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Petty Local Political Whining
In my state this is an off-off-year election, meaning that only local and non-headliner state positions are up for election. No congress, no senate, no state reps, no governor, no president. Turnout tends to be smaller, and local issues are less swamped by national ones.
Our County Republican Committee spent thousands in the primary this year, essentially picking one Republican candidate over another. Accusing Republican school board incumbents who didn't make Trans Kids their #1 issue of being RINOs and endorsing candidates who ran on a platform of removing books from the school library. Scandal-wracked Judicial candidates who took strong Pro-Life positions publicly were endorsed over candidates with stronger records who stayed quiet on controversies. County council races were handed to MAGA candidates who promised to "look into" election integrity. They picked the winners in every primary race, endorsing farther right candidates over moderates, specifically sending out mail telling voters "not to be fooled" by candidates running the Republican primary who weren't "real" Republicans.
Ronald Reagan's famous Eleventh Commandment, which read "thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," was not followed.
And now we're just a couple weeks out from the General, and from the local party apparatus it has been CRICKETS. No mail, no TV ads, no coordinated door to door volunteers, no slates, no billboards. The closest they've gotten was a little postcard saying something along the lines of "Hey, actually, mail in voting is pretty cool and not at all fraudulent, you should try it."
And I'm FURIOUS, because this is a total betrayal and reversal of their role. The party endorsing in the primary election ruins the point of a primary election. The whole idea of a primary is that the voters, rather than the party, get to decide who the nominee will be. Plenty of blame to put on the moron sheep voting in these primaries, who voted the party line in an internal party election. But even worse is then failing to follow through and provide resources for the candidates you picked. Sending out mail on their behalf. Coordinating so that every candidate goes out and knocks on doors, and every candidate that goes knocking has literature for every other candidate to hand out. Providing cover so that candidates don't have to take controversial stands publicly and can instead couch it in oblique dog whistles. Giving the kind of support that makes up for the local newspapers running aggressive stories about every R candidate.
Now they've hung their radical picks for candidates out to dry, and there's a very good chance Republicans get shellacked in the general. Which might not have happened had more moderate candidates been chosen, but to choose more radical candidates and then fail to support them is malpractice. If this pattern is repeating in local Republican parties across the country, the party is likely entering a dark period. It's the Iron Law of Institutions, instituted as organizational policy. You can't win when you force your candidates to play to the extremes, then fail to support them against your actual opponents.
The Trump era has been a historic disaster for the Republican Party downballot. After fighting and clawing it's way into centuriate power during the Tea Party era, reaching a peak of state and local power in 2016 unmatched since the 1920s, the anti-Trump backlash drove them out of power everywhere in 2018 and 2019.
They have the luck that the Democrats really suck at not just assuming they will hold power forever, so driving yet more backlash, but people in many places would rather have Democratic leftists over Trumpist conspiracy theorists (even if that is a near run thing).
The fact that the crazies have gained local party power in a lot of places is going to be a hobble on the party's performance for a long time. Arizona -- what is probably still a light red state in natural circumstances -- is probably going to be become blue just because the AZGOP is nuts.
My local party has stayed mostly sane, thankfully, so hopefully we can finish pushing the Democrats who won county control for the first time in half a century back into minority status. We'll see.
Can you elaborate on what are some Non-Nutty Republican positions on things like immigration, crime, BLM, CRT in schools, or transing kids? You might not be doing that, but I get the feeling that the Not Insane Republicanism is a plea to come back the the early 2000's neocon era at best, and following the steps of the UK Tories at worst. Maybe you're right that this is how you win, but at that point I have to ask what is the point of winning?
It's not just issues, it is tone and emphasis. Launching a school board campaign that puts (largely hypothetical) trans kids front and center is running a narrow campaign on aggression and identity politics. Running for county executive on a platform of investigating election fraud is putting the actual business of the county second behind national issues (which the vast majority of voters don't really care about in that case anyway). The candidates we're seeing don't carry and groom and present themselves well, they don't have long resumes of accomplishments to point, they don't have pedigrees and when they do they run against them rather than on them. That's the kind of thing we're having problems with.
A lot of it is focusing on good governance and emphasizing concrete actions over vague culture war issues. The strategy question isn't just about what you want to do, it's what you want to talk about, what you put center stage and crow about vs what you do quietly backstage and dump in a Friday afternoon procedural news release.
At the county council level right up to the federal level, reduce the grip of government, make it easier to build a shed or start a business. Procedural reform, by which for every new rule put in place, one old rule is removed. That can be instituted throughout levels of government: for every new ordinance, one old ordinance has to go. Ratchet it up to two ordinances, and now you're shrinking government.
