How Is It That Republicans Fear Being "Primaried"?
by John Lawrence
Every Republican politician seems to fear being primaried more than they fear any possible Democratic opponent. Steve Bannon is threatening to run more extreme candidates in Republican primaries which he just assumes will displace incumbents. Incumbents are running scared, not of Democrats in the general election but of more extreme Republicans running against them in the primary. The districts have been gerrymandered to suit the specifications of Republicans so they need not fear losing to a Democrat.
This phenomenon of being primaried and losing to the more extreme candidate wouldn't be possible if the groundwork of anger and extremism hadn't been laid by hate talk radio and Fox news, pretty much the only mind food fed to citizens living in the hinterlands. They get a daily dose of anger-stoking from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones with the result that they are mad as hell about anything especially anything connected with Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton who have been thoroughly demonized day after day after day.
This makes it possible that no candidate is too extreme for hinterland rural voters for whom guns, fossil fuels and the military are mixed into a toxic stew that nobody better disrespect. Whatever Democrats or urban citizens are for, they are against. The wellspring of hatred has prepared them to vote for the more extreme gun loving candidate. And then people wonder about the motive behind the doings of a Stephen Paddock. I want to know what was his media consumption like. That will probably give a clue as to his motives.
Democrats just don't get it. Politics isn't any more about appealing to the rational interests of voters. It's about appealing to the resentments and hatreds of voters. It's about a tribal brand that they say yes to regardless of whether or not its in their self-interest to do so, and it's not about appealing to either their self-interest or the 'better angels of our nature.' It's not about asking what you can do for your country as John Kennedy so famously asked. That sentiment is long gone. For the red tribe it's about hatred, and it's stoked with a daily dose from right wing media.
I think there needs to be a new brand for a political party, since the Democrat brand has been so thoroughly demonized, with a platform purely on an economic basis ala Bernie Sanders. That and un-gerrymandering the districts just might attract enough rational voters to tilt the balance away from the red state Republican haters.
