Republicans and Low Information Voters: Trump, COVID-19 and Hydroxychloroquine

Let me start off by saying, I'm not a doctor.  I'm a lawyer.  I don't have an expertise in medicine.  Please don't take medical advice from me.

I also want to say that I sincerely hope and pray that we find a treatment that is effective against COVID-19.  If that turns out to be chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, well that would be just great.  But Republicans, and Donald Trump in particular, are pushing this drug as a miracle panacea for COVID-19.  They're doing this based on very little scientific evidence.  That is, Republicans are trying to convince low information voters that it is ok to end state-imposed restrictions on the economy because we now have a miracle of modern medicine that will protect us all.

Why?  Well, they really need a miracle cure, or the thought of a miracle cure, to support their policy choices.  Specifically, they don't like the fact that we have had to shut down the economy to fight the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  Trump believes that his re-election prospects are tied to the economy.  History tells us that Presidents who face re-election in the midst of a recession generally lose.  In addition, the Republican's strongest supporters, big business, can't stand the idea that their quarterly reports are being spoiled by slowed sales.  Trump needs to convince you that re-opening the economy in the face of a new contagious virus taking its toll on the public is a good idea.  So, he has to convince you that something, anything, is a miracle cure that makes re-opening the economy less risky.

The logical policy right now would be to discourage unnecessary contact to slow the spread of the virus so as to alleviate the pressure on our healthcare resources, at least until we can find an effective treatment or vaccine.  Because this involve encouraging large portions of the economy to close down, it may also involve the Government assisting those hurt financially from enforced isolation through direct payments to allow people who can't work to pay their rent, pay for their health insurance, and feed their family.

Yet, some Republicans conveniently become deficit hawks when it means criticism of policies championed by Democrats.  Funny, Mitch McConnell wasn't that concerned with the federal budget deficit when it came to tax reform, and providing big corporations with nice tax breaks.  But when you have the need for social distancing and stay-at-home orders, coupled with an attempt to try to alleviate the economic impact on regular people with the so-called "stimulus checks," McConnell suddenly becomes a deficit hawk again.

This is why Trump and his supporters are so desperate to have the states lift their stay-at-home orders.  He and his supporters need to have the economy restarted before November.  They honestly don't care about the potential death toll that could result from re-opening the economy too early.  If Trump can convince his followers that there is a miracle cure, then he can manipulate low information voters to act against their own interests.

It's funny.  I actually believed that we had put the chloroquine debate to rest.  We had that study from National Institutes of Health that followed patients in the Veterans Administration hospitals.  The study indicated a correlation between the use of chloroquine in COVID-19 patients, and a higher mortality rate.  Keep in mind, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.  Plus, we must consider that the use of chloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment has only bee approved as a palliative measure.  That means it has only been approved to be used when other treatments have failed, and the patient is close to death.  So, you need to consider that when evaluating this study.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration currently cautions against the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment outside of a clinical trial, due to the potentially dangerous side effects, such as how it could affect the heart.

Nonetheless, the NIH study is still a more comprehensive study than the French one that the chloroquine peddlers have been pointing to.  That study involved less than forty patients, and was not a randomized clinical trial.  To be blunt, the French study didn't use currently accepted scientific methodology.

And that is key.  Real science takes time.  You have studies that document experiments.  Experiments need control groups for a valid comparison.  You need the right number of participants so you can show that your results aren't random, and that they are statistically significant.  And then, you need the studies to be reproducible.  They need to be peer-reviewed, which means other doctors and medical researchers need to examine the methodology and the results to make sure no mistakes were made and that the results are accurate.  Why?  Because there is a lot at stake.  The Hippocratic Oath that doctors take says, first, do no harm.  And when you are putting chemicals in your body, there is a potential that these chemicals can affect your health in a bad way.

