REPUBLICAN VOTERS ARE UNITED — AND DIVIDED
The GOP is either coming together around a new and extraordinary consensus. Or it is coming apart at the seams. Take your pick. Both are true.
Recent debates among GOP candidates for governor and the Senate in Arizona, governor in Minnesota and Senate in Ohio confirmed what Virginia’s elections in November had suggested: center-right voters in red America are as energized as ever. In moderating four forums, I’ve found the large crowds as informative as the candidates. And the messages they’re sending have revealed much about the GOP in 2022: It is divided, but not in the way Manhattan-Beltway media believe.
The biggest divide can be called “insurgent wing” vs. “establishment wing,” but that’s only one fault line within the GOP. A chasm separates the Republicans — including former president Donald Trump — who eagerly got the vaccine and booster shot as soon as they were available and those who think there is a sinister underbelly of misinformation and power accumulation to the entire coronavirus prevention campaign.
Another deep fault line concerns the 2020 election. Many Republican primary voters believe President Joe Biden’s win is tainted, thinking the election deeply troubled by sudden rules innovations brought on by COVID-19 as well as ham-handed outside actors. This group suspects that the $400 million
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated to local election offices delivered Biden’s win via boosted turnout. (“How Private Money From Facebook’s CEO Saved The 2020 Election” is the way NPR framed the donations; those GOP voters — hardly fans of NPR — agree with that framing.) A subset of the “election objectors” mistakenly think material fraud occurred in enough states to have awarded the election to the former president. A smaller group, also mistakenly, thinks former vice president Mike Pence could have set aside the election results.
On foreign policy, there’s another huge split. On one end are peacethrough-strength voters who want to reopen Bagram air base in Afghanistan and who believe that America’s commitment to the defense of Taiwan includes, if necessary, American submarines sinking Chinese ships headed toward the island. On the other end, a reborn isolationist wing — stronger than at any time since before World War II — is stirring and organizing.
But despite these gulfs, there is much that unites Republican voters. They care almost nothing about allegations of voter suppression from the left. And while the people who rioted and invaded the Capitol last year need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, the Jan. 6 select committee is a kangaroo court in the eyes of GOP voters, and that will never change.
Three key areas of agreement, around which successful Republican candidates will organize their campaigns, are the wholesale failure of public schools during the pandemic — including teachers unions run amok — and thus the need for school choice; the “breakup of Big Tech,” which means different things to different people but which elicits cheers; and the need for combativeness among candidates assailed by mainstream media. Finally, there is a near complete consensus that Trump set the standard for naming judges by nominating only proven originalists. The fruits of that stance are evident, with the Second Amendment safe from threats and Roe v. Wade possibly overturned by July.
GOP candidates can go (and some have gone) too far in rhetorical flourishes about 2020, Biden and liberal elites. But the party’s voters have much forgiveness for missteps. The GOP’s divides pale next to stark clarity about the two tribes in America — red and blue. As midterms approach, the excitement is with red, not blue.