarks about immigrants, his crude personal behavior, or his general disdain for the norms of American politics, many white, college-educated voters—long a bedrock of the GOP—cast their ballot either for Hillary Clinton or for a third-party candidate to avoid supporting Trump. The shock of his election kept this initially from being a broad focus in popular culture, but in special election after special election in the coming year, culminating in the 2018 midterms, it was clear there was a lasting revulsion from these Republicans toward the Trump-era GOP. This was reinforced in 2020, when these voters appear to have turned even more heavily against Trump, helping Joe Biden run the table in the most competitive swing states.
This tranche of voters is not huge, but they may be decisive—in 2020, 16 percent of self-identified moderate or liberal Republicans voted for Biden, according to an analysis by Pew, twice the share that did so in 2016. This even as Biden won a narrow electoral college victory by a combined margin of just under 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Bryon Allen, a longtime Republican pollster and partner at WPA Intelligence, noted that, before Trump, Republicans in many suburban counties would get narrow majorities. “Now, without a [GOP Georgia Governor Brian] Kemp or a [GOP Virginia Governor Glenn] Youngkin or somebody who has particular appeal and the right issues … we might get 47 percent or 48 percent” in the same areas…
“I think Donald Trump was the gateway drug that has drawn a lot of otherwise pretty standard Republicans to the Democratic Party over the last eight or nine years,” Zac McCrary, a veteran Democratic pollster, told The New Republic. “And a Never Trump Republican in 2016, two or three cycles later, turns into a pretty conventional Democrat up and down the ballot.”
That may be somewhat wishful thinking; ancestral loyalties can be hard to shake. The American South is dotted with jurisdictions that stopped voting for Democrats at the federal level a half-century ago yet continued to elect Democratic legislators and local officials into the past decade. Further, the Republican Party is still deeply at war within itself. And while Donald Trump and his ideological allies may be ascendant, there is no final verdict about the role of Trump and Trumpism within the GOP.
While that civil war rages, a faction of erstwhile Republicans has opted out of the fight and simply decided to back Democrats. With many of these well-educated suburbanites poised to vote for Joe Biden again in 2024, the question isn’t just whether they will swing what is likely to be yet another tight election next year, but whether they are part of the Democratic coalition moving forward. Conversations with pollsters and operatives from both parties suggest that, after a third straight election in which Trump is the leader of the GOP, Republicans may find that they have alienated these voters forever, while creating plenty of new Democrats along the way…
… [T]he emergence of Never Trumpers is the product of both long-term trends and candidate-specific quirks; the trend of educational polarization slowed or accelerated depending on which candidates were on the ballot. In 2012, the GOP nominated a candidate in Mitt Romney who overperformed among the college-educated white voters in the suburbs who have turned on Trump. Some of these voters would have likely started shifting toward Democrats earlier if, instead, the Republican nominee was Rick Santorum, whose 2014 book was titled Blue Collar Conservatives. With Trump, the long-term trends and the candidate-specific quirks collided.
But the difference with Trump is that his massive influence on American political coalitions is largely based on whether voters thrill to his transgressions or are appalled by his grotesqueries. Even now, it’s sometimes difficult to discern whether it is his personality itself or the worldview that Trump embodies that has driven some Republicans out of the party. As Schlozman put it, if you “take a dozen people in Atlanta who voted for Mitt Romney, what they think of Donald Trump determines how they’re voting now in a very important way,” but “what explains their views about Donald Trump?”
What’s clearer is that relatively few voters were swayed by his policy accomplishments, like a generic GOP tax cut bill or his administration’s oversight of Operation Warp Speed (which Trump alternately celebrated or shied away from). Instead, it’s the loaded rhetoric that he has brought to American politics on topics ranging from building a physical wall on the border with Mexico to his repeated false claims of election fraud. In contrast, past realignments have rested on far more robust legislative feats. The Democratic majorities of the Roosevelt era were founded on support for or opposition to the programs of the New Deal. The shift in the South starting in the 1960s was based on reaction to the landmark civil rights laws of the Johnson administration. With Trump, it’s often simply been the man himself and the forces he has unleashed. The result has smoothed the transition of these former Republicans into the Democratic fold.
