I Wonder Why Republicans Keep Having Candidate Quality Problems

It's quite the stumper!

Above: Alabama Senator Katie Britt gives America the douche chills.

Senator Katie Britt’s State of the Union response made the Space Shuttle Challenger launch look like a rousing success. At times, Britt seemed like a Tobias Fünke-level actor auditioning for the role of PTA Mom Who Just Dropped An Edible; other times, she seemed like someone telling a ghost story to a dog. Britt’s performance was a failure unless her goal was to portray the GOP as The Party of Inauthentic Weirdos. One of her anecdotes also turned out to be extremely misleading, as revealed not by a Woodward-and-Bernstein-style months-long investigation, but by a journalist who bothered to google “hey is that bullshit-sounding story bullshit?”

Britt has probably overacted her way out of the running to be Vice President. You know that Republicans are desperate for VP options when Vivek Ramaswamy — a man so obnoxious that he’d have to dial back his personality to play a villain in an ‘80s frat house comedy — is being seriously considered. Around the country, Republicans are dogged by what Mitch McConnell famously dubbed “candidate quality” problems. Why is that? Let’s look at some of the marquee names in the Republican freak show and see if we can identify some patterns.

In North Carolina, Republicans have nominated Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson for governor. Robinson has been called a “firebrand”, a “fanatic”, and surely many other euphemisms for “stark raving lunatic”. He called “transgenderism” and homosexuality “filth”. He called Michelle Obama a man. He’s spread conspiracy theories about the New World Order, George Soros, and — apparently tired of beating around the bush — posted a Facebook rant about Jews. He’s skeptical of the JFK assassination, which, given Robinson’s other opinions, might mean “there was a conspiracy” or might mean “JFK is fine and works at the Walgreens by my house.” There’s also other stuff, but you get the point. Probably the least troubling explanation for Robinson’s behavior is that he drunk posts on Facebook a lot, and the most troubling explanation is that he doesn’t have a substance abuse problem, and what we’re seeing is his brain functioning at full capacity.

In Arizona, Kyrstyn Synyma’s¹ retirement means that Republicans don’t have to run against an incumbent. They have a good chance to pick up a seat, but they may squander that chance by running Kari Lake, who just lost a statewide election in 2022. Lake’s unsuccessful gubernatorial run was notable for the frequency and fervency with which she repeated Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. This led to Lake feuding with other Arizona Republicans, including the family of John McCain, which is a bit like running for mayor of New York after running over Derek Jeter with your car. Now, Lake is trying to win the GOP primary in sort of a Larry David quitting-on-Friday-and-showing-up-on-Monday-like-nothing-happened situation.

In Colorado, Lauren Boebert seems determined not to let an eensy bit of frottage at a family theater ruin her career. And why should it? If we had abandoned FDR after he vigorously fingerbanged Eleanor during a showing of Steamboat Willie, we might have lost World War II. Boebert’s personal life is chaotic, but many successful people have had chaotic personal lives, so perhaps Boebert can become such a person despite also being a combative half-wit who sucks at her job. Boebert certainly hasn’t engendered sympathy by pretending that the Beetlejuice incident was about her “dancing in her seat”, and not about the chance that her date might ejaculate on the back of someone’s head. Her favorability rating is currently 14 percent, but she may be able to get that number up if she rubs it vigorously and whispers dirty things in its ear.

It seems to me that the GOP has far more wackos than normal. Why is that? Well, see how true this explanation sounds to you:

In the ‘90s, the rise of cable news and AM radio empowered hard-right “movement conservatives” who took power during the Gingrich Revolution. Internet and social media accelerated this trend, and by the Obama years, the Republican base had become only minimally tethered to reality. GOP officials who saw what was happening repeatedly failed to stand up to the crazies because they feared a primary challenge and didn’t want to throw elections to Democrats. Trump capitalized on this hothouse atmosphere by embodying the id of the Republican base, and now he has the ability to excommunicate any Republican who doesn’t endorse his warped view of reality. And that facilitates loons because Trump is, himself, a loon.

Trump endorsed every politician I just talked about (except for Ramaswamy, though Ramaswamy is basically a Trump tribute band). There appears to be one necessary condition to win Trump’s endorsement: You have to pretend that he won the 2020 election. Of course, only a nutcase would do that, so only nutcases win his blessing. Which makes it likely that the GOP will continue to churn out candidates who basically have “SNL COLD OPEN FODDER” tattooed on their forehead.

This phenomenon has become so obvious that even Donald Trump, Jr. gets it. Here’s what he said on Friday:

It’s fitting that Mitch McConnell coined the phrase “candidate quality problem”. He saw his party going nuts and might have been able to stop the slide, but he repeatedly backed down from confrontation. Now — to use the words of the scion of the man who is molding the GOP in his image — “the MAGA movement is the new Republican Party”. Which means that in five or ten years, we might yearn for the quality of candidates that we have today.

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1. This might be the last time I get to roll out the Lynyrd Skynyrd spelling of Kyrsten Sinema’s name.