The modern iteration of the Republican Party has three sorts of office-holders: Ideologues, grifters/plutocrats and performance artists. Some are a blend the three strains, but one or another tendency usually wins out in a pinch.
For example, Tom Cotton came out against the coup and hawkishly disagrees with Trump on defense — he’s an ideologue. So is Mitt, and so were a lot of the recently departed GOP old guard. Before Trump virtually all Republicans were or pretended to be ideologues, but with so-called conservative ideology now optional, the ranks are thinning. Charlie Copeland and Greg Lavelle would be Delaware examples.
Once upon a time rich guys backed the Marco Rubios of the political world. Now a plutocrat buy the seats themselves. Both Perdue and Loeffler are good examples of this, joining recently re-elected Darrell Issa, who district-shopped for his new seat, and Montana’s Gianforte in Montana. Burr in North Carolina is an example of the pure grifter, someone who used government connections to make money. Of course, Perdue and Loeffler show that being rich already doesn’t lessen the lure of the grift. In Delaware, Republicans can only buy offices below the canal, but a whole parade of rich guys have tried to win statewide — remember Glen Urquhart? Sussex government also includes people who benefit greatly from their positions by fostering as much development as possible.
The most visible, if not the most numerous, are the performance artists, the ones who get all the air time. Many of them come by it through religion. Ted Cruz, for example, poses as an ideologue, but notice how fast he ran to the front of Josh Hawley’s coup parade. Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, the large number of former talk show hosts who are now in various offices — all are hoping to pull the Marsha Blackburn trick of becoming a senator by being an asshole. These are the people who will turn to TV careers when the voters finally tire of them. In Delaware, this describes people who pose as ideologues but are actually just performers. There’s no better example than Colin Bonini. I’d include Dave Lawson in this category, too, as he seems to relish being an outspoken jerk.
I acknowledge that the line gets fuzzy on some Republicans. Mitch McConnell — ideologue or grifter? He walks the ideological walk, but he also rose to prominence after he ditched the mother of his children and married a rich heiress, so grifting mission accomplished. Paul Ryan, too, talked like an ideologue — but when the time came to back up his intellectual pretensions, he had nothing, just like a performance artist. And what the fuck is Marco Rubio? Sure, he’s a cat’s paw for plutocrat Norman Braman, who funded his career, but he makes me think I might need a separate category just for ineffectual dunces, because he’s a dud as either an ideologue or a performance artist.
Anyway, that’s my theory and I’m sticking with it, but it’s open to revision, so comment away.