It’s impossible to predict the next lasting fault line in American politics. As Schlozman noted, modern political parties rest on a layer of intersecting cleavages going back to the Civil War, and each new alignment leads to new coalitions and new points of contention. But if Trump remains the dominant figure on the GOP scene for yet another election cycle, the voters who fled the Republican Party aren’t likely to return. And even if he does somehow fade into the background, those same voters may find the party they once called their own virtually unrecognizable.
CaseyL
Maybe elsewhere in the article the authors talk about how Trump has transformed the GOP into a White nationalist fascist party, and what effect that has on erstwhile moderate Republican voters.
Because it isn’t just Trump; it’s the people he brought to power with him; and the pre-Trump GOPers who embraced Trumpism with open arms.
The whole GOP, in other words.
Baud
I welcome those 16 people.
cain
Those GOP have no choice but to vote for Biden. This was about saving the Republic not about their politics. The Dems stuff is not that odorous in the scheme of things.
Tinare
Meanwhile, the GOP didn’t change with Trump, Trump just said the quiet and coded parts outloud.
Baud
Fixed.
trollhattan
@Baud: You can see them all pile out of a Mini Cooper next time the circus is in town.
Alison Rose
Sure they are.
If they change their registration to the Democratic Party, if they donate to Democrats, if they do GOTV for Democrats, if they vote for Democrats every time…then they can call themselves Democrats.
Matt
The only thing I’m interested in from “Never-Trump Republicans” is this: I want them to stay home in every election going forward.
I don’t want to hear them showing up at Democratic party meetings and whinging about “why do trans people need civil rights anyways? I’M GONNA VOTE FOR TRUMP UNLESS YOU ACCOMMODATE MY BIGOTRY!!!!!!”
I don’t want them turning up in Democratic primaries to vote for right-wing “Democrats”.
They’ve already demonstrated that their judgement is garbage by voting Republican; we’re going to spend the rest of their lives cleaning up their messes. The least they can do is STFU and stop making things worse.
Geminid
@Baud: Ideological “Self Identification” is an interesting phenomenon. Back when exit polls were more probative than they are today, I read that 7% of Obama voters in 2008 self-identified as “Conservative.” The number for 2012 was the same 7%.
Ohio Mom
Are most of those never Trumpers just not voting for Trump but still voting R up and down the ballot, from Congress to the proverbial dog catcher?
I mean, thank you for not voting for Trump but can you please not vote (again) for JD Vance?
Baud
FTA
Raoul Paste
@Baud: Now THAT is a proper correction
Yutsano
Is it just me or does that seem like wish fulfillment?
Ohio Mom
If I squint very hard, I can see what Pelosi and other Democratic leadership mean when they say we need two parties, if only the Republicans would be the party they imagine.
But as soon as I relax my eyes, Really? I’m not convinced.
I voted for one Republican in my life, a very reasonsble fellow for Cincinnati City Council named Guy Gukenberger. If he still alive, I’m sure he is at least a never Trumper.
Geminid
@Geminid: I think that a lot of these “Never Trumpers” have drifted into the “Independent, lean D” group. That category may contain as much as 40% of Independents, according to political science researchers. They find there is a similar or slightly larger amount of “Independent, Lean Rs.,” with a much smaller group they identify as true swing voters.
eclare
@Ohio Mom:
My only vote for any Republican was George HW Bush in 1988, my first election. In 1992 I voted for Clinton, and I have never looked back, only voting for Democrats.
Ben Cisco
@CaseyL:
Incorrect: This is who they are. This is who they have always been. They just did a casting call for full-on asshole and TRE45ON answered.
NotMax
Sheesh.
306 – 232.
narya
@Ohio Mom: My normie Friend grew up in WI, in the days when the R governor actually did things like protect the environment. He thinks, as a matter of principle, that one-party rule isn’t a good thing. He also, at this point, sees the current R party as the party of fascism (which he opposes!) and refuses to get anywhere near them. I think it’s useful to have a variety of approaches and views; however, I haven’t seen anything reasonable out of the R party in my life, so it’s hard for me to imagine what that might look like. It’s probably what Pelosi, et al., are talking about.
zhena gogolia
@narya: You have to go back to Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, and Lowell Weicker to see what it looks like. And Margaret Chase Smith.
ETA: And of course, all such people are now Democrats. It’s just a totally different landscape. Hell, Eisenhower would be a Democrat now.
ETA: Hell hell, Goldwater might be a Democrat now.
