Don’t Turn a Blind Eye as the GOP Starts to Implode Bureaucratically
“The party, being the state party or the national party, has a fundamental job to help candidates be position for victory and to do the ground game and the data and so much of the infrastructure work of campaigns,” said Barbour. “So when you have a party that’s failing, it’s like the public utility down the street doesn’t work anymore. How do you get your electricity or your water? … The party really plays that fundamental role in elections for its candidates.”
So says Mississippi GOP operative Henry Barbour – Mississippi Republican National Committee member, and nephew of former Governor Haley Barbour in a recent CNN piece on the “disarray” in the GOP. That reporting is all focused on the GOP shooting itself in the foot organizationally in key battleground states:
Republican party officials are becoming concerned that mounting dysfunction in a set of state Republican parties could imperil the GOP’s chances in 2024, going so far as to leave the eventual Republican presidential nominee hamstrung on party infrastructure in key battleground states.
The worries are based on the recent ousters of two state Republican Party chairs in Michigan and Florida, as well as dangerously low finances, ideological clashes and personal scandals that have hobbled the parties in those states plus Arizona and Georgia. And in Nevada, the party has had to deal with the fallout of its chair and vice chair being indicted in a 2020 fake electors case. Each of these states is set to play an essential role in the 2024 races for control of the House of Representatives, control of the Senate and even the presidency.
Now, long time readers of my work here, and on my mostly dormant personal blog will no doubt recall that I am not fan of the Democratic Party either – especially its often shown willingness to take charts and graphs to gun fights. So when a Party starts to implode bureaucratically I am not one to turn a blind eye. Like it or not, our political system requires functioning political parties, no matter what the Founding Fathers said about them.
Unfortunately, Mr. Barbour and his ilk still refuse to properly diagnose the disease that may well bring his party down at the ballot box. Sure, the inability to canvass may hurt them. But so too will post-Dobbs total or near total abortion bans, which run in opposition to consistent national polls showing support by a majority of Americans for legal, safe abortion through the first trimester. They are also likely to be hurt by their unwillingness to actually do anything about immigration reform – where Democrats have easy soundbites to deploy showing the President and Democratic Senators working the issue, and the House refusing to address it at all. Their alleged support of parents right regarding books in schools is starting to come back to haunt them, both because people like Bill O’Reilly are finding their books removed as questionable, and because people like Moms For Liberty co-founder and Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler as just as openly and publicly hypocritical (and therefore easy to mock) as anyone.
In the end, get out the vote only works when you give people something to vote for. And given the results of 2020 and 2022, the GOP needs to worry more about that, and less about whether all its financial ducks are in a row in Michigan.
The stuff that I am going to keep an eye out for:
There are people who are volunteers for any given locality. They do stuff like show up early in the morning and bring a box of donuts, they drive people to and from places, they put the folding chairs out on the floor and then, after the thing, stack the folding chairs back up in the corner. They run around the floor with a pushbroom after. They take the trash out to the dumpster. They do it again next time.
Are there more of these people because of Trump or fewer?
Because if there are fewer, Trump’s dead in the water.
One thing that happened in Colorado in 2016 was the whole “none of the Trump people understood caucuses” thing and, after Trump “won” the caucus, everybody went home… leaving the Cruz people to have the post-caucus meeting where they officially write down who won. The Cruz people gave all of the delegates to Cruz because the Trump folks didn’t know that that was one of the steps.
It worked out for Trump because that played like a dirty trick in the eyes of the public. “Look, the establishment is against him! EVEN THE REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT IS AGAINST HIM!”
But for anybody else, the fact that his team didn’t know that you have to have people who show up early with a box of donuts, etc, cost him the Colorado delegates.
Does Trump have donut guys this time around?Report
How do you encourage donut guys to show up when you’ve convinced them the system is rigged against them?Report
It’s worse than that, I don’t know that these guys know that they have to show up in the first place.