That's why studies take time. That's why it normally takes years for vaccines to be developed for newly discovered viruses.  Sometimes, vaccines aren't developed for a particular virus.  Think about HIV.  We have nown about this virus and how it causes AIDS for about forty years now.  We still don't have an AIDS vaccine.  Why?  In part, because once we eventually took notice of the suffering that AIDS caused, we discovered some effective treatments.  Also, with appropriate safeguards, the transmission of HIV can be prevented.  But, the point remains, we don't have an HIV vaccine.  It is possible that we may never develop a vaccine to counter the novel coronavirus.

And rushing a vaccine can prove ineffective.  During the 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, the first attempts to rush a flu vaccine into production failed miserably.  We don't want that to happen here.  That's why valid scientific methodology is so important.

But many Americans don't understand science, and this is where Republicans and their allies in the media try to manipulate low information voters.  They were promoting stories of individuals who said that they took chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine and got better.  This is called anecdotal evidence.  It is the weakest evidence a scientist can rely on.  Remember how Rush Limbaugh addressed it?  "Anecdotally, it worked," is what Rush proclaimed.  To the uneducated, you hear these stories, and you might conclude, hey this seems like a good idea.  But, anecdotal evidence presents several problems.

First, you need to verify the anecdotes.  Did it really happen?  Then you need to know all of the facts and circumstances of the particular anecdote.  Was there something about that particular case that made it special, or calls into question the conclusion?  You need to remember, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.  The result could be coincidental.  Maybe the body's own defenses finally kicked in just as the patient began taking chloroquine.  To reach the right conclusion, we need to know all of the factors involved.  It's complicated and the process takes time.

But right now, time isn't on Trump's side.  He needs to restart the economy now.  He needs the states to re-open so we aren't in a recession come November, science be damned.

So, on Monday, May 18th, he revealed a very astonishing fact.  He revealed that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure.  He's testing negative for COVID-19.  He has no symptoms.  He claims that he has been taking the drug anyway.

Now, we need to take this news with  grain of salt.  Trump's penchant for lying is documented and notorious.  Nonetheless, his assertion still raises a number of questions.

Why now?  We haven't heard him peddle chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for weeks.  Well, intellectual giant, Laura Ingraham, has been pushing a study.  It's a study that say chloroquine can inhibit the infection and spread of the SARS coronavirus.  She's pushing this study, and retweeting it, claiming "the left" has not been doing its research.

There are just a few problems.  First, the study was published in 2005.  We're facing a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus.  The word "novel" meaning that the virus is new.  The current virus didn't exist until 2019.  A study from 2005, then, is not directly relevant because it could not have involved the same virus that is currently causing the pandemic.

But, she's counting on the ignorant and uneducated getting confused by the terminology.  The term "coronavirus" refers to a family of viruses.  It is a generic term, that refers to the shape of the virus.  Coronaviruses generally look like crowns.  Because something is a coronavirus doesn't mean that they all have the same DNA or RNA make-up.  They just look alike.

We've known about coronaviruses for years.  You may see people who don't know any better pointing to disinfectant labels, and claiming this virus isn't new because the label says that the disinfectant is effective against coronaviruses.  Yes, but there are different types of coronaviruses, and they all act differently.

SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, was a coronavirus that first appeared in 2002.  It was contained, and no known transmissions have occurred since 2004.  The official name of that virus is SARS-CoV1, for SARS, coronavirus one, the first of that kind that we discovered.

The official name of this new virus is SARS-CoV2, or SARS, coronavirus two.  Why?  It causes similar symptoms to SARS.  It's genetically related to SARS.  Much like humans are genetically related to chimpanzees.  But they are different viruses.  They act differently.  They have similar symptoms, but they also have different symptoms.  Just because chloroquine may have been effective inhibiting SARS does not mean it will have the effect on COVID-19.  It may.  It is worth investigating.  But it's no guarantee.

To be clear, the idea is that cholorquine  may affect the pH of the recipient's blood to such as degree that it inhibits the virus from reproducing.  There is some information from India that may support this hypothesis. But, again, these are not clinical studies being conducted using modern scientific methodology.  It would be foolhardy to press for the widespread use of the drug as a prophylactic measure based on such information, without confirming the hypothesis with a study using accepted scientific principles. 