MattF
It’s worth noting that thirty years ago ‘liberal Republican’ was not an oxymoron. My congressional district, now represented by Jamie Raskin, was then represented by Connie Morella, a Republican, who was well to the left of most Democrats. I recall her puzzlement at how her district had turned against her— there was a real change around that time.
hrprogressive
Short Answer; “No”
All the “Never Trumpers” have had ample, ample opportunity to disavow the entirety of the Fascist Republican Party – because since Trump, this is exactly who they are – and instruct all their proverbial “Never Trump/Country First/Bush/Reagan/Whatever” Conservatives…
“Hey everyone, we know the idea of voting for Democrats probably is tough to stomach for a lot of you, but we actively encourage you to do so until every last Trump Republican no longer holds elected office. The fate of the country is at stake”
I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone like Tim what’s his name, or Olivia Troye or Michael Steele ever say anything like this…
They all have the platforms. That they refuse to do this – again, if you have evidence they’ve done this, I’d be happy to be refuted – makes me strongly not want to trust anyone who has not abandoned the (R) next to their names after 8+ years of open wishful totalitarianism against the American People.
Baud
@MattF:
Thirty years ago, she would have been voting for Newt Gingrich for Speaker. She shouldn’t be puzzled.
CaseyL
@Ben Cisco: Maybe I should have said de jure v. de facto. Maybe the deciding factor wasn’t Trump so much as it was Citizens United and Shelby County that made it safe for the fascists to let their flags fly out and proud.
Jeffro
Rooting for trump – much like using “woke” for anything other than when you got out of bed – is just self-outing oneself as a racist.
THAT doesn’t have a whole lot of appeal to anyone but racists. No wonder folks are quiet-quitting today’s GOP
zhena gogolia
@hrprogressive: I think Tom Nichols is the only one who’s done it.
Dan B
@zhena gogolia: Fiscally conservative but not wildly conservative, believe in good frugal government, socially moderate, opposed to extremism, etc.
Tom Levenson
@NotMax: That was my reaction…but on reflection I think Martin was just clumsy here, not attempting to diminish Biden’s margin. 43,000 votes separated the election from ending up at 269-269 in the Electoral College–and a Trump second term after the House of Representatives voted.
That tight a margin (in the context of an 8 million popular vote edge) still makes my stomach flip.
MattF
@Baud: Tom DeLay, actually.
zhena gogolia
@Dan B: Don’t want to get in anyone’s bedroom or medical decisions, etc.
Dan B
@zhena gogolia: Eisenhower was originally asked to run as a Democrat. I don’t remember the reason he did not.
hrprogressive
@zhena gogolia:
And good for Tom! But where are the rest of his so-called compatriots?
There are not nearly enough of them ready to admit the “old GOP” is dead, and buried, and anyone left in the party is either openly supportive of fascism and white nationalism…or, just you know.
Maybe they “hope the fever will break someday”.
Let’s ask Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland how that’s going, shall we?
Jackie
@Ohio Mom: I think the majority of Never Trumpers group are also anti-MAGA and vote accordingly. A lot of those also support women’s health care, etc.
I think this group will vote mostly Dem until the MAGAts and GQPers are voted out once and for all. By the time THAT happens, they may decide they have more in common with Democrats than not. They’ll never be “raging liberals,” but moderate Dems are welcome to the Big Tent.
Dan B
@zhena gogolia: Yes. Good addition.
NotMax
Skimmed the piece and it boils down to “Your guess is as good as ours. Only time will tell.”
In other words, devoid of import or substance.
Jeffro
@zhena gogolia: I may have mentioned this before, but my RWNJ dad tried to tell me and my RWNJ bro (I think it was in 2021, post-Insurrection) that he was at heart a “Rockefeller Republican” who had no choice but to vote against the She-Demon in 2016.
Oh, and also for trump in 2020 because woke or something.
Oh, and who “disliked trump but loved his ‘policies’ “
There aren’t enough eyerolls in the world…
narya
@zhena gogolia: Exactly! I also think part of what has happened is that various Democratic programs–e.g., the War on Poverty, Head Start, some of the other expansions of basic care–have brought a pile of evidence that there are certain large-scale interventions that only the federal government can manage, and that materially improve both people’s lives and the life of the population as a whole, even if the local versions reflect the needs of specific localities. That all makes the notion of “small government” more challenging to define and carry out, because now we know that people are materially worse off in those cases.
