Gonzo Primary Weekly: Reconsidering the GOP autopsy
Could Republicans have been right in the long term about their six-year-old prediction of the Party's own demise?
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At Untold Story, I’m looking to work through and diagnose both what ails political media coverage and deliver journalism that clarifies our American political moment going into the presidential election in 2020. It’ll be a process. I’m Jeremy Borden, independent journalist, reluctant political junkie, with bylines in publications big and small but with a sense that more of us in the media need to tilt at windmills if the mess that has been made of the American Experiment is going to continue.
So far, I’ve announced a new project called The Gonzo Primary by defining the broad parameters for what healthy media coverage might look like as we start from scratch. Most recently, I explored how Joe Biden’s momentary fiction on the debate stage was a missed opportunity to explain a more complicated legacy for busing and how Biden’s argument in 1975 made much more sense than the one he’s making now.
Below in the #GonzoPrimary: The “demographic death spiral” of the GOP’s 2013 meltdown turned out to be wrong — for now. The strategy to maintain power without changing a now overt racial politics is coming to bear.
What I’m Reading
Perhaps I should say listening too, as, like many Americans, the podcast is becoming home to some of today’s best journalism and storytelling. In this case, I wanted to highlight comedian and cultural commentator Larry Wilmore’s interview with Cory Booker, the New Jersey senator and Democratic presidential candidate, on his podcast “Black on the Air.”
Booker made a couple interesting points worth considering in this moment. First, he jabbed Biden indirectly by pointing out that the only Democratic nominees who led in the polls well before the first primary were Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. Of course, they all ended up losing the general election.
And then there’s this exchange:
Wilmore: I thought what he (Biden) did doesn’t work for a primary. But I think some people thought his attitude might work against Trump, that not-back-down kind of attitude. You’ve come out and said you want to win with love, not with fire...
Booker: Well hold on. I want to challenge this a little bit, I hear this all the time. I know how you grew up. Love is fire. Trust me my mama brought some fire. Love is the toughest force there is.
Wilmore: …Then love, what do you mean by that? And I'm talking about battling for the presidency.
Booker: How did we beat bullies and demagogues in the past? You can go from McCarthyism to Bull Connor. Did they beat Bull Connor because they brought bigger dogs and more powerful fire hoses? Or did they beat Bull Connor because they brought some ferocious love, unapologetic unarmed truth and they did things that appealed to the moral imagination of this nation, the consciousness of this country? We will not beat Trump by fighting him on his turf, on his terms. That’s what he wants. He wants to make this election all about him. He wants to dominate the news cycle, suck the oxygen out of the room. I don't want that fight. You beat him by not making it about him but about making it about us. … and making it about what we’re for. We need to rise to become the best of who we are.
Wilmore: I have predicted as of now he’s going to get reelected. think it's very difficult to unseat an incumbent during a strong economy. It’s just difficult…
The pair then talk about how our economy has changed from one where gains are felt by workers to one to an economy where investors feel gains while everyone else founders. While all of the stats show that’s true, will people be propelled to vote for a Democrat for that reason? The bigger question is shy should they believe that a new brand of politics or a policy agenda via a new president will actually make a difference? It hasn’t in the past, Obama and Trump included. Why turn out to make a change when democracy feels irrevocably divorced from reality?
This Really Happened
Consider this chain of events: one-time acquaintance and/or buddy of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — a mysterious and well-connected rich dude named Jeffrey Epstein — creates a sex ring of young girls to traffic through his New York and Palm Beach mansions starting sometime in the early 2000s or, probably, even earlier. In March 2005, a 14-year-old girl and her parents go to the Palm Beach police with accusations of sexual abuse by Epstein. Local police begin to unravel a massive human trafficking ring.
Concerned about whether local prosecutors are going too easy on Epstein, the cops take their evidence to the FBI. The feds start interviewing young girls all over the country, building a massive case against him.
In August 2007, then-Florida US Attorney Alexander Acosta starts negotiating a plea deal with Epstein’s lawyers. A couple months later, in October, he reaches an extraordinary “non-prosecution” agreement that allows him to plead guilty to two crimes in state court and go to jail only at night to sleep but “check out” during the day and go to his office, a deal that reveals Epstein has the greatest lawyers in the world or Acosta, prosecutors and state judges all involved are either deeply inept or incredibly corrupt. Acosta’s office also violates a federal law that dictates victims have to be notified of a plea deal. Victims continue to fight for justice, to no avail.