Like, I’ll use the Colorado Democratic Caucuses as an example. I went to a couple (2008, 2016) before we switched to Primary Voting and there were the same people that I saw there each time. A couple of nice hippie ladies, a couple of nice hippie dudes. They had opinions on who we should caucus for, of course, but they saw their job as explaining to the newbs how caucuses worked and where we should gather and whatnot.
Each one took place at the high school downtown. The first caucus I went to had individual classrooms for each district. The second one was a madhouse that met in the cafeteria and it felt like there were a lot more people there but, one of the nice hippie ladies told me afterwards, that was an illusion because the party consolidated a lot of districts due to budget cuts and whatnot. So there were more people milling about in the cafeteria but fewer *TOTAL* than in the election prior.
I think that one of the reasons we switched from caucuses to primaries was not only because of the budget but because those hippies were no longer spring chickens. And nobody learned how to do it after they left. (The excited Bernie kids from CC are no longer in town. They’re all working at Biglaw or whatever at this point.)
So the election folks? A primary is just like any other election. Come in, get your ballot, drop off your ballot, get your sticker, leave. Easy peasy.Report
Judging by the lower turnout in Iowa this year compared to 2020 I’d say no.Report
This isn’t about turnout.
This is about the guys manning the building at the places where turn goes to out.Report
You need fewer donut guys with lower turnout. It also shrinks your don’t guy pool.Report
I think the subtext here is that the GOP’s policies and behavior are deeply unpopular. Even amongst their own voters. But their base hates certain things MORE than they dislike voting for the GOP. This is less a problem with organization and more, I think, the conservative movement not really standing for anything other than grievance in order to protect the donor and capital class that it really represents. The solution is clearly to stop having bad policies, but as noted, they won’t ever do that, so the deflection is to these other non policy based things. The fault isn’t in scandals or goofy representatives, the fault is in a fundamental disinvestment in democracy and we shouldn’t be afraid to call it what it is.
This is setting aside our fundamentally broken two party FPTP system that enables this kind of behavior.Report
“their base hates certain things MORE than they dislike voting for the GOP. ”
Which is mirrored on the other side, by people who have a lengthy list of things they wish Biden was doing, or criticism him for doing, and then say “but I’m still not voting for the other guy.”Report
That’s because Trump is worse in the issues.
This isn’t that hard.Report
Remember when I asked conservatives to describe their “liberal dystopia”, that is, the worst case scenario if Democrats had complete control of the government?
As I recall, the worst scenarios were along the lines of “Well, they might raise taxes and the economy would get worse”.
In 2024 we have one scenario where Trump wins and democracy in America ends, the other scenario where Biden wins and…
Well, this is where you fill in that sentence.Report
Here is one of the times where we discussed “progressive” dystopias.Report
That was a good thread.
So can I put you down for “If Biden wins, some people will be subject to mild social censure”?Report
Are there any circumstances under which some people would not be subject to mild social censure?
Can we even say whether mild social censure is wrong?
Personally, I think that *MORE* people would benefit from social censure! And stronger than mild! Jail!
Like shoplifters, for example.Report
I just went read that piece. That is embarrassing and if I were you, I wouldn’t link back to it again within the context of this discussion.
On one hand we have some language policing with some really murky definitions, on the other we have literal fascism and women becoming second class citizens. That just shows how unserious you are about these topics.Report
Yeah, one man’s dystopia is another man’s utopia. That’s for sure.
But also read it in the context of which I brought it up.
Remember when I asked conservatives to describe their “liberal dystopia”, that is, the worst case scenario if Democrats had complete control of the government?
Does that thread match the description?
If not… well.
I wish you the best of luck in your attempts to use social shame in an attempt to bring me back in line.Report
For some reason, Jaybird likes to link back to posts and comments that don’t reflect well on him.Report
In 2024 we have one scenario where Trump wins and democracy in America ends…
I think this is a lot more true this time than it has been in previous elections. Even previous elections with Trump running.
The good news is you have me, and if you have everyone to my Left then you’ve got the election. The bad news is this claim is made every election so it’s an easy claim to tune out.Report
Both sidesism is the province of the uncritical.Report