Pink Tie
@hrprogressive: I’ve been paying fairly close attention to the likes of Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell (especially because she conducts focus groups and usually seems to provide the data), Charlie Sykes, and I think they really do come out on that side. Miller & Longwell particularly because they are queer & Miller has a black child, but I do roll my eyes when Sykes complains about Republican racism/bigotry. This is all kind of theoretical WRT the Bulwark personalities anyway, because anyone who leans their way already agrees, and so their platform is self-selecting. Sykes probably has the best chance to take a “vote D until the MAGA psychos are gone” to normie R voters because he can still land interviews with people like Paul Ryan. He was the only one of that group who actually had a broadcast platform anyway, as a conservative talk radio host. The others were mostly consultants or party functionaries who walked away, making new careers talking shit as podcasters or doing cable news hits.
Rand Careaga
And then there’s that segment of the voters and commentariat whom Roy Edroso has memorably dubbed “Just the tip Trumpers.”
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: Virginia Senator John Warner was sort of a throwback to tbe Eisenhower Republicans.
Warner was an accidental Senator though. In tbe 1978 primary, he came in second to Richard Obenshain, who was the leader of the Republicans’ conservative wing. Then Obenshain died in a plane wreck. Warner took his place and won the first of 5 Senate terms.
The conservatives griped constantly about Warner, but they couldn’t do anything about him because Virginia has open primaries and the Independents loved the guy. I think John Warner is the most popular Virginia politician in my lifetime.
Jackie
This is a very detailed article about what’s happening, sometimes silently, by MAGA leaning repubs at the state level. It’s really worth reading the entire article:
cain
This is an awesome exchange by a comedian and some maga people in their 50s from Cincinnati
https://youtu.be/h3AL5cifkQU?feature=shared
Well worth watching !
Pink Tie
@Geminid: I grew up in Hampton Roads, and our family (me included) always voted Warner, but otherwise straight Democratic on the rest of the ticket. People genuinely did love him and believed that he did right by his constituents and his duties as senator.
The open Virginia primary… I had moved to Texas by the 2000 election, but the other members of my family chose to vote in the Republican primary for McCain, because they were all so alarmed at the prospect of W.
Doug R
All those words and not a single mention of Dobbs.
Alison Rose
@cain: Ehhhhh…he had me until the molestation joke. That wasn’t necessary.
Baud
@Doug R:
The article discusses abortion. I quoted it upthread.
Don K
@Ohio Mom:
Okay, as an example. I live in Bloomfield Township, MI, prototypical green and leafy upper-income suburb and home to Oakland Hills Golf Course, host of major tournaments over the years. In 2000, Bush won the township 62-36. In 2004, this margin was reduced to 59-40. In 2008, it was 52-47 in favor of the Republicans, while in 2012 Romney stretched it out to 57-42 (hometown boy effect?). In 2016, we voted for a Dem for president 49-46, and in 2020 Uncle Joe won the township 55-43. To complete the transformation, Whitmer last year won Bloomfield 59-40, and we elected a Dem-majority township government. So at least this municipality is going blue top to bottom of the ballot, and in under ten years. I think the divorce of upper-income college-educated voters from the Republican party is final.
Geminid
@Dan B: Leaders from both parties recruited Eisenhower early on. I don’t know why he picked the Republicans. He had to win a tough fight with Robert Taft for the nomination.
Another Scott
@Dan B: My recollection is that he was convinced that the Taft wing of the GQP was dangerous and needed to be defeated.
E.g. Hoover.org:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Geminid
After 20 consecutive years of Ds he may have become convinced by arguments that change was in the air.
bbleh
@Tinare: he was an accelerant, a catalyst. He publicly validated those views, which encouraged people to be more open about them, which further validated and encouraged both him and them, etc. But yes, like Murdoch / Fox, they merely exploited a latent market
Matt: @Ohio Mom: @Geminid: @Jackie: I continue to think the Bitecofer model is the correct one for these days. People don’t switch parties nearly so much as they switch between voting and not voting. Party affiliations are pretty dyed-in-the-wool, but some voters, eg “Never Trump” Republicans, will sit out an election — or a particular race in an election — because they just don’t want to vote for their party’s candidate. The so-called “swing voters” are much more likely to be a statistical artifact — some percentage of former Republican-leaning voters deciding not to vote and simultaneously a similar percentage of former Democratic-leaning non-voters deciding to vote — than it is people actually switching from one party to the other. I think the number of actual switchers is very small.