Nonetheless, Ingraham is counting on the uneducated seeing the similarity in names, SARS-CoV1 and SARS-CoV2, and therefore concluding that this must mean chloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19.  Unfortunately, once again, it's just not that simple.

Plus, the President likes to downplay the potential side effects of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.  We have been using chloroquine as a treatment for malaria and lupus for decades.  We know these drugs have the potential to affect the heart.  So, doctors need to careful when prescribing it and in monitoring the patients taking it.  When Trump says, "What do you have to lose," potentially an awful lot.  Like, your life.  Especially, if you take the medication as a prophylactic measure, when you've tested negative and show no symptoms.

Still, Trump has been pushing this as a potential miracle cure for some time now.  And he doesn't tolerate dissent, even if that dissent is based on science.  Rick Bright, for example, is a scientist who was in charge of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA).  He refused to tow the party line, and push chloroquine consistent with the President's wishes.  Bright tried to get his political bosses to pay attention to the risks.  He was ignored.  So, he helped corroborate information on the risks of the drug to a reporter writing about the subject.  When the article was published, even though Bright was an unnamed source, he says that he was demoted.  Bright has filed a whistleblower complaint over his demotion.

So science that goes against the President's chosen course of policy is under attack.  Which is typical of the Trump Administration.

Now, I have to wonder about the ethics of a doctor who may have prescribed Trump hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure, when the President has tested negative for COVID-19 and has no symptoms, keeping in mind the potential side effects.  Remember, first, do no harm.  By prescribing hydroxychloroquine in this situation, the doctor may have violated his ethical rules.  If Trump is telling the truth, then the alternative explanation to the doctor violating the Hippocratic Oath is equally troubling.  That would mean that the doctor is giving Trump a placebo marked as hydroxychloroquine, just to placate him.  That possibility also raises ethical concerns for me.

When it comes down to it, I honestly don't care if Trump wants to risk his own life by taking hydroxychloroquine.  His body, his choice.  And if his core followers want to take that risk, and wind up harming themselves, well that's their own fault.  But, I do worry about the low information voters who are scared, who follow the President's lead, not truly understanding the risks, or that the evidence supporting its possible benefits is sketchy at best.  This is where Trump really has a responsibility to be careful in what he says.  The voters he targets are vulnerable.  By manipulating these voters and valuing his re-election strategy over the health of the American people, he shows his moral failing.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

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Mid-Term House Results Highlight Decline in Republican Voter Base

Desiring to place a positive spin on the outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections, President Trump will most assuredly emphasize Republican gains in the Senate. Despite a pick-up of five seats (as projected at the time I write this) for a 56 seat majority, however, the results of the Senate races do not diminish the fact that the Republican Party is dying. 

The trend in the American electorate is more accurately demonstrated by the results of the elections for the House of Representatives. There, the Democrats, needing to pick up 23 seats to be the majority party, are projected as of the time of the writing of this to win as many as 35 seats. 

The Founding Fathers, fearing mob rule, built safe-guards into the Constitution, insulating the Government from the popular vote. Thus, the President is not directly elected by the people. Instead, the people vote for Electors, who make up the Electoral College and who in turn choose the next President. The number of Electors each state has is the sum of the number of the state’s representatives in the House and the number of the State’s senators. This results in disproportionate power being given to the voters in states with smaller populations, such as Montana and Utah, than to those in states with large populations, such as California and New York. 

Likewise, each state has two senators, regardless of whether the state has a population of 700,000 or 7 million. 

Even if a policy or presidential candidate lacks the support of the most voters nationwide, the structure of the US Constitution means that that policy or candidate can still win the day. 

Indeed, in the history of the United States, there have been five times when the candidate winning the popular vote nonetheless lost the presidency. The two most recent times occurred in 2000 and 2016 when the Republican candidate lost the popular vote but won a majority in the Electoral College. 

