THE REVENGE OF THE MUSHY MIDDLE? RIGHT-WING CORBYNISM HITS REPUBLICAN PARTY

Has the GOP been taken over by the Cringe Right?

by Colin Liddell

Nicholas Fuentes is jubilant that "Christian nationalist" candidates triumphed in the recent GOP primaries. This is best summed up in the headline for his recent livestream on the results:

"TOTAL GROYPER VICTORY: America First SWEEPS Midterm Primaries, AFPAC SPEAKERS 3-0"

The Financial Times adds some detail:

In Michigan, former Trump administration official John Gibbs ousted incumbent Republican congressman Peter Meijer [...] Meijer voted last year to impeach Trump over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

In Missouri, state attorney-general Eric Schmitt, who had backed a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 US election results and was one of two candidates endorsed by Trump in the race, prevailed in his contest for a Senate seat.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, where ballots were still being counted, two Republican candidates backed by Trump for governor and Senate were still in the running to take on Democrat opponents later this year.

In the state’s Senate race, Trump had endorsed Blake Masters, a former employee of billionaire Peter Thiel whose candidacy has received a large financial boost from his former tech employer.

In the Arizona governor’s race, Trump endorsed Kari Lake, a former TV presenter who shares his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.[...]

Mark Finchem, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Arizona secretary of state and a vocal denier of the 2020 election outcome, secured the GOP’s nomination for a position that would give him oversight of state voting.

But the problem here is that America is a two-party state,  electorally a zero-sum game. Because of these "Groyper" victories, the GOP is now effectively retreating into its hardcore Christian, pro-life, "muh guns", "Stop the Steal" base, leaving the tepid middle-of-the-road voters, who don't care about these right-wing shibboleths to be swept up by the Dems, assuming they can get their act together, even slightly.

This also explains why the Democrats actually spent money to back John Gibbs, Trump's candidate in the Michigan race. They cynically realise they stand a better chance of winning elections against someone who seems like an "extremist" to floating voters.

Gibbs: useful idiot for the Dems?

With the World in such a poor state at present, things are bound to be tough for all incumbent political parties. The smart move for those wishing to defeat them is to rely on broad-based voter dissatisfaction, while avoiding pissing off floating voters.

This is the strategy the Labour Party in Britain is pursuing, with its bland but not unlikeable leader Keir Starmer and a campaign that keeps its own wart-encrusted face in blurry soft-focus as much as possible.

The Labour Party, suffice to say, learned its lesson the hard way, during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015-2020), when its activist base did exactly what the MAGAtards are now doing to the GOP, except only from the Left rather than the Right.

Then too the party was pushed in a direction guaranteed to alienate the mushy middle voters, who found Corbyn's signally Left-wing socialism and lack of patriotism unpalatable.

You can be sure that a similar negative effect is happening with the GOP. The prospect of divisive "Stop the Steal" Trumpers, Bible-bashing Christo-Nats ('Kristallnacht' - geddit?), and Putin shills seizing power instead of the calm, bland, non-sectarian managerial types associated with the "old school" GOP will put a rocket up the arse of many Democrat and floating voters, and drive them out to vote against the GOP "culture warriors".

At best, what was shaping up to be a massive GOP landslide in the November Mid-terms could turn out to be a muted marginal victory; at worst, the Dems might even make gains. Corbynism (i.e. jerking off your hard core base while ignoring the floaters) doesn't work from the Left. There is no reason why it should work any better from the Right.

Parties that come from the Left or the Right and then water down their message by appealing to the mushy middle are often electorally successful, but seldom politically successful in the sense of actually solving problems and governing successfully. But then, of course, parties coming from the Left or Right who then fail to water down their message seldom get elected.

This sounds like a Catch 22. It is. But perhaps in the future the parties that will succeed, both electorally and politically, will be the ones that find some way to transcend this sterile bipolar framing.

___________________________________

Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).