The corollary of course is that trying to persuade Republicans to vote Democratic is a losing proposition compared to trying to get Dem-leaning non-voters to show up and vote (and maybe persuade some Republican-leaning voters to just sit this one out).
Shalimar
@eclare: I don’t think I have ever voted for a Republican, but I did write in Jimmy Stewart in 1992 and 1996 because I really do not like Bill Clinton. That was a youthful mistake I haven’t made since. Voting for anyone other than the Democrat is no better than voting for the Republican.
UncleEbeneezer
@Alison Rose: I was just thinking that what needs to happen is that we need the Never Trump Republicans and No Labels idiots to commit to destroying MAGA/Trumpism and permanently marginalizing the Republican Party as it is today, then they can combine forces and create a new party that might actually be viable. The problem is that they (especially Never Trumpers) don’t want to admit that the GOP has to be destroyed before they (Never Trumpers) will ever be politically relevant again in the US. If they could just join Dems consistently for like a decade, we could solve much of the problem. But I won’t count on it…
mrmoshpotato
No. They wolves in sheeps’ clothing. Fuck everyone at the Lincoln Project, and fuck them for trying to tell us how to run the Democratic party.
Fix the shithole that you helped create, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, etc.
Actually, just burn down the GOP, boys. Fuck your lives’ work.
Geminid
@Pink Tie: I almost voted for John Warner once. It was the year Mark Warner ran against him and lost, 1996 maybe.
But as I approached the polling place I thought about how Democrats in Virginia were really gonna take it on the chin that election, so I decided to go down fighting with the team. Still, I always thought a lot of John Warner.
UncleEbeneezer
@Don K: You love to see it. Seriously, with all the doom and gloom it is nice to hear about regions like this that are headed in the right direction.
Shalimar
@zhena gogolia: Joe Walsh, noted former Tea Party extremist, has also said the choice is Biden or fascism. He is for Biden, in case that first statement left a doubt.
Omnes Omnibus
@mrmoshpotato: I wouldn’t go that far, but I think that, as they come over to our side, they need to take all the seats. They don’t get to run things, and their opinions about the direction the Dem Party should go are not needed. Give us your votes and earn our trust. For some, that could take a really long ass time.
Alison Rose
@UncleEbeneezer:
Concur.
CliosFanBoy
I subscribe the Bulwark. Sometimes I think, “why don’t you just become a Democrat” and then they publish a piece that reminds me that they may be sane and not total reactionaries, but they’re still republicans at heart.
moops
self-identified liberal Republicans….. so, all 10 of them?
moops
They aren’t going to do that. No matter how much you want them to. So, what else would you like them to do? because they are not going to do that.
You can be all pure and demand they do the right thing, or you can ask for something they might actually do.
CliosFanBoy
@Another Scott: We should tear down the statue of Senator Taft that’s near the Senate and replace it with one of Dewey.
lowtechcyclist
@Shalimar:
I don’t get this. Voting for someone other than a Democrat or Republican is, with rare exceptions, effectively the same as not voting.
Is not voting no better than voting for the Republican? I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather see people not vote than vote for the Republican. We want people to stay at home rather than voting for the Republican.
Freemark
@hrprogressive: Joe Walsh comes pretty close to this. Still surprises the shit out of me.
Citizen Alan
@eclare: Same here. I voted for Bush over Dukakis because I was young and stupid, but even that was without conviction on my part. Since then, I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a Republican in a contested election. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever checked the box for a Republican running unopposed more than 5 times in my life.
Citizen Alan
@NotMax: To be fair, 40-50k votes in the right counties and that still would have been a victory for Trump, I think.
Kent
I’m old enough to have voted for Republicans.
When I was young and growing up in Oregon I voted for Mark Hatfield for Senate because he was opposing Carter’s reinstatement of draft registration. But Hatfield was a very liberal Republican from a different era.
I also voted for Ted Stevens once in Alaska when his Democratic opponent was this severely crazy woman Teresa Obermeyer who had somehow snuck through the crowded Democratic primary based on name recognition in Anchorage. I was absolutely NOT going to vote for the Green
Neither of those elections was remotely in doubt though.
Ken
What a terrible mixed metaphor. Trump repelled people to the Democrats, so he’s scarcely a “gateway drug”. “Bloated toxic road-kill,” perhaps.
