Ever since the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and more recently the vote to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her seat on the House Education and Labor Committee, normally sane and insightful political pundits have focused on the following question.  Why do Republicans continue to side with a former president who cost the party the House majority in 2018, governorships in Kentucky and Louisiana in 2019 and the White House and Senate majority in 2020?

The consensus is a lingering fear of Donald Trump.  But fear of what?  There are two possibilities.  The first is somewhat conspiratorial, the existence of Trump kompromat on members of Congress, a topic I first presented in December 2018.  The article was titled “J. Edgar Cohen.” It questioned whether then Trump fixer Michael Cohen, ala former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, maintained secret files that, if ever made public, would embarrass or even destroy the careers of those who did not support Trump.  But that would take more effort and competence than the Trump organization or White House ever demonstrated.

The second explanation focuses on fear of Trump’s cult-like voter base which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now calls the “GQP” following Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s and the Republican House caucus’ overwhelming support (211-11) for Taylor Greene.  In contrast, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell made it clear he does not want “the QAnon lady” to be the Democrat’s poster child for the 2022 mid-term election.  The question everyone seems to focus on is, “How large a percentage of the 2020 Trump turnout was made up of the QAnon, Proud Boy, white-supremacist, neo-Nazi fringe of the GOP?”

But, as I taught my students in the “Imagination and Entrepreneur” class at Miami, you cannot come up with a right answer if you’re asking the wrong question.  In this case, the value of that creative axiom came to me watching Jon Stewart’s movie Irresistible.  During the following exchange between a campaign manager Gary Zimmer (Steven Carrell) and his candidate’s daughter Diana Hastings (Mackenzie Davis), the latter questions tactics that could result in collateral damage.

Zimmer:  People are gonna get hurt.  I’m sorry.  I really am, but sometimes people have to do shitty things in service of the greater good.

Hastings:  Gary, stop!

Zimmer: What?

Hastings:  Is this politics?

Zimmer:  It’s not politics anymore, Diana.  It’s math.  That’s what an election is.  It’s just math.  We need what they get plus one.  That’s all.

So, the question is not how large is the number of alt-right voters who were part of the GOP ballot count in 2020.  A better question is how small can it be to make a difference in 2022?  And can that number explain the split between the Republican Senate and House leadership over support for Taylor Greene?

My best guess at that minimum figure is 10 percent for the following reason.  Of the 33 Senate seats to be contested in 2022, 10 are in states where the margin of victory was less than 10 percent.  Of those 10, seven of the winning candidates were Republicans.  If McConnell hopes to regain his majority leader status, he needs to hold on to all seven and pick off one of the three Democrats.  However, back in 2016, those GOP victors depended on a more traditional coalition of Republican voters with heavy support in primarily white suburban districts, the same voters who increasingly voted for Democrats in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020.

McConnell is just doing the math.  He is willing to throw what he believes is a the smaller percentage of Trump GQP cultists under the bus to gain back what he hopes is a larger slice of suburban, white, female, college-educated voters.  Remember, his goal is “what they get plus one.  That’s all.”

The schism between House and Senate leadership exists because my 10 percent estimate is a statewide calculation.  The dynamics change in congressional districts, especially if they have been gerrymandered.  Dissing alt-right Trump cultists could create more intraparty battles between Trumpsters and establishment Republicans as we have witnessed already in Wyoming and Arizona.  Such divisions could jeopardize House races in districts in which the 2020 margin of victory was even greater than 10 percent.

That is why Wyoming may be the most interesting mid-term contest in 2022.  Because the state boundaries and Liz Cheney’s congressional district are one and the same.  In 2020, she won re-election with 68.7 percent of the vote of which an overwhelming majority were relatively sane and have supported the Cheney family for decades.  That makes for three scenarios for 2022.

• She is defeated in the Republic primary by a Taylor Greene doppelganger.  Ala Lisa Murkowski she runs in the general as a write-in candidate.  Though she is likely to win, the split vote still gives the Democratic candidate a better chance in a three-way race.
• She loses the Republican primary and decides to sit out the 2022 general election and launches a “win back the party” national campaign.  Would establishment Republicans seek revenge against the GOP nominee for taking down the state’s “favorite daughter?”
• She wins the primary and likely goes on to win the general election.  Without Trumpist support the margin is significantly less than the 48.1 percent in 2020.

Wyoming in 2022 may be the best indicator whether a Trump coalition which tolerated some of the worst elements, no matter how small, was a marriage of convenience.  And whether that shotgun (or AR-15) wedding will end in a very messy divorce.  Especially, if like the last four years, it does not produce electoral victories.

POSTSCRIPT:  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

While researching the 2020 election results in Wyoming, I came across a unforeseen tidbit.  I expected Cheney to have carried every county across the state, maybe with the exception of Albany County which includes Laramie and the University of Wyoming.  Albany County was very close with Cheney winning the county by a single percentage point.  The bigger surprise was Teton County which includes the City of Jackson.  Democrat Lynette Grey Bell outpolled Cheney 60 percent to 36 percent.  You do not need a crystal ball to know why.  The population is more diverse, wealthy, and educated as a result of in-migration from states like California.

