Isaac Schorr here, filling in for Jim Geraghty; buckle up, because you’ve caught me in some kind of mood.
There is no menu: You’re home, Dad’s a terrible cook, all that’s in the fridge are frozen vegetables — and he’s doing the best he can.
The ‘We’re Just Plain Evil’ Blueprint
I can’t foresee myself ever casting a vote for a Democrat because to me, there are virtually no redeeming qualities to the institutional Democratic Party.
It has a bottomless appetite for spending money it doesn’t presently have but intends on taking from me. It has an intolerable tolerance for crime, homelessness, drug use, and disorder. It has no care for the Constitution, and no confidence in the righteousness of America’s position vis-à-vis those of its geopolitical and ideological adversaries. It supports experimental treatments on and the castration of children suffering from gender dysphoria. It supports elective abortions on-demand until a child is born.
But Democrats mostly contain their flaws to misbegotten policies that they’re able to paint in an appealing-enough light on the campaign trail.
They couch their support for violent, unthinkable late-term abortions in the reasonable-sounding notion that an unplanned pregnancy presents a woman with a tough decision that should be kept between her and her doctor, or hide behind “support for Roe v. Wade.” They say that if we don’t provide children with the euphemistic “gender-affirming care” they seek, they’ll kill themselves. They screech about the separation of church and state. They know that in the cities where crime is most pronounced, they’re mostly protected by their complete dominance of local politics and government, and when things get really bad there, they pay lip service to policies aimed at cleaning up the streets.
The GOP, meanwhile, is increasingly embracing the approach of the Republican Party of The Simpsons:
Too many Republican candidates present themselves as — and voters throw their support behind — the proudly malicious, whose primary virtue is their vice. I’m making the furthest thing from a novel point by holding up Donald Trump as the preeminent example of this phenomenon, but my goodness, what an example!
It was less than two years ago that Trump egged on a mob that stormed the Capitol chanting about hanging his own vice president on the basis of a lie he was peddling. Three weeks ago, he urged “U.S. Jews” to “get their act together.” On Monday, Election Day Eve, he called Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “an animal” just a little over a week after her 82-year-old husband underwent brain surgery for injuries sustained while fending off an attacker with intentions to break the Speaker’s kneecaps. How do you explain away any of this?
And Jolters, you may recognize that this is a non-exhaustive list.
Moreover, his unrestrained id has trickled down into the party’s candidates. Arizona’s Kari Lake praises do-no-gooders such as Wendy Rogers and tells “McCain Republicans” — a reference to the late John McCain, who endured being bayoneted in the foot and stomach, having his arm broken, ribs cracked, and shoulder shattered as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese — to “get the hell” away from her rallies. J. D. Vance boasts that he doesn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Doug Mastriano attended the rally that preceded the January 6 Capitol riot. Blake Masters cut an ad during which he proudly pronounced that “Trump won in 2020.” Mehmet Oz used his status and medical expertise to make money selling magic beans. Herschel Walker . . . well, God only knows what Herschel Walker has done.
However much Trump — who endorsed each of these candidates during their primary contests — may smile upon this lot, most Americans are revolted by those who say, do, and revel in revolting things. And the only people who don’t recognize Trump and his cronies’ behavior as revolting are political addicts who have their unrestrained id fed by low-knowledge, high-energy media personalities such as Benny Johnson, who on Election Day declared that, “What the Republican electorate wants is a strong executive who utilizes and wields power over his enemies. And then destroys his enemies and makes them grovel, makes molten salty tears flow from their faces.”
People whose frustrations with the results — and reasonably some of the processes around — the 2020 election quickly gave way to a certainty that it was stolen from them, a certainty that’s been reinforced by true believers and line walkers (“it wasn’t stolen, it was RIGGED!”) alike. People for whom time and an affinity for the results of the Trump administration’s policies desensitized them to the obvious, exhausting malice of the administration’s namesake. People who are assured by the commentators they mistakenly trust that what’s really holding the GOP back is the presence of Dan Crenshaw and Ben Sasse in Congress. People who have concluded that because the media will take every opportunity to smear conservatives, no real conservative offense matters.
Now, some of Trump’s candidates have or may ultimately prevail. But if Tuesday proved nothing else, it’s that general-election voters are sensitive to the malice that some amount of the GOP electorate seemingly no longer is, and that they’re willing to respond to it by punishing the Republican Party collectively for its indulgence. How else do you explain the Democrats’ ability to win in purple and even red (Kansas!) states while saddled with a wildly unpopular president, mass dissatisfaction with the economy, and fiascoes such as the Biden administration’s surrender to the Taliban?
So when a candidate offers you the “molten salty tears” of his opponents, ask whether voters might want something that tastes better. And when you’re reading or watching conservative media that only ever pushes you toward a single conclusion — that you are righteous and your enemies should be made to endure the worst — ask yourself if they’re not sending you down a road that ends in disappointment.
Malice can win under the right circumstances, namely, when facing down more malice (see: 2016), but generally, it’s a losing ingredient. It need not be included to deliver sweeping conservative electoral and policy victories (see: Ron DeSantis this year, Glenn Youngkin last year).
While Democrats may not have earned their overperformance this year, Republicans richly deserved their underperformance. If they don’t relearn to recoil at unbridled malevolence — and instead follow the lead of Vance, House Republican Conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik, and others by insisting that Trump and the inevitable baggage that comes with him are not only the past, but the future of the GOP — they’ll deserve the string of disappointments that come.
ADDENDUM: Be sure to read Dominic Pino’s article on the debt of gratitude Republicans owe their candidate for governor in New York. Lee Zeldin turned in quite the performance:
In what turned out to be a less successful Republican House performance than expected nationwide, New York’s Republican congressional candidates did well. In the likely narrow Republican House majority that will result when the dust settles, it’s possible that New York will have made the difference between GOP control and another term as speaker for Nancy Pelosi. For that, we have Lee Zeldin to thank.