National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Steve Stivers isn't the slightest bit worried that all the grief Republicans are getting at their town halls—that is, when they bother to show up for them—is an indication of trouble brewing in the 2018 elections.
The Republican plan will be to hug Trump tightly. And Stivers says the angry constituents you're seeing at the town halls are all paid protesters.
“Organic movements don’t happen 10 days into a new administration,” Stivers said during a recent interview, skeptical of the grassroots nature of what's happening. “It took the tea party movement months and years to get to that level of frustration.”
Stivers hypothesizes that protesters are organized by “paid individuals that are either associated with the progressive left or the Democratic party.” He predicted that the GOP base would revolt against them, giving Republican cover as they plow ahead with Obamacare repeal. And he blasted organizers for disruptions that are “not productive for anybody.”
Short version: We're going to take away your healthcare, cut services, send the money to the rich, and repeal federal protections on everything from pollution to worker safety—and the only people who could possibly get angry about any of that are paid protesters looking to cause trouble. Got it.
Stivers said he and other members are “not interested in going some place just to get screamed at.” He predicts that progressives will “overreach by shouting people down,” and by “busing people in.”
Oh, he's a peach. But it's part and parcel with the party's newly emboldened authoritarian approach to government. It's not that Americans who oppose the party are wrong; it's that no such opposition legitimately exists. It's not about elected officials addressing the needs of their own constituents or even meeting with them; there is no need, because if the constituents disagree with the party the constituents will be dismissed as fakes.
It's a continuation of the Fox News model of reality, of course, in which all non-conservative facts are presumed to be planted by enemies of the movement, but it's one that Trump has honed into a narcissistic, single-focus idea. He is the party now; his opinions are the only legitimate ones, all others are "stupid" or conspiratorial; any press that says otherwise is the enemy; any citizens that say otherwise are either plants or never truly existed in the first place.
But it's now the default mode of operation for the entire party, from top to bottom. We've gone from creeping sharia and worries about United Nations meddling with our golf courses to a conspiratorial view of reality that presumes even the objections of other Americans are illegitimate, and fake, and a conspiracy by "globalists" or too-liberal financiers. Coupled with Republican efforts to ensure "illegitimate" voters no longer have access to the polls, it's extraordinarily dangerous.