CliosFanBoy
The only republican I have ever voted for since I turned 18 in 1977 was for the city* auditor in Athens, Ohio in the mid-1980s. But he was so much better qualified than the Democrat that even the local “alternative” paper endorsed him.
People have told me many times, “I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the best candidate.” I tell them, “So do I. Strangely it’s always the Democrat.”
* or was it county? it’s been a long while.
Kent
My theory is that most so-called Independents are really just garden variety Republicans or Democrats but like to use the “independent” label because it sounds more intelligent or cynical or something.
So a lot of those former Republican voters probably identify as “independent” even if they are voting pretty mainstream Democratic.
Either way, I’ll take very vote. I don’t need all my Democratic voters to be party activists.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: I once did a thought experiment where I designed a Circle of Purgatory. I imagined this was at the request of the Empress of the Universe. She wanted a full scale renovation of Purgatory but was too busy to work out all the details herself.
So I came up with a Circle where angry Democrats griped and grumbled about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and debated which Circle of Hell the two belonged in.
The Empress wanted a relegation system similar to the one they have for English football. So for the Democrats who showed no progess on their anger issues or regressed, I designed a circle they would drop down into, where they would gripe and grumble about the Lincoln Project and debate which Circle of Hell the founders belonged in.
But those who showed improvement would move up to a Circle of Purgatory where they discussed Nordic Noir crime fiction all day.
Mike in NC
Not much of a secret to his appeal: a racist, fascist, sexual predator and con man who tells people what they want to hear.
Pink Tie
@moops: yes, this is realistic. They have so much of their lives’ work (despicable as we might find it) and identities tied into their successful efforts at promoting GOP ideology. Let’s accept what they are willing to give, if it’s in the right direction; they can and might come around, as Walsh has. I don’t care if Sarah Longwell or Steve Schmidt still believe in trickle-down economics as individuals but we should try to accept what they’re willing to give, pushing back where we must. They’re trying.
Citizen Alan
@Another Scott: So what we need is someone with the public stature of post-WW2 Ike to take control of the Republican Party and clean out the fascists?
CliosFanBoy
@Citizen Alan:
At this point Ike, Reagan, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or even George Washington* would finish at best a distant 6th in a republican primary.
* yeah, I know, not a republican.
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: That sounds like a tall order or a wild goose chase, finding another Eisenhower.
How is life far away from the American South going (typical New Yorker that I am underneath it all, I can’t remember if you eascaped Alabama or Mississippi).
Citizen Alan
@Ohio Mom:
Mississippi (though Alabama and Mississippi are basically each other’s Evil Twin). And it’s wonderful here. I just got back from ClovisFest where I did some early Christmas shopping and enjoyed a Cornish Pasty from a British-themed street vender. I’m debating whether to go do karaoke at a gay bar or else just stay in tonight.
geg6
@MattF:
Yes, I had no problem voting for John Heinz for senator. He was a Rockefeller Republican type. First and last one I ever voted for. His wife married John Kerry after his tragic death. I find that pretty telling.
Pink Tie
@moops: adding that the insurrection, undermining of democratic norms, disgust with MAGA congresspeople, and the repulsive, intensifying culture-war battles are ALL the Never Trump people talk about… I think they’re slowly figuring it out.
Hoppie
@Another Scott:
Interesting dive, but I have to wonder what else in the analysis is wrong when they flub something this easy to check….
Another Scott
@Hoppie: It was from Hoover, after all.
(Good catch!)
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Ben Cisco:
Well put!
Jackie
@Jackie: THIS is one of the MAGA state grabs discussed in the link I posted above @commet 41
mrmoshpotato
@Tom Levenson:
Same.
The Electoral College should be burned to the ground, and have its ashes dumping into a lava lake.
Geminid
@bbleh: Ah, Rachel Bitecofer. I started fillowing her in 2018, when she was teaching at Christopher Newport University.
Bitecofer still does political analysis and maintains a lively Twitter feed, but she has also transitioned to hands-on campaign work as a freelance consultant. An Arizona group hired her last year for campaigns including that of Adrian Fontes, who won election for Secretary of State. Afterwards, Mr. Fontes spoke highly of Bitecofer’s guidance.
Last year Bitecofer left Virginia and moved back home to Oregon. She lives in Salem now, where she is raising her autistic son and cheering at Ducks football games.
eclare
@Kent:
That is not my comment, I think it was Shalimar’s.
