Why The GOP’s “Foundational Rot” Will Only Get Worse, Possibly Fatal For The Party

A day or two ago I wrote about how a building doesn’t normally come toppling down from the top, the foundation rots and it collapses down in on itself. As proof of my hypothesis, I cited the 2022 midterms, a scant year after the GOP gerrymandered new redistricting maps, strengthening their stranglehold, and yet suffered unheard of losses on the state and statewide levels.

After time for some calm reflection, and a little research, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s true. And to prove it, I’ll start with a brief sports analogy that will help me to make my point.

In a long term successful sports organization, especially baseball and hockey, what is the foundation? The answer is simple. An excellent scouting staff, and a first class farm system. The scouts find players with potential, and the farm team coaches and managers improve and hone those natural skills. If the parent team has an injury, they don’t have to trade or sign a free agent, they have qualified talent at the top of the farm chain.

The two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans have that too. They look for talent at the local level, educate them on how to run, guide them along for local seats, then picking the rising stars to go on to county and state legislative seats. Hell, former IL Democrat congresswoman Cheri Bustos held a series of boot camps in 2018 and 2020 to train promising newcomers on how to run a successful campaign. And it worked, the Democrats flipped county and state legislative seats.

In politics it’s called building a deep bench. The object is to nurture promising candidates up the food chain, baptism them by fire, and then move them up towards national seats. It’s called candidate quality, and it’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was pissing and moaning about months before the 2022 midterms, and tamping expectations that the GOP would retake the Senate. And McConnell was dead right. And now I’ll show you a side-by-side comparison to highlight it.

When Traitor Tot took the oath of office in 2017, he was a national obscenity. And the nation revolted at this pig on two hooves being serenaded by Hail to the Chief. And as a result, by the mid spring of 2017, local, county and state Democratic offices, along with the DCCC were deluged by people wanting to know how to run for public office. They were doctors, nurses, accountants, teachers, and every profession between. And they were united by one common goal. To serve, and to make a positive difference. They largely ran their own campaigns, depended on grassroots fundraising, and kicked the shit out of entrenched GOP incumbents to the tune of a 40 seat tsunami in the House.

And who did the GOP run in 2018? A slate of died-in-the-woll, radical Trombies. They even ate their own young by primarying already successful HOP incumbents on the guise that they weren’t sufficiently loyal to His Lowness. And while the Trumplets won the primaries, they got slaughtered in the general election.

Now, here’s where the grapes meet the press. After the deluge of 2018, the Democrats learned on the fly, and started steering some of the larval talent into local and county races to pay their dues. They were beginning the laborious but eventually enriching strategy of Building their deep bench. And the results were good, especially iin 2022, when upcoming rock stars started flipping seats in state legislatures.

But in the meantime, who have the GOP been running to Build their deep bench? Well, in states where they have a presence, the Loud Toys have been running successful candidates for library boards, school boards, and county boards. And in other states, far right bucketheads and bedsheet banditos are running for the same. How are they coordinating this? Simple. They’re following the advice of Two Shirts Steve Bannon, who promoted the strategy on his podcast repeatedly to ensure that his nihilist vision endured for at least another decade.

There’s your dichotomy right there.The Democrats are methodically building a deep bench of candidates to draw from in the future. And the GOP is continuing to field unacceptable far right Trumplets, and stocking their bench with domestic terrorists. Mitch McConnell’s worst nightmare going into the allegedly favorable GOP Senate map of 2024. After all, who the hell with statewide name recognition and a good political reputation in a state is going to want to run for the Senate on a ballot full of political troglodytes? Not to mention a potential bruising primary against a Trump backed idjit.

The old adage is that Money talks but bullshit walks. And right now the Democrats are busy mining golden nuggets for the next decade or more. And at the same time, the GOP is stomping around in a Port-O-San in a pair of Crocs. But here’s the real thing to remember. What we’re talking about here is long term. And the reverberations will go on long after Traitor Tot and Howdy Doody McCarthy have passed from the scene. The moderate GOP’s quest of ousting the Trump undesirables from the caucus was bad enough, but now they’re going to have to pull them out, branch-and-root from the next lower level. Good luck with that one.