Much is being written about how low-tax states such as Texas and Florida are attracting “refugees” from the northeast and California.  Governors Greg Abbott (TX) and Ron DeSantis (FL) are trying to accelerate those shifts by producing ads and making recruiting trips to encourage businesses to relocate.  However, they may reconsider when they realize the major export from those same states are liberals and Democrats.

FOOTNOTE:  You might be surprised to learn the exteriors of the fictional town of Deerlaken, Wisconsin portrayed in Irresistible is actually Rockmart, Georgia. Is this part of a liberal plot by Jon Stewart and others to infiltrate the rural South and make it more blue?

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Yesterday, Jeff Bezos announced he was stepping down as CEO of Amazon 27 years after founding the online retail giant.  And one of the issues that has dogged Amazon and other online stores is the unfair advantage they have over brick and mortar outlets.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about.  Today’s topic is the attention and preferential treatment some parts of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution get over others.  At the top of the list of favored children is “freedom of speech.”  Since the insurgent attack on the U.S. Capitol, several social media platforms and publications have taken a second look at the impact of offering their services to purveyors of incendiary messaging.  In response, conservative-leaning officials and commentators have flooded the airwaves crying “cancel culture” and demanding government action against social media and the press.

Yet, last night, Fox News chose not to broadcast President Biden paying respects to Capitol police office Brian Sicknick who was beaten to death by those who invaded the building on January 6th.  Where was the outrage about “cancel culture” by these same people who are so concerned Americans are sheltered from contrarian views.  I will bet the farm Rupert Murdoch would have screamed “we can’t let government control information” if White House press secretary Jenna Psaki had attacked Fox News on First Amendment grounds for not covering the story.

But I digress.  This was not supposed to be about freedom of speech.  So let’s move on to “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  This is a bit dated, but still worthy of note.  In 2013, Hobby Lobby a company owned by a conservative Christian, was accused of not selling items related to Jewish holidays.  The  controversy reached a peak when a clerk at the store’s Marlboro, New Jersey location told a Jewish customer who asked where he could find Hanukah craft items, “We don’t cater to your people.”

Hobby Lobby president Steve Green apologized for the incident and confirmed the chain did not carry Judaica at that time, stating:

We have previously carried merchandise in our stores related to Jewish holidays. We select the items we sell in our stores based on customer demand. We are working with our buyers to re-evaluate our holiday items and what we will carry in the future.

Green has no obligation to carry Jewish craft items just as I have no obligation to shop at one of his outlets.  More importantly, I would never sue Green or Hobby Lobby for violating my constitutional right to free exercise of religion because it does not apply in this case.  (I do wonder if the section for atheists and agnostics is an aisle with empty shelves.)

Too bad the alt-right does not share that view.  Amazon, post-January 6th, elected to no longer be the website host for Parler, the favorite social media site of many participants in the Capitol attack.  Parler sued Amazon for breach of contract although a significant percentage of Parler users violated Amazon’s content policy which states clients cannot offer goods or services that “promote, incite or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.”  The only real issue is why they waited until January 6th to drop Parler as a client.

This double standard also applies to the Second Amendment.  On January 25, 2021, Law Enforcement Today reported the owner of Trigger Firearms and Reloading in Jefferson City, Missouri posted the following message on the store’s Facebook page.  “We don’t have guns or ammo for Biden supporters.  Sorry for the inconvenience.”  Where was the outcry from Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, co-founder of the Senate  Sedition Caucus, who one day before wrote in a New York Post op-ed, “Your ‘conservative’ social platform isn’t worth much when Amazon can shut it down.”

In HawleyWorld it is okay for a private company to deny access to semi-automatic weapons and multi-round magazines based on how you vote, but Twitter or Facebook cannot stop people like him or Marjorie Taylor Green from posting inflammatory lies and conspiracy theories.  And does the phrase “well regulated militia” mean one of the governing criteria for membership in these commando units must be support of Donald Trump?  Senator, can you say, “Hypocrisy.”  I knew you could.

There is one more irony to consider.  Many of these same “conservatives” long ago traded in their pocket-sized editions of the Constitution for a complete set of Ayn Rand novels.  From Rand’s “the virtue of selfishness” to Ronald Reagan’s “government is not the solution; it is the problem,” the right has worshiped at the altar of the “invisible hand.”  Let the free market decide.  That is, until the opposition realized how powerful the market can be.  Until rogues on Reddit outfoxed government protected hedge fund managers.  Until consumers decided they did not want to line the pockets of Publix heiress Julia Jenkins Fancelli who used some of that wealth to finance an insurrection against America democracy.  Until citizens concerned about climate change challenged the future of the oil and gas industry by demanding more electric cars and sustainable sources of energy.

To paraphrase the Gospel, “Give to the Constitution that which is actually governed by the Constitution; otherwise, leave the Constitution out of it and quit your bitching.”

UPDATE FROM THE MIAMI HERALD (2/2/2021)

“On the same day former President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued that his words to the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol were protected by his First Amendment right to free speech, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a hastily called news conference to announce a proposal to penalize social media companies for blocking politicians, even if they incite violence.”

So, according to DeSantis, the state can force a private company to give a platform to a politician, who has called for the assassination of the Speaker of the House.  Where is the “freedom caucus” now?

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP