I have to disagree with my esteemed colleague on the subject of so-called “good” or “moderate” Republicans. They do exist — not in Congress, which is why Chris Coons is pissing up a rope, but they are out there. I know more than a few myself. They’re the sort of people who have a decent amount of money and so support the GOP, but they didn’t donate to Trump in ’16 or vote for him in ’20.
So I believe there are good Republicans — and they are the people most to blame for the capture of their party by the loonball right. I base this conclusion on a simple fact: The “good Republicans” fail to turn out for primary elections.
The Republican Party creates safely Republican districts for its elected members, but that doesn’t mean wingnuts are guaranteed to win seats. That only happens because the folks who think of themselves as decent and moderate stay home on primary day. For example, when Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell, Republican turnout was relatively high, 32%. The not-witch got a few more than 30,000 votes, a few thousand more than Castle. Roughly 90,000 Republicans didn’t bother to vote at all.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, for a more recent example, faced an empty chair in November. But she had plenty of opposition in her primary, when she got 43,892 votes, 40.3% of about 108,000 votes cast. Eight others split the rest of the vote, but when the runoff was held a few weeks later, fewer than 77,000 bothered to cast ballots. Greene’s vote total was virtually unchanged.
In the land of the pundits, this level of obsession by a minority faction of the GOP is treated as evidence that right-wing zealotry is insurmountable. That’s industrial-strength bullshit. In November, Georgia’s 14th district turned out 307,625 voters, about four times the number who voted in that August run-off. The good Republicans had two opportunities to nip the crazy lady in the bud, but couldn’t muster up the effort to vote in sufficient numbers.
It’s possible these good Republicans are simply outnumbered by their crazies — but until they get off their asses we’ll never know for sure. And if they truly hated what their party has become, they’d get off their asses.