MAGA isn't sending its best into elections
By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
The drift of the Republican Party away from partnership in producing positive legislation began with Newt Gingrich (“a dumb person’s idea of a smart person”), if not before. DeLay, Ailes, Limbaugh (Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump, unremembered in death), Breitbart, Jones, Carlson, Hannity. The list goes on.
All of them facilitated Donald Trump’s emergence as the personification of their party’s decline. Rather than detriments, his lying, gaslighting, ignorance, fake Christianity and narcissistic nastiness became vehicles for success. It released what must have been building for years among Republicans (as opposed to conservatives, of which there remain, uncloseted, but a few); namely, a preference for electing people disinterested in legislation but committed to “sticking it to the libs.” Performative outrage and constant denigration were necessary and sufficient for MAGA candidates to be elected.
A few decades ago, it was beyond imagination that the party of Dan Evans, Mark Hatfield, John McCain, Barry Goldwater, Margaret Chase Smith, Everett Dirksen, and dozens more, would nominate for governor such an awful human as North Carolina’s self-described “Black Nazi,” vile social media poster Mark Robinson . Nor would they have countenanced a presidential candidate of that party who referred to Robinson as “better than Martin Luther King” and “Martin Luther King on steroids.” To Trump, skin color defines a person.
The presence of Trump as head of the party has freed red state voters to unlock deeply-held resentments of all people unlike them, to elect people like Boebert, Greene, Gaetz, Fox, Cruz, Cotton, Hawley, et uck, who contribute nothing to the common weal, but make a living appearing on right-wing media, pleasing themselves and their voters by attacking and lying about liberals. Trump is the template for all but a few Republicans serving in Congress. Under Trump’s influence, the Republican Party elects the worst of the worst. It’s what they want. Old-school conservatives are tossed aside like Trump’s rumored adult diapers.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-maga-isnt-sending-its-best-into-elections/
= new reply since forum marked as read
"old school" repukes don't have a great track record either 
