Brittle Republicans Are Ready to Crack
Party loyalty is a sign of Republicans’ weakness. Republicans voted for Trump three times, violating principles they held sacred before 2016, yet Republicans don’t see the contradiction. Something quite basic motivates them.
A MAGA-style Republican long before Trump, my father hated Vietnam War protestors. If you asked what makes America great, he’d say, “Freedom.” But he didn’t recognize the protestors’ right to free speech. He felt they were betraying the country. “They should be machine gunned!” he’d declare.
“But that’s what the Nazis did,” I’d object. “No, they didn’t,” he insisted. In his mind, we’re the good guys (“red-blooded, patriotic Americans”); they’re the bad guys. Therefore, anything we do is in the service of good, and anything they do is in the service of evil—even when good guys and bad guys do the same things.
Ultimately, nothing matters as much to Republicans as belonging to team good-guys.
But black/white clarity isn’t possible in a fluid world. My father followed the news. He heard about the government’s lies, the My Lai massacre, and all the war’s other developments. He just tried to ignore them, blaming America’s failure on the press and protestors—if they’d just kept their mouth shut, we would have won. He used anger to cover up doubts he was afraid to confront.
Democrats can hive off Republican voters by getting them to doubt the simplistic conviction that underlies their party loyalty. Attacking Trump reinforces the us-versus-them lines that Republicans have drawn. Instead, Democrats should hammer away at Republican voters themselves. Confront them with the moral contradictions that Republicans don’t acknowledge today:
You can’t revere the Constitution but hate the government it created.
You can’t be pro-life and strip away people’s healthcare.
You can’t be for freedom and pro-Russia.
You can’t be afraid of crime and refuse to restrict guns.
Paint these contradictions in bright colors to show the moral cowardice of Republicans. Make it impossible for them to sustain the rigid thinking that allows them to keep voting Republican.
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