Geminid
@Jackie: North Carolina Republicans also moved to restrict the state’s Freedom of Information Act. I happened to be listening to WBT* radio out of Charlotte one evening last week and that was the lead story on the news.
*WBT is a clear channel station station so it comes in well here after dark, at 1110 on the AM dial.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus:
More to my liking.
mrmoshpotato
@moops: Throw themselves into an active volcano?
Ivan X
@Doug R: The full article mentions it.
Jackie
@Geminid: I’d sure like to hear from Marc Elias right now!
rekoob
@Geminid: Late to the thread, but I was a non-eligible teen during the 1978 US Senate race in Virginia. Everyone saw Dick Obenshain’s death was a tragedy, but Andrew Miller was a strong candidate and could have helped both Carter and the VA Dems in the coming years (“It’s Miller Time!”).
John Warner lost the Republican nomination because he was considered non-Virginian and, to a certain extent, too attached to celebrity (he was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time). When Obenshain was killed in the plane crash, Warner swept in after an appropriate interval. He won the 1978 Senate race over Miller by 4,721 votes out of 1.2 million cast, or a margin of roughly 0.40%.
Every vote counts.
wjca
But the whole point of the article is that the GOP did change. Those who were conservative, but not radical reactionaries (or nihilists), departed. Leaving a quite different configuration behind.
Bill Arnold
I voted for a Republican in a local town race once, in NY State. The opposing Democrat had managed to score the “Right To Life Party” endorsement/party line, and I always voted against anyone with their endorsement.
Was funny meeting the R candidate for county executive pressing the flesh in a supermarket parking lot and telling him that I would have to vote against him because he had the Right To Life endorsement. He sputtered “but what about the babies” and i smiled back.
He won anyway; suburban northern R county of NYC; in such a place, the primary is the election.
wjca
Your bigotry is showing. The minimum you want, going forward, is they show up on Election Day and vote for Democrats. Every one who does that is worth two who merely stay home.
Geminid
@rekoob: Also, Obenshain was very conservative and very much an organizer. I’ve seen him described as “the architect” of the conservative-dominated Virginia Republican Party. Warner would have been on the wrong side of the conservative/moderate-conservative fight.
Richard Obenshain’s son Mark is now State Senator for a district in the Shenandoah Valley that includes Harrisonburg. The younger Obenshain is a mediocre politician. I listen to the Harrisonburg radio station a lot and I rarely hear his name mentioned. I didn’t even know he represented Harrisonburg until I read it in Wikipedia.
Jackie
HOLEEE COW! TIFG REALLY REALLY doesn’t like PA Gov Shapiro’s new automatic registering new voters law! (And, again it appears he’s running against Obama)
I apologize for the RawStory link: it was this or TIFG’s Social Media link. A hard NO!
I do (for once) agree with him saying throw all the Repugs out of office!
wjca
Hell, Ronald Reagan would be a Democrat now. The GOP really has gone that far around the bend.
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
I kinda liked the Hollywood adaptation “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. (Such women exist, BTW.)
Didn’t know the size of the fiction genre; thanks!
Geminid
@Jackie: That’s classic Trump. He helped wreck Pennsylvania’s Republican party and now he’s demanding action from them.
rekoob
@Geminid: Indeed — the Republican Party of Virginia named its headquarters in Richmond after him. His son Mark has not been in the same league as his father.
Had the 1978 US Senate race been between Obenshain and Miller, it would have been a re-match, of sorts, of their 1969 campaign for Attorney General, which Miller won.
Miller was a contemporary and friend of my father — it no doubt explains my interest in the campaign (plus, I was pining for Princeton at the time, and Miller was an alumnus).
I voted for Chuck Robb in 1981 — it’s interesting to look at the blue/red distributions from 40+ years ago.
bbleh
@wjca: I’d certainly like them to show up and vote Dem, but I’m not gonna invest much in trying to persuade them to do that rather than just stay home — or if they’re gonna show up at least not vote for TIFG — rather than in persuading Dem-leaning non-voters to show up and vote, simply because I think there’s a LOT more bang for the buck in the latter than in the former.