It should come as no coincidence that these two most recent examples involve Republican presidents. The fact is that the Republicans have seen their core supporters diminish for quite some time now. In fact, Republican Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by almost 3 million. The reason Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College vote was due to the fact that her voters were concentrated in highly populated states where the individual vote has less power. 

Take the 2012 federal elections as an example. That year, the only group that gave Republican Mitt Romney a majority was white males. This caused a lot of soul-searching within the Republican Party, with many Republican leaders seeing a dire need to expand the appeal of the party to other demographic groups. As one effort to attract new voters, Republicans even initially supported a liberal version of immigration reform, which passed the Senate but died when Tea Party members in the House branded the bill as amnesty.  Fearful of the new-found power of the Tea Party, House Republican leaders backed away their support of immigration reform. 

The rise of the Tea Party itself serves as an example of how a group took advantage of political structures meant to counter the popular vote to gain power. When Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 1994, after over forty years of Democratic majorities in that body, the party concentrated on protecting its power.  Republicans, led by Tom DeLay, focused on state legislature races, the state legislatures being the bodies that created congressional district maps. In a process known as gerrymandering, state legislatures controlled by Republicans drew maps that purposefully created a large number of districts where the population favored the Republicans. That is, the legislatures created safe Republican districts. While gerrymandering has been a part of American politics since the republic was formed, it had never been accomplished on so grand a scale before. The unintended consequences of this round of gerrymandering was that Republican House members now found stronger competition from more conservative candidates in the primaries than from challengers in the general election. Thus, the conservative Tea Party found themselves with power disproportionate to their actual size in the general population. Tea Party members strongly influenced the direction of the Republican Party.

While Republicans count on white makes for their support, the trend in the United States has been for white males to make up less and less of the general population. In order for Republicans to maintain popular support, Republicans needed to appeal to other demographic groups. 

However, Republicans have chosen not to broaden its appeal, but instead to attempt to counter the trend of the growing number of non-white voters. This can most easily be seen in the party’s immigration policy. While Republicans have opposed the ability of undocumented aliens to enter the country, they have also pursued policies to stem legal immigration. The Trump Administration, for example, has imposed harsher requirements on immigrants with at least a college education to qualify for a visa through the H-1B program. The Administration also seeks to impose restrictions on asylum-seekers, and wants to change the law to limit family-based immigration. If successful, the result of such policy positions will be to reduce the growth in non-whites within the US population. 

Applying these trends to the 2018 elections, Republicans picked up Senate seats in states such as North Dakota, Missouri, Florida and Indiana. These were all states that voted for Trump in 2016. Republican wins should therefore not be surprising. Indeed, of the 35 seats up for election in 2018, 26 were Democratically held. That meant going into the election, the Democrats not only had to defend all of their seats, but also pick up three of the remaining nine seats. The task of making gains in the Senate was much more difficult for Democrats. 

Gains in the House, however, are much more reflective of trends in the US population. Despite Trump’s claim to economic success, issues such as health care, the protection of women from sexual assault, harsh immigration enforcement, Russian interference in the 2016 election and the rise of racial bigotry all played a role in the Democratic victories. Indeed, the Democrats made these gains despite the aforementioned disadvantage of Republican gerrymandering. Clinging to gains in the Senate, which themselves will have no effect of the balance of power in Congress due to the fact that the Republicans already had a majority in the Senate, will do little, if anything, to enhance the long-term prospects of the Republicans. 

By contrast, a Democratically controlled House will not only thwart Trump’s agenda, but will give support to the continued investigation into Russian electoral interference headed by Robert Mueller. In sum, the results of the 2017 mid-term elections were a clear disaster for Trump and the Republican Party, and far more reflective of the hurdles Republicans face in future elections. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.

The Beginning of the End of the Trump Presidency?

I don't think it will be long now.

Shortly after the election, I had lunch with a friend who was amazed that I predicted a Donald Trump victory even when he was far behind in the polls. I made another prediction that day, telling her that I did not believe Trump would last his entire term.

My reasoning?  He didn't do this for any grand policy reasons or love of country. He ran for love of Trump. Trump is a skillful self-promoter and learned very well how to get ratings in a reality tv world. He used that to manipulate his popular name and give the public a very entertaining (albeit disturbingly so) campaign. But he doesn't have the skills to govern.

If you look at his business career, how did he function?  It wasn't through any powerful negotiating skills, or business acumen. It was simply by throwing his money around. Just ask the many contractors who worked on Trump projects but never got paid their contracted rates. Presumably, they were attracted to work on his real estate developments by his name and the promise of full payment. But when push came to shove, and full payment was not forthcoming, Trump's response was to say "sue me."  Since the little guy knew Trump had the means to buy fancy lawyers and tie up any lawsuit in protracted litigation, the little guy would give in and take what crumbs Trump had to offer. Money won.

But that was not going to be the reality of the world Trump was facing once he got in the White House. The President may be the focus point of government, mostly because it's easier for the media to follow one person. But the government consists of another 535 large egos residing just down the road on Pennsylvania Avenue as well as thousands of independently minded people in the judiciary. These are people who have their own sources of power, and are not solely dependent on Trump for their position. I explained to my friend that Trump was going to find that he couldn't always get what he wanted simply by throwing his name and money around. This was particularly true given how small the Republican majority in the Senate was, and how he had personally insulted many GOP Senators.

Trump enjoyed greater support in the House. But that was due mainly to GOP gerrymandering which had given disproportionately large power to the most radical wing of the Republican Party, all in the name of creating safe GOP districts. It is this wing of party that supported Trump largely due to their hate for Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and because Trump was willing to entertain them with aggressive attacks on their Democratic opponents. But no one with any hint of intelligence had ever accused Trump of being a true conservative.

So conservatives in the House who did not like Trump would simply be biting their lips and biding their time until Trump was no longer useful to them. If Satan himself could get their agenda passed, well then so be it, so long as Satan had a high approval rating.

But, a number of things have happened since Inauguration Day. First, starting on day one, the press has refused to give the President the adoration he thinks he deserves, engaging in a constant battle with the Administration. And during much of this battle, the press has unearthed inaccuracy after inaccuracy from the White House.

Second, the President reportedly has become increasingly dissatisfied with his job, as he did not realize the full magnitude of what running a government would entail. It is as if Trump expected that once he became President, all he had to do was be the face of the government, and receive the adulation of the people. He falsely convinced himself of his own popularity, and has been surprised that running the White House was not as easy as putting on the show of running a fake executive board room on tv.

Third, in his dissatisfaction with the job, and his drive to be popular, he allegedly isolated himself into spending an inordinate amount of time watching tv news and talk shows, and then uncontrollably tweeting nasty things about those he thought were mean to him.

Fourth, he offered no vision or support for what was supposedly his agenda, other than cajoling other Republicans. As a result, his own party's long-running promise to repeal Obamacare crumbled. Trump was left unable to fathom how a GOP majority in both houses could fail to pass a bill, indeed any bill, on the subject. And as his agenda has failed, he has repeatedly and publicly attacked members of his own party in Congress. Indeed, whenever his agenda has faced road blocks from other people in power, his response has always been to attack other branches of government. This is the same thing he did to the judiciary as his travel ban faced defeat after defeat in the courts.

Fifth, more interested in protecting his name, Trump has engaged in behaviors that appear to many to be a cover-up, if not a campaign of obstruction of justice, regarding the investigation of Russia's possible involvement in the presidential election. His megalomaniacal drive to kill the investigation has led to the firing of an FBI Director, attacks on an Attorney General who had been his earliest and most loyal supporter, consideration of self-pardoning, a desire to fire the new investigator, and possibly creating legal jeopardy for his own son.

Sixth, his own staff in the White House has descended into chaos. Indeed, with all of the seismic changes in staffing, it has recently been reported that Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, who were thought to be bitter rivals at the beginning of the Administration, had become close allies just before Priebus' firing in an effort for self-preservation against the Trump inner circle. It is chaos of the President's own making and apparent entertainment, as it has been reported that he fired Priebus for failing to lower himself to Anthony Scaramucci's level and fight back against the Mooch's shockingly base attacks.

