After Wisconsin, The GOP Has a Reckoning
It's Time to Turn on Trumpism
At one time the Republican Party was overwhelmed with extremists. They had taken over their party, decried everyone outside of it a Communist, and promoted an isolationist foreign policy at odds over the last few decades of American exceptionalism around the world. Savvy Republican leaders realized that if they were ever to hold the reins of power again, they would have to get rid of the crazies in their midst.
No, I’m not talking about the Trump led party of today. I’m talking about the GOP in the late 50s and early 60s. The insurgents, organized by John Birch Society leader Robert Welch, an ultra-conservative (and extemely wealthy) retired candy manufacturer, the Birch Society was formed as a counterweight to the Democrats’ hugely successful New Deal. It grew into a major grassroots political force, with hundreds of chapters scattered across the country encouraging members to run for local office and support far-right political campaigns. It was anti- Civil Rights, anti- Communist, anti- globalism and anti- Semitic. Welch loved to traffic in conspiracy theories, insinuating that Eisenhower was a closet Communist sympathizer and that Robert Taft had died of a cancer because someone planted radium in his sofa. See any parallels to today?
The person who gets most of the credit for the GOP’s course correction is William F. Buckley, the intellectual heartbeat of the GOP at the time. As editor of the National Review, he carried a lot of weight with the party rank and file and had a direct form of communication nationally. He was the one that said the way forward was to kick the crazies out of the party. Until they had removed the extremism from their ranks, they would never be considered a feasible alternative to the growing liberalism of the day.
This course of action eventually evolved into the Reagan Republican party and the Conservative takeover of DC in 1980. The blueprint laid the foundation for Republican governance in Washington for the last 45 years. Its Reagan talking about a “Shining City on a Hill,” or “Morning in America, “ or George W. Bush talking about “compassionate conservativism.” It’s moderating the harsher edges of the GOP and casting out the bomb-throwers, even though slowly and slowly the party succumbed further and further backsliding to their extremist wing. And then came Trump and the inmates took over the asylum again.
Dan Kelly and Wisconsin Supreme Court Race
Exhibit A. Dan Kelly. Dan Kelly is not a good politician and not a very good judge. He’s an unabashed partisan, originally put on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by Governor Scott Walker to fill a vacancy. Kelly, is a graduate of one of the worst law schools in America and was generally seen as unqualified for the state’s highest court when he was nominated. State Supreme Court seats are elected seats and the first time he was up for election, he became only the 2nd Supreme Court incumbent in state history to lose election.
Losing you think would have humbled the judge, but instead, he signed up for Trump’s Wisconsin Re-Election campaign. When Trump failed to win the state, he was one of the primary persons responsible for pushing the fraudulent electoral votes scheme, advocating alternative electors and trying to get those to Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson for Vice President Mike Pence to validate on January 6th. Trump’s failure to concede defeat and subsequent actions resulted in an insurrection, Trump’s second impeachment and hundreds of insurrectionists in jail.
No matter to Kelly, he decided to run AGAIN for State Supreme Court. In the primary he faced a rising star in state GOP politics, Rebecca Dorow, who had just presided as judge over the case of a felon who drove his car mowing down bystanders at a Waukesha Christmas Parade. She received great acclaim for the job she did, but lost the election to Kelly anyway.
So how’d Kelly do? On Tuesday night in a state where most statewide races come down to 20,000 or so votes, he lost by almost 200,000 and 11 points. To make matters worse, he refused to concede, snidely commenting the winner lacked the dignity of receiving a concession from him. Make no mistake, Wisconsin, roundly rejected this crazy.
In the Wisconsin election, there were two issues that drove voters statewide to the polls on a cold, rainy April day for a State Supreme Court election with no other items on the ballot: Dobbs and Democracy. Dobbs, the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade sending abortion back to the states, resulted in WI reverting back to an 1848 law still on the books outlawing abortion. And ever since 2011 when Scott Walker and the radicalized GOP got in control of the state, the gerrymander they put in place along with subsequent legislative actions they forced Wisconsin residents to swallow had long lost favor with the majority of residents. These two issues spelled doom to the point that turnout in many areas of the state rivaled Presidential election years. Kelly and the GOP were on the wrong side of both issues, and were arrogantly, condescendingly contemptful of the voting public’s opinions on it. It was an easy call they would lose on this.
But officials like Dan Kelly are the symptom of an ever growing cancer on the GOP; the extremists dominate the primary process and the crazies are put on the ballot. Rational, moderate options lose out to the most outrageous person out there spewing the MAGA/Trump/FOX/Newsmax/OAN/Talk Radio party line. You can’t govern that way.
Long story short, what the Republicans experienced on Tuesday night is just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve latched their fates onto Trump and followed him like lemmings with the cliff coming. Barring the next William F. Buckley standing up and saying “We need new direction” and elected Republicans openly denouncing Trump and Trumpism, they’re going to follow up right off that cliff.
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I’ve actually never been a William F. Buckley fan, but I do give credit where it’s due. He was a rational, erudite voice of conservatism. His book, “God and Man at Yale” is actually a forebearer to many of the collegiate issues we have today on college campuses. If you’ve ever read it, then you recognize that much of the discourse about “educational freedom” and “indoctrination” and “liberal college dogma” has been around for quite some time.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
Many remember McCarthyism and Edward R. Murrow’s classic takedown of the disgraced former Senator (from Wisconsin) on the show “See it Now.” Murrow told McCarthy they were going to do a piece on him and would offer him the opportunity to respond in kind the subsequent week. The segment aired and it was brutal.
Murrow instead countered that he wanted William F. Buckley to provide the rebuttal, to which CBS and Murrow refused. The result was that McCarthy’s response was inarticulate, inadequate, and the Senator appeared drunk. His career was finished after that.
PurpleAmerica Cultural Criticism Corner
If you want to see a great film about the Murrow/McCarthy affair, watch George Clooney’s excellent piece “Good Night and Good Luck.” Clooney’s father was a a newsman, and had often said the two most powerful moments in news were Murrow’s takedown of McCarthy and Walter Cronkite’s annoucnement that the war in Vietnam was lost. David Strathairn gives a career performance.
Buckley’s son Christopher Buckley is an accomplished author in his own right. Among one of my favorite political movies ever was this one, based on his novel, “Thank You For Smoking.”
Outstanding Tweet
I stayed away from the Trump indictment today as an issue because I figured it was already starting to get OJ level style overcoverage. But this tweet is just *Chef’s kiss.”
Footnotes and Parting Thoughts
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