The good news is, one can do both at the same time with issues like reproductive rights: that both galvanizes Dem-leaners, especially those who don’t typically vote, AND discourages Rep-leaners who are already getting a little disgusted with the whole WWE-meets-Christofascism thing. But at the end of the day, persuading a Rep-leaner to vote for the hated Demo-rats, rather than just to say a pox on both your houses, ain’t worth the expense IMO.
bbleh
@Jackie: I agree! If they won’t do the right thing by America, it’s best just to burn the whole thing down and start over. It’s the Freedom Caucus logic applied to the Republican Party.
(I’d be willing to argue that this is an almost inevitable endpoint of the decades-long trend in the Republican Party. Their whole motivation is grievance, their default mode is angry, and their approach to every issue is to throw a tantrum and smash things. That they’re applying it to each other is hardly surprising.)
Jackie
@Geminid: He’s demanding action from ALL of Congress! Not just Pennsylvania. I think he’s finally at the edge of the cliff.
JUMP, Donald! JUMP! And take all your lemmings with you!
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie:
Including (preemptively) his fat, orange, Kremlin-humping, fascist ass! Throw himself into a volcano. Sorry volcano, you didn’t deserve this.
bbleh
@mrmoshpotato: eh, at 2000 degrees a 300-pound blob of animal fat doesn’t even register.
(If we could have a little advance notice, though, so we could arrange a proper ceremony, it would be appreciated.)
wjca
I can see that. What I can’t see is putting effort into actively discouraging people who would vote for Democrats (or, at least, against Republicans by voting D) from voting at all. That kind of absolutist purity is what loses winnable elections.
wjca
Forgive my massive ignorance here. But rather than “Kremlin-humping” isn’t TIFG more humped by?
Pink Tie
@Geminid: obviously we were all Robb voters otherwise and went for Mark Warner when we had the chance.
Rachel Bitecofer was a terrible missed opportunity for CNU, where my father taught from 1974 to around 2017. I have heard so many stories from him about the administrators he dealt with. When the Pro Publica piece came out not long ago about Newport News essentially stealing land from the black landowners to make land available for CNU, and how the decision came about…I grew up in that neighborhood and saw the homes go away.
I wish this could be a front page piece. The Pro Publica article was heartbreaking, but it was heartbreaking every time you drove through the neighborhood. I’ll be happy to contribute if any front pagers want to feature it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-virginia-college-expanded-by-uprooting-black-neighborhood
mrmoshpotato
@bbleh:
True, but I still feel the need to apologize.
mrmoshpotato
@wjca: I think it’s mutual if that. Dump is dumb enough, and power-hungry enough to freely hump the Kremlin without knowing his just a useful blob to them however.
Jackie
@wjca: Exactly. Remember our Blog Master was a Republican at one time. In his case, the Terri Schiavo case was his last straw.
Whatever it takes for moderate Republicans/right-leaning Indies to re-evaluate and vote Blue “temporarily,” is for the good!
rekoob
@Pink Tie: While I’m dropping names, I’ll note that CNU owes a lot of its growth to Paul Trible, odious Tidewater Virginia Republican of the past 30-odd years. It doesn’t surprise me that the school is at the center of a land grab facilitated by his next-generation leader, Glenn Youngkin. Although I can no longer vote there, I’m encouraging all my friends and family to vote (D) and early.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
You owe Pele a bottle of gin.
And not the cheap stuff, either. :)
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
What if it’s not a Hawaiian volcano?
Bill Arnold
@bbleh:
Sure it does. Have you ever tossed a tortilla chip on a hot charcoal grill? The few grams of oil in it result in a surprisingly large burst of flame.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
In that case, two bottles of gin. The second for the other local deity.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Haha.
Pink Tie
@rekoob: watch your feet, everyone! Names dropping!
Yeah, Trible lives not far from the campus. My parents are in the same house they bought in 1976 on an associate professor’s salary; miraculously, their (white) area across Shoe Lane was exempt from the rapacious eminent-domain seizures! Literally one side of the road was white and one side was black.
I went to public school with all the kids who lived in those houses on Moore and Shoe. Those neighborhoods were black-owned because Newport News wasn’t fully incorporated as a city when they bought the land, so there wasn’t any redlining yet — they just owned land. Then Warwick County and the city incorporated, and the county land became part of the city. And the city council just took the land to develop. This happened about 70 years ago at this point, but the construction/evictions/thievery happened, legally. And went on.
Two of my close friends’ grandparents saw their seized land turned into parking lots and tennis courts. Faculty, like my dad and other friends’ parents, had no say.