It is a chaos that required a former Marine Corps General, who's major accomplishment in the Administration to date had been to threaten to separate mothers from their children as they sought to cross the southern border desperately seeking to flee the violence in Central America, to assume control of the White House staff and fire the colorful but abrasive Director of Communications after the Mooch had been on the job for only ten days.

And finally, polls have been published showing not only historically low approval ratings for Trump, but also that the House of Representatives could very well be in play in the mid-term elections.

It is this last development that could very well be the turning point. It appears that Trump may no longer be useful to congressional Republicans. Indeed, his brand name may even bet hurtful to their electoral aspirations. With the President showing that he cannot even be loyal to members of his own party, will they now be loyal to him?

Based on all of these developments, I would not be surprised if efforts are being made to gently push Trump into resignation. He is reportedly not happy being in the "dump" of the White House, and spends so much time outside of Washington anyway. As much as the GOP desperately want Chief of Staff Kelly to control the President, Trump will be who Trump is. He cannot be pushed to the shadows of his own presidency while the big boys do the actual governing. And so, with Republican pressure, I think the time is nearing where the Trump Presidency will end. If his poll numbers keep declining, the party will either find a face-saving way to have Trump resign, or they will find the backbone to remove him.

William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Be Careful Not to Interpret Too Much Into the 2016 Elections

Let the misinterpretation of election results begin!

Many of my hard core Republican friends have been ecstatic this past week.  There are feelings of vindication, and outright joy in having beaten back the dragon that was Hillary Clinton.

I chose to vote Libertarian this time around, but I have to admit a certain relief that there will not be another Clinton in the White House.  Of course, that relief is tempered with the realization that we will have Donald Trump.

If you have been listening to talk radio this week, you cannot miss the elation in the voices of the likes of Rush Limbaugh.  What is more, Limbaugh is outright proclaiming this election to be a complete repudiation of President Obama's policies and the Democrats' liberal ideology.  He is outright warning Trump not to accommodate liberals in his administration.

Surely the more extreme wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Partiers, will see it that way too.  A victory like this, where Republicans not only won the White House, but retained the House of Representatives and the Senate, will only encourage their "no compromises" attitude.  Although there is no credible threat, you can almost hear the Tea Partiers' desire to oust House Speaker Paul Ryan, who failed to adhere strictly to complete support of Trump during the campaign.

Republicans, however, need to be very careful about reading too much into this election.  To be frank, this was far from an ideological landslide.  Trump may have won a majority of Electoral College votes, but let's be clear.  Hillary won a plurality of national popular votes.  The GOP may have retained the House and Senate.  But along the way, they lost about seven seats in the House and three, possibly four, seats in the Senate.  From these numbers alone, this was certainly not an election where the Republican presidential candidate was so popular that his coat tails swept in numerous new Republican legislators.

Exit poll numbers point to this being an election where the voters, or at least those who lived in battle ground states, rejected a candidate perceived as corrupt and dishonest.

A few numbers jumped out to me from the election results that support this conclusion.  First, Trump received fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.  Second, Hillary's margins of victory with African-American, Latino, Asian and Young voters were smaller than those of Barrack Obama from 2012.  What these numbers tell me is that the voters just did not show up for Hillary the way they did for Obama in 2012.  For whatever reasons, Hillary was just not as exciting a candidate as the current President.

This is not surprising given the atmosphere of the campaign.  This was by far an extremely negative campaign.  This was true of both sides.  From the beginning of September, the Clinton camp was running television ads emphasizing Trump's negatives.  And of course, Trump's campaign mantra was "Let's jail Hillary."  There was very little on display about issues or agendas.  This was totally a personality campaign.

