It’s like the Republicans are trying to lose. No really, I think they’re trying to lose. Here’s why.
After an election night drubbing, Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro are going on the air and urging the Republican Party to pull back from its extremist anti-abortion stances. It’s become such an obvious and glaring problem on the right that even Fox is having to admit to its own audience that it’s a problem, in order to retain relative credibility with them.
Yet even as this plays out, the Republican politicians who took it on the chin the hardest last night – like the Governor of Virginia and the leader of the Ohio legislature – are now doubling down on their anti-abortion views even more. So are leading voices in the Republican House. It’s almost as if they’re trying to lose. In fact I’m starting to think they are trying to lose.
Well, it may be less a matter of trying to lose, and more a matter of being fine with losing. Here’s the thing about the Citizens United era. Many if not most Republican politicians are primarily funded by a handful of right wing mega donors, indirectly through Super PACs and other dark money methods. As a result, most Republican politicians are outright owned by a handful of donors.
If these mega donors demand that these politicians keep pushing for extreme abortion bans, then that’s what these politicians have to do. Going against what voters want might cost these Republican politicians the election. But going against what their mega donors want could cost them their entire funding, which would be the end of them anyway. And they know that if keeping their mega donors happy does cost them their seat, they know that their mega donors will still take care of them after the fact, through things like right wing think tanks and lobbying firms.
It sounds surreal to suggest that most Republican politicians are perfectly fine with losing elections these days. But when you look around, most of them do in fact seem to be fine with losing. They’re not so stupid as to not be able to understand why they keep losing. But these are the kinds of right wing cretins who got into politics strictly to make money to begin with. And these days, if you’re a Republican, there’s just an astounding amount of money to be made by losing.
This doesn’t mean the Republican Party is over. It doesn’t mean the Republicans are going to try to forfeit in 2024. The catch is that no matter how many Republican politicians end up losing their seats by trying to make their donor overlords happy, there’s always another Republican candidate coming along to take their place. And if we don’t put in the work required to secure victory, some of those Republican doofuses will end up winning by accident.
But it’s time we acknowledged what’s going on here: the Republican Party is no longer based around a strategy of trying to win elections. It’s based around a strategy of simply trying to make as much money as possible, even if that means losing elections.
Each time we’ve seen the Republicans take yet another losing position, adopt yet another losing strategy, go yet another election cycle with a failed RNC leadership, or stick with yet another losing candidate, we have to hear all these theories about how it’s some secret evil genius strategy to win. But in reality, all this losing behavior is exactly what it looks like: losing behavior. Let’s not assign secret evil genius powers to a group of doofuses who are simply trying to make a buck and don’t much care if they win or not. We’re best off identifying this vulnerability of theirs, so we can seize upon it and use it to our advantage.
