Rebuke, Reward, or Retrench? GOP Leaders Can Only Stick Their Heads in the Sand So Long.

Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images

Last week, radical GOP House member Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) suggested further violence would ensue when he spoke before an audience in his home state of North Carolina about the January 6 insurrection. The video was captured and streamed on Facebook by the Macon County Republican Party but it has since been removed. Cawthorn spoke of a “rigged” 2020 election and warned of “bloodshed” if “election security” measures are not adopted. He condemned the treatment of the insurrectionists being held in jail but indicated any ability to ”bust them out” was being hampered by not knowing the locations of the “political prisoners.”

The statements were extreme and alarming, but somehow not enough to raise any objections from Republican leadership. House Democrats called upon House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to condemn Cawthorn and the statements, but they were met with stony silence. 

McCarthy was similarly silent following a earlier tweet by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who once admitted to wearing kevlar armor on the day of the Capitol riot. The statement expressed sympathy with a would-be bomber in Washington, D.C.: “Although this terrorist’s motivation is not yet publicly known, and generally speaking, I understand citizenry anger directed at dictatorial Socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom and the very fabric of the very fabric of American society,” Brooks wrote.

As the rhetoric grows in volume and intensity, the GOP leadership now finds itself in an increasingly alarming position and left with three basic choices in how to respond to it: rebuke, reward, or retrench. But none of these options will serve to narrow an ever-widening gap within their party.

Each time leaders within the GOP have tried to rebuke extremism—for example, condemning Donald Trump and the insurrection, or merely stating the fact that the election was not stolen—they have paid a steep political price. Republicans who tried to stand on the side of reason and the law by voting to impeach the former president have been hounded out of leadership roles. Election officials who insist that the 2020 election was fair, from Georgia to Michigan to Arizona, have been excoriated by the GOP base, sanctioned by local party organizations, and even routinely threatened with violence. 

But to reward extremism has come with its own set of headaches. As the GOP discovered in the Georgia run-off, which cost Mitch McConnell his Senate majority after two Democrats were elected, the more that rank-and-file GOP voters believe (incorrectly) in widespread election fraud, the less likely they are to participate and actually vote. Moreover, radical candidates have learned that the more outrageous their behavior, the more money they can pull in from online donations. That translates into a greater number of radical, QAnon-affiliated candidates—with 36 running for Congress by the latest count—possibly winning key primaries. Such a high number of extremists could lead to a number of defeats in the general election where, unlike the MAGA base, more moderate voters will be less inclined to pull the lever for such politicians.

And so, for the most part, GOP leaders have decided simply to retrench, doing all they can to avoid commenting about radical statements and developments and to stall, delay, and avoid any accountability. For example, the national GOP (along with Fox News) has been nearly silent over the Supreme Court’s decision last week