Such campaigns traditionally result in low turn out.  Voters hear over and over again how this candidate is the next Satan, no the other candidate is the next Satan.  Many voters get so discouraged by the choice, that they simply choose not to vote.  Those who do vote choose mainly to vote against someone, and not for their chosen candidate.  In elections like this, it is usually the last bit of bad news released before the actual election that decides the winner.  Hillary drew the short straw, as the announcement of FBI Director James Comey eleven days before the election reminded many voters of her negatives.  By time Comey sounded the all clear two days before the election, on a Sunday when most Americans were watching football, it was too late.

The 2016 election can only be seen as more of a repudiation of a bad candidate than as a triumph of any particular ideology.  Republicans would do themselves a favor if they keep this in mind.  While they are poised to control the two policy making branches of government, and may have a heavy influence on the judicial branch for years to come, a sharp turn to the right could make this victory short-lived.  The House and Senate will stand for election again in just two years.  If there is a radical ideological shift in the government that proves unpopular, the GOP could find their slim majorities erased.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Republicans Are Real Good at Blaming Everyone for Election Losses . . . But Themselves

I just heard Sean Hannity's rant from yesterday's radio show. He really loses it over the possibility that Trump will lose Utah to an independent candidate, Evan McMullin. In fact, it's been humorous to watch Trump supporters seethe in anger over conservatives who cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump. Hannity is now threatening a "reckoning" on November 9th if Trump loses the election. 

One thing that fascinates me about this particular campaign is just how early Trump set up the narrative of blame if he loses. Almost immediately after the Republican Convention Trump claimed that the election was rigged. He targeted the media. He tagged the system as corrupt. It was almost as if he knew coming out of the convention that he was going to lose, and he had to begin blaming someone, something, anything but himself, for the impending loss. 

This is set up to be the third time in a row that the Republicans will lose a national election.  And yet the GOP fails to recognize that it has become its own worst enemy. 

The 2012 election should have served as a game changer for Republicans. The exit polls showed that the Republicans lost in every ethnic group, and in big numbers, except for white men. Rationally, this should have signaled the need to change directions. 

Initially, it appeared that the Republicans were going to do just that. One of the biggest indications of a willingness to change emerged in an effort to address immigration reform in a constructive manner. Finally. 

But something happened on the way to that place. One of the more radical wings of GOP voters, Tea Partiers, discovered just how much pull they now had in the party. 

Republicans, who control a majority of state legislatures, concentrated efforts on drawing congressional district lines to ensure a majority in the House of Representatives for years to come. That is, they used the map and demographic information to concentrate the number of likely Republican voters into safe congressional districts. It's a process known as gerrymandering, which had been around almost as long as the US republic itself. By concentrating conservative voters in a single district, however, Republican state legislatures wound up giving disproportionate power to the more radical wings of GOP voters, namely the Tea Partiers.  The result was that incumbent Republican Representatives had far more to fear about a more conservative challenger in the primaries than a Democrat in the general election. 

Republican leadership then began giving in to the Tea Party more frequently. The Tea Party found it had the power to shut down the Government over a budget fight to defund Obamacare.  With its new-found power, Tea Partiers could then concentrate on defeating any common sense approach to immigration reform, by labeling the proposals "amnesty."  

Tea Partiers got drunk with the power. Any Republican who didn't subscribe to their views completely received the dreaded designation of RINO (Republican in name only).  Suddenly, Republicans known for their conservative leanings, such as Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, found that they were not conservative enough for this constituency. Indeed the hallmark of the Tea Partiers has been the refusal to compromise on any issue. 

So, instead of learning from electoral defeats, the party regressed. Its desperate efforts to cling to a majority in the House only gave power to a group of voters all too happy to alienate the rest of the country. It is this group of voters, with their no compromises attitude, that led to the nomination of Donald Trump. 

And once again, instead of being introspective and examining what is wrong with the Republican Party that it fails to attract voters on a national level, the stage is set for post-election finger-pointing.  If there is to be a "reckoning," it should not be aimed at conscientious conservatives who refuse to support a boorishly flawed candidate like Donald Trump. It should be with that wing of the party that refuses to let go of its outdated and divisive attitude, and that fails to see how its message is driving voters away. 

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.