Eight years later, on June 16, 2015, a longshot for president named Donald Trump waves from an escalator and decides he should be the next president and a chorus of chuckles and eye rolls from the political pros in Washington, D.C., unites the right and left in a favorite political emotion shared amongst the red and blue: caddy dismissiveness. Trump, a TV star also famous for putting up giant letters spelling his last name on buildings he doesn’t own, navigates a massive Republican field, allegations of rape and sex abuse and a host of other controversies amid the most divisive and unconventional campaign in modern history. The twice-divorced libertine who dips his penthouse apartment in a gaudy gold probably manufactured in Mexico or another country he would later call or imply is a “shithole” woos religious and social conservatives anyway. Reminder: He wins on November 8, 2016.
A year later, on February 16, 2017, Trump nominates a former federal prosecutor from Florida to become his new secretary of labor, a guy most outside of the Beltway or Florida Republican circles have never heard of — Alexander Acosta. The US Senate knows all about this sketchy Epstein deal and he parries a few questions on it but mostly skates by. Acosta is confirmed by the Senate with 60 votes, which includes six Democrats.
It is Acosta’s new job in the Trump cabinet that gets journalists for the Miami Herald to decide the old allegations of sex trafficking and subsequent sketchy plea deal against Epstein need a fresh set of eyes and investigation. Herald reporter Julie Brown told the New York Times:
“Sometimes a story deserves a new look,” she said. “There were all of these puzzle pieces that were out there, and when you put all of these puzzle pieces together, with the passage of time, there was this really damning story.”
On Friday, July 12, Acosta resigned (technically) his labor secretary post after federal prosecutors in New York had announced a new indictment against Epstein the week before and after Epstein tried to defend his position amidst the mounting media frenzy. His firing was an excuse — many in the White House had been pissed at Acosta for months for a perceived failure that he could be doing more to steamroll the rights of workers and advance a corporate agenda.
This is not meant to diminish the incredible work done by Brown and the Herald, which deserve all the kudos that they’re getting for the new indictment filed by a different set of prosecutors in New York prompted by the Herald’s work. The turn of events is certainly something of a turn toward justice for the dozens of young girls who prosecutors say have been abused, but it is also an indictment on the criminal justice system and, yes, even the incredible journalism done in this case.
But the whirlwind of unlikely events that led to it — Trump’s win, Acosta’s nomination, the Herald’s subsequent renewed interest in the case — shouldn’t be required for federal prosecutors to do their jobs or such a massively questionable series of events to get scrutiny.
And not to belabor the point but if Trump hadn’t been elected president ... and thus Acosta not elevated amid the most narrow, unlikely set of events, thus giving the Herald a new reason to look into all this, sparking the renewed interest of federal prosecutors in New York ...
What then?
Gonzo Primary Weekly: A North Carolina primary and the future of the GOP
In 2013, Republican Lindsey Graham declared that the GOP was in a “demographic death spiral.” Defeat in 2016 was inevitable (inevitable!) if the GOP didn’t come together with Democrats on bipartisan immigration reform he and other so-called “moderates” were touting.
At the time, Graham was using the argument that the GOP needed to get in good with the Latino community to, in his mind, give the party the best hopes of winning the presidency and other key races in 2016 by urging Congress to pass a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill — a failure of cosmic proportions that we as a country are reaping an equal and commensurate payback of Biblical proportions. (I’ll look another day at the comprehensive immigration proposal similarly advanced by George W. Bush with no success to our great shame and, I would argue, a grenade in the fissure of an already-broken Washington.)
What killed reform? In this case, not the US Senate, which passed a bill with GOP support that seems unfathomable now and included a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country. Hard line Republicans in the House effectively sidelined the effort.
From Vox:
As much as anything, though, Republicans were worried about the politics of immigration reform with their base. And when Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in a shocking primary upset by challenger Dave Brat, who'd attacked Cantor for being open to immigration reform, many Republicans took it as a warning. After that, there was very little attention from House leadership to the issue of immigration reform.
His comments came around the time of the GOP’s now-infamous “autopsy” report, put together by a group of centrist Republicans who similarly warned the party would be sidelined to obscurity as Democrats would hold the presidency — and, probably, the House and the Senate — for the rest of time.
