Trying to think through the politics of the aftermath of last week.
I just saw a poll that said that 47% of Republicans believe that Antifa is responsible for the siege on the Capitol, and 47% do not. That is as useful a factoid as any to show that there is just about an even 50/50 split in the party between normal Republicans and wackjobs.
It also shows why no Republican politician has any desire to ruffle those whackjob feathers. They are the base and none of them can win an election without their favor.
Some of the Republicans in Congress are wackjobs themselves and ran as full-throated representatives of their support. Some of them, like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, are calculating weasels adopting their strength and vocabulary to their own nefarious agendas. But most of them are just gutless weasels appealing to a base to hang on to their seats.
The only difference between the Republican Party now and from January 5 is that elusive sense of outrage that now has turned the political tides. For years we have been observing one appalling action after another from Trump and the scum he represents, and have been mystified that we could not summon a sense of outrage to put an end to it. At long last, we have one, and at long last, Republicans who have supported the extremists are facing political consequences. Republicans are now called upon to repudiate their extremist base.
But at what real cost? If they repudiate them, they cannot win re-election. If they cling to them to survive politically, what real cost can Democrats extract from them? Can we really get Congress to vote to unseat them? Can we really make them toxic to their electorate? What can we REALLY do to Cruz, Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, let alone the extremists of their party like Madison Cawthorn and Lauren Boebert, two freshmen Congresspersons who are actual True Believers (read “Nazis”)?
Aren’t they best off trying to play for time, beg platitudes of unity and wait for the outrage to wear off, as it always does?
And how will this calculus change after whatever happens on January 20?