At the school board level, reduce administrative waste and extracurricular bloat to cut costs and ultimately taxes. Improve test scores.
If the competency slate for school board also puts in place a minor rule on where kids go to the bathroom, great, but don't make it the centerpiece of why they're running for office and everything else an afterthought.
There's nothing hypothetical about it, I personally know parents of a trans kid, and educational materials are quite openly pushing trans propaganda. It's not aggression to demand that schools stick to ABC's and 123's instead of pushing race war and mastectomies. Even if you think the issue is irrelevant, a conservative party that turns a blind eye to it is more than useless. I literally might as well vote left-wing at that point, at least I'm going to get what's on the tin.
I think the culture war issues are a lot more specific than "good governance". You do elaborate on what you mean by that, but "reduce regulations" is a lot more abstract to me than "ban 'gender affirming' surgeries and hormone therapies for minors", "ban schools from hiding the kid's desire to transition from parents", "don't send male convicts to female prisons", "reestablish the citizen's right to self-defense from criminals", "reverse lenient-on-crime policies" or "force schools to actually teach".
Well again, if you're going to reduce the whole trans issue to bathrooms, why shouldn't I just spare myself the humiliation, and vote progressive?
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It isn't how the Republicans win, though. It relies on being able to capture a normie center that's no longer there; the Democrats took it under Obama and the Republicans can't reach it, let alone get it back. If you watch and read only respected media (as normies do), you get only the Democratic perspective; media which treats Republican viewpoints with anything but pure disdain (Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Times) is not considered respected, with the very slight exception of The Wall Street Journal (which doesn't help in most of the country).
Personally I don't think this is how you win either, but even granting the premise, I'd like to know what would be the point.
It's the Burkean conservative utopia where the population doesn't reach 50% trans until at least 2100, and the police are abolished but there's a well-thought-out plan for doing it.
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For the most part, the problem isn't a policy agenda problem (in fact, on these issues -- crime, immigration, education -- have a polling advantage), it's a temperament and presentment problem.
Oh, I think I agree with that.
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simplified lumpenproletariat immigration for LatAm with a digital federal registry of non-voters, no jus soli for them
points-based immigration with an "American values" test for upper prole and white collar migrants
Handgun restrictions for urban youth with Urumqi-style checkpoints, decriminalize drug consumption and possession.
Black lives matter, but looters will be shot on sight.
Research the origins of transness to prevent it. Research the origins of racial discrepancies in life outcomes to fix them.
I think other than the BLM position, this is exactly what I meant. No limits on mass immigration, only on the quality of immigrants? In fact, not even that, you'd still let the "lumpens" come in, just put some restrictions on what they can do once they're here? Violate 2nd Ammendment rights, and let people ruin their lives hoping they'll be too high to do serious crime? How is "research the origins of racial discrepancies in life outcomes to fix them" different from what was done since the very beginning of the Civil Rights movement? Nothing about the crazy stuff they're teaching in schools? Why would anyone with a conservative bone in their body be ok with you waving through surgeries and hormone therapies for minors, on the vague promise you'll find the cause of transness and prevent it in the future?
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While low candidate quality has certainly been a moderate factor in R downballot declines, a lot of it (probably the majority) is due to the increasing nationalization of races. Moderate Rs or Ds used to be able to win in solidly blue or red areas respectively. That's almost completely disappeared over the past decade or two. As such, a more even split is probably baked in pretty strongly now.
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And the counter argument is that this is simply the republicanism functioning as intended. The old bit from the WaPo about saving democracy from the voters comes to mind. To someone who's brain has not been steeped in progressive nonsense about the will to power the decentralized nature of the GOP is a feature rather than a bug
The problem isn't the voters making poor choices, the problem is the local party "saving democracy from the voters" by endorsing in the primary, only to disappear or be ineffective in the general. I'm all for the primary process being handled through voting among all party members (though I do think added qualifications for party registration aren't a bad idea), but for the party to endorse in the party primary is to ruin the point of the primary.
In my view the proper role for the party apparatus is to present the primary candidates to the voters as clearly as possible, and then after the voters make their choice they help the chosen nominee win in the general. If we're going to have candidates running for the Republican nomination as the "endorsed Republican candidate" then why have a primary at all? ((One can of course equally blame the voters for making the choices they did, but that's a road to nowhere))
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The idea that the parties themselves should be Democratic organizations is itself a Progressive idea. They did fine for a long time functioning as deliberative, member organizations which we're focused on winning general, rather than primary elections.
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