Mind you, this is what GOP party elders were saying ABOUT THEMSELVES back then: The GOP was a party of old fogies that hadn’t advanced a single new idea since Reagan, who only old people had voted for and cared about anyway. Black people thought Republicans were cruel and they needed to be convinced otherwise. Women, too — 53 percent of the electorate in 2012. How could the Party communicate better with women? Hispanics! Hispanics didn’t want much to do with the GOP — a key, growing part of the electorate that could make up a third of the electorate by 2050.
Check out this sentence from the GOP report and prop your jaw up:
The Republican Party is one of tolerance and respect, and we need to ensure that the tone of our message is always reflective of these core principles. In the modern media environment a poorly phrased argument or out-of-context statement can spiral out of control and reflect poorly on the Party as a whole. Thus we must emphasize during candidate trainings, retreats, etc., the importance of a welcoming, inclusive message in particular when discussing issues that relate directly to a minority group.
Poorly phrased argument … inclusivity … Need I remind you, Trump put a final stake through the report with what would be a winning thesis in his opening argument at Trump Tower on his signature issue of immigration: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” (And, of course, his tweets this weekend in which he told four prominent Democratic women of color to “go back” to where they came from spelled the end of dog whistle politics as we know it.)
It’s curious, even with flare-ups like this, I haven’t heard any of these Republican authors, who are still very much players in the Party, talk about this report much lately or make the same argument as Trump tries to stoke a race war via Twitter.
Hindsight is what it is, and the report overplays the Democrats’ strength because it assumed the Obama coalition of voters would belong to the Democrats forever, which we now know was perhaps a singular moment by a singularly talented politician in tandem with a highly effective campaign.
Still. The autopsy’s analysis of demographic trends and voter sentiment is still true — even if Republicans continue to wage successful efforts to win by suppressing voter turnout, gerrymandering and expertly dicing and slicing the electorate through a brutal and overt campaign to get us to vote for someone not necessarily because we believe in them but because we hate the other candidate far more.
Is there a point when these tactics fail and the much-disgraced autopsy turns out to be correct and our politics lurches in a more constructive direction?
It won’t happen anytime soon. A U.S. House primary last week was one look at whether the GOP would embrace what some have dubbed a “problem with women”, as there are only 13 Republican women in the House. Despite $1 million from a group focused on electing more GOP women to Congress, the candidate, Joan Perry, lost to state Rep. Greg Murphy in a runoff, probably determining the outcome of the election in the deeply conservative district.
Elections aren’t just about one thing, and certainly voters in this district, men and women alike, could care less about some political group or even worries about the longevity of the GOP with key demographics such as women. It’s worth noting that just 11.5% of eligible voters in the district actually voted in this primary.
But it does continue a trend of the cult-like fascination and adherence to Trump. Even though both candidates are supporters of Trump, Murphy effectively called Perry’s devotion into question and lined up a series of Trump hard-liners to back him. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina congressman who leads the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, used language that NYT’s The Daily host Michael Barbaro said could be perceived as “coded” when it comes to Perry’s gender. From an ad that ran during their race:
You have to be invited to be a member of the Freedom Caucus, but you have to have a backbone of steel. Many members who run have a backbone of banana. When you peel it back, it gets real mushy. And I can tell you, having talked to both candidates, give them
Another moment from the NYT’s Daily podcast and interview with reporter Julie Davis:
And I spoke to one man, his name was Tommy Moore, he was a retired barbecue restaurant owner. And he still seemed undecided, and I kind of asked him what was going to make the difference to him in terms of what his vote was going to be. And he said, you know, I want someone who’s going to support the president, I think she would do that. But the only thing is, that, as you know — he says to me — women can sometimes be a little emotional, and I’d really have to think about that. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, it’s just something I have to think about.
The question of “is the Republican Party sexist” that this piece sort of circles is obviously a complicated one. Culture warriors like Sarah Palin or tea partiers like Nikki Haley are as popular as anyone. The real issue is whether the GOP’s strategy of division along racial lines while producing gains for corporations and the wealthiest Americans (which Democrats, of course, have had an equal role) is a long-term strategy that can work.
Predictions aren’t a good idea but, so far, the GOP’s naked and brazen campaign of division and a policy agenda that is driving gains for the richest Americans and corporations is working. The winner of the North Carolina primary and the guy in the White House are testaments that it may be a counterproductive strategy for the country but a winning one for the GOP.
What is less clear is how long it can last.