The endorsements of Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr. both weren't enough to save first-term House Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman, ousted by a far-far-right challenger in Virginia's 5th District yesterday. Riggleman joins the ranks of Republicans still considered not radical enough, by a party base increasingly unwilling to put up with anything but rank fascism from their leaders.
Riggleman's alleged sin against his party was officiating the same-sex wedding of two of his campaign volunteers, last year, a nod to decency that Republicanism will not be putting up with anytime soon; for that, about 2,300 party delegates ousted him in a "drive-through convention" on Saturday in one of the weirder episodes of our entire increasingly-bizarre election season.
The Republican nominee for the district will instead be ex-county supervisor Bob Good, a hard-hard-right Liberty University graduate who went on to become a staff member at Liberty University and fundraiser for Liberty University, a political figure with an absolute litany of proud crackpot moves, from declaring the county a "Second Amendment Sanctuary" to opposing "sanctuary" cities "for illegal aliens." He opposes "transgender bathrooms," obviously opposes LGBT marriage rights (and the Supreme Court, for allowing them), and is a white nationalist of the Trump comma Steve King variety, advocating for the end of birthright citizenship and to make English the "official" language of the country.
Even as the polls show voters recoiling from the party's hard-right extremism and a potential party wipeout at the hands of Democrats, in other words, the Republican rank and file are digging in. From "Q" advocates to the arch-right, there seems no candidate too radical for the base to embrace.
Rep. Riggleman is claiming foul, claiming "voting irregularities and ballot stuffing"—without apparent evidence, as of yet. What's clearer is that the nomination method proved an absolute disaster for Riggleman. Rather than a primary, the nomination was decided by the votes of about 2,300 delegates. Since a convention couldn't be held, a "drive through" event was held for delegates to vote by car, rather than using mail-in ballots or remote voting. And the place chosen for the single drive-through location was in Campbell County—where Good served until January as a supervisor. As The Washington Post reports, that meant some Riggleman delegates "had to drive up to six hours round trip to vote for him."
Whether these decisions by local party leaders were meant to target Riggleman or were mere coincidence of the party's deep apathy to allowing anyone to vote for anything without making it as much of a fiasco as can be managed is, of course, up for debate.
The possible good news is that this opens up even the conservative 5th District for a potential Democratic flip. Good's history is one of an unabashed zealot, simultaneously against the government for regulating things like guns while demanding the rest of the law be rewritten to cater to his particular sub-sect of bigotry-premised religious and nationalist beliefs. The usual, in other words. That leaves a new opening for the Democratic candidate, chosen by primary later this month, to push less extreme voters on whether the Republican move to something between Italian fascism and a new American Taliban is truly what they signed up for.