We need a blanket name for GOP crazies that doesn’t include “Trump” in any form — badly. “Fascists,” “extremists,” “terrorists,” “QAnons,” “far right,” “white supremacists,” none of them fill the bill. We need to think about this, because as long anyone but them uses his name to describe them, they — we — are doing his PR. Having said that…
Whatever you want to call them, they’re more motivated than the movement conservatives and even tea partiers that preceded them. There’s lots of blather about a split in the GOP, but most of that talk misses what I think will be the key dynamic. When Trump was first elected, I said one of his main effects would be to push lots of institutions — notably, the military, intelligence, and some law enforcement — to the left and greater autonomy. 🎯 A similar dynamic is happening within the GOP now. Arch-conservatives like McConnell aren’t exactly embracing leftism, but structurally, whether they like it or not, they’re forced to walk and talk less like rightists and more like centrists. This will continue.
That mostly applies to the federal level, where even ‘state’ elections are increasingly becoming national referenda. At the state level, the Qrazies — motivated, mostly below the radar of national media, prospering in the intimacy of fever swamps — will take over. Local Dems throughout most of the country don’t have the resources to mount a serious challenge, and local moderate GOPers don’t have the bloody-minded zealotry needed to win. So: brace yourself for more and more statehouses to become bastions of Qraziness.
Hopefully Biden–Harris will recognize just how serious this threat is — paranoaic, nihilist, terrorist-sympathizing state governments — and take ferocious measures to fight it. RICO-like legislation aimed at crushing organized efforts at mass-disenfranchisement would be a really good place to start.