The Anti-Establishment State GOP

By rCarner @ Shutterstock.com

You were probably watching back in 2008 when Ron Paul-libertarian/conservatives were using parliamentary procedures and vast numbers of active members to take over Republican Party infrastructure in states, counties, and towns across America. That was the beginning of the shift away from the old-guard GOP neocon establishment control of the party’s local infrastructure. With the assumption of RNC co-chairmanship by Lara Trump (alongside more establishment-style Chairman Michael Whatley), the process of removing the establishment from the party’s national structure is nearly complete. At The Spectator, Amber Duke reports on the consultants and party establishment operatives who lament the change. She writes:

However, as these party insiders are also quick to mention, the grassroots activists who spend their weekends at county meetings or conventions are not representative of the GOP base.

“Activists are not our base. They are a super-motivated subgroup,” one of the former Michigan officials said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the activists of someone’s party can get a little distant from the rest of the electorate. In states with nominating conventions, the problem gets even worse. Convention participants make the typical primary voter look like a little bitch.”

In order to avoid alienating base GOP voters, officials say, state parties need to get more “normal” people involved. Unfortunately, they argue, the proliferation of hardcore activists who refuse to compromise has made it exceedingly difficult to recruit people who have better things to do with their time.

“Even if you can convince them to spend Saturday at a local party function, they come in and see an hour of idiocy from conspiracy theorists and wingnuts who want to talk about unpasteurized milk and adding ‘born and unborn’ to the Pledge of Allegiance. They drive away normal people who turn away in disgust,” the former senior Michigan official said.

The former blue state official agreed. “All of the normal community-minded people frittered away because crazy infiltrated. Why does somebody want to give up an hour of their Wednesday night to sit in a room full of lunatics? It’s a hard sell to say, ‘I know you love going to your kids’ Little League games, but wouldn’t it be fun to go to Convention and get screamed at for three hours?’”

“Do I want to go to a GOP party meeting and bang my head against a wall on Saturday morning? Or do I want to go hunt ducks? Hard choice,” the western GOP consultant echoed.

At this point, many longtime party officials aren’t sure if the problems plaguing state parties can or even should be fixed. Instead, many are using outside entities to elect candidates rather than relying on fractured and cash-poor state parties. “Everybody would love for it to get better,” the western GOP consultant admitted, but added that the situation is not “dire straits” enough for anyone to take on the hard task of clearing out the dead weight.

“Do you think these people are going to go away quietly? You’re just going to get slandered and lied about and everything under the sun,” they said. “Maybe it costs 10 or 15 percent more to work with a super PAC or a consulting firm, but at least there’s competent and normal people willing to do it who won’t try to destroy your life.”

The Pennsylvania consultant agreed that “outside groups have become the main campaign arms because the party wasn’t doing its job and nobody cares enough to challenge it.”

Without a strong statewide elected leader willing to take responsibility for state parties, like in Florida, most agree it’s too much to ask anyone to take on that kind of risk. But even in Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp has chosen to operate his own shadow party rather than trying to take on the official state party, a tacit acknowledgment that things might be too far gone.

“I don’t think this is a solvable problem,” the former blue-state official declared. “It’s death by a thousand cuts.”

Read more here.