Trump’s final insult to Republican voters

The bottom has fallen out of the Republican Party. I don’t mean electorally — though that could happen too. I’m talking about political professionalism.

First, there’s candidate quality. Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General and now a candidate for the Senate, has multiple problems , including that he spent New Year’s Eve partying in Dubai with two indicted fugitives, one of whom was a big campaign donor. But he is just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s Victor Marx, running for Colorado governor, who is so bad that even a former head of the Colorado Republican Party can’t vote for him . Then there is podcaster Brandon Herrera, endorsed by President Trump , who is competing for a House seat in Texas. His on-air shtick is to be intentionally vile — here he is mocking Jesus and talking up a supplement that will allegedly increase your ejaculate volume, which Herrera says he likes because it allows him to “bewilder random women.” Even Republicans say he is a “ goose-stepping extremist .”

Rep. Mike Collins, candidate for Senate in Georgia and another Trump endorsement , had two campaign organizers who were also leaders of a white nationalist group. His son-in-law is a flaming white supremacist . Moral concerns aside, running a candidate like this in a rapidly diversifying state like Georgia is political malpractice.

These awful candidates — and this is just a sampling — are matched by equally awful messaging.

It wasn’t that long ago that Republicans were the acknowledged masters of political messaging, especially when it came to the attack ad. It was Republicans who brought you Willie Horton in 1988 and 2004’s Swift Boat Veterans for Truth . You might quibble with the ethics, but even Democrats can’t argue with their effectiveness .

Even in 2024, Republicans showed occasional flashes of brilliance. Perhaps the most effective ad of the campaign was the infamous They/Them ad . But now? The entire Republican messaging strategy revolves around insisting that “affordability” is a hoax and that, if Republicans lose control of Congress, communists will destroy America.

This messaging isn’t just ineffective, it’s insulting. Trump himself made “making America affordable again” the cornerstone of his 2024 campaign. Having done the opposite once in office, his new message seems to be “stop whining.” In Trump’s words , higher gas prices are “a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done.”

The other big theme being pushed by Republicans is that there will be an imminent communist takeover if Democrats take control of Congress. Trump is even claiming that he will be the last Republican president should the midterms go badly for him.

It’s true that a few self-proclaimed socialists have won Democratic primaries this year. But the idea that this is something other than the normal give-and-take of party politics is laughable, especially when the Republicans themselves are fielding nutjobs that make the most extreme of Democratic candidates look like Thomas Jefferson by comparison.

For starters, the candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America make up a tiny fraction of Democratic candidates. Even if they all win, which they won’t, they will end up as the left-wing version of the Freedom Caucus, a tiny minority that does very little except wreck the plans of Democratic leadership. If history is anything to go by, that will force Democrats to make deals with Republicans if they want to get anything done. In any event, despite Republican scaremongering, Democrats can’t do much even if they control both the House and the Senate as long as Trump is president.

So electing chief boogeyman Abdul El-Sayed (D) to the Senate — who, despite what you might think from listening to Republicans, was born in Michigan — would hardly spell the end of American democracy. After all, we’ve survived almost 20 years of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Why is all this happening to the once-proud political tradition of the Republican Party? I’m afraid it all traces back to Trump and his efforts to enforce his will on the Republican faithful. There was no earthly reason for Trump to turn on incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in favor of Paxton, except that Trump wanted to prove he could end his career.

Just as he did with Cornyn, Trump enjoys ritually humiliating those around him. Now he is trying to do something similar to voters. These grossly unfit candidates and the awful messaging are themselves a message: You’ll eat this slop because I tell you to .

Congressional Republicans may feel they have to put up with these insults and indignities to keep their jobs. Voters don’t. Remember that on Nov. 3.

Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.