A real Democratic strength in 2018—grassroots energy that's inspiring a record number of first-time candidates across the country—could simultaneously result in a string of fatally flawed hopefuls for Republicans. Normally, organic campaigns focused on local issues can be a real boon to a party. But in the GOP's case ever since the tea party takeover, their local upstarts have consistently produced "a bumper crop of fringe candidates" like Roy Moore, writes The Atlantic's McKay Coppins.
"What’s the lesson here?” one GOP consultant asked me on the eve of the Alabama election, on condition of anonymity so as to speak with candor. “Don't entrust our nominations to loose cannons? We’ve been fighting this battle since 2010 and no one learns anything from it. Did we not learn that from Christine O’Donnell? Did we not learn that from Sharon Angle?" [...]
Angle, for example, waged a strange and reckless campaign in Nevada and ultimately blew a chance to unseat Democratic Senator Harry Reid. Her candidacy would be remembered primarily for her claim—instantly debunked, and nationally ridiculed—that the threat of encroaching Sharia Law constituted a “militant terrorist situation” in the cities of Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas. Meanwhile, O’Donnell (who is most famous for her “I am not a witch” campaign ad) defeated a former governor and nine-term congressman in the Republican primary, and then got blown out in the general.
Yes, yes! More of this, please.
“You are going to have more fringe candidates continue to run,” said Nick Everhart, a Republican consultant based in Ohio. “And nationally, you’ll inherit their problems as a party unless you distance yourself and say no. That’s the question I have: At what point does the national party have to say, ‘Just because you win the nomination doesn’t make you ours’?”
That might be a worthwhile question if such thing as "the party" existed. It didn't when it came to Moore. You had Mitch McConnell trying to shoe him out of the race one week followed by Donald Trump's endorsement the next week and finally an Alabama GOP senator stepping forward to grant Republican voters permission to put a dagger through Moore's candidacy. That's not “a party," that's mayhem.
Bottom line, much of the Republican base is so detached from reality now that the prospect of grassroots-inspired candidates promises be a freak-show pageant. That may work in some heavily drawn House districts, but it’s a killer in statewide races where the benefits of tribalism aren’t ironclad.
The institutional GOP can only do so much to control the quality of its candidates: “You can’t stop those people from filing.” And when any primary field gets too big, the electorate can easily fracture to the point where the noisiest firebrand on the ballot wins.
“There’s no remedy for this,” Everhart concluded. “There’s no magic wand or way to fix it.”
Nothing a witch couldn’t fix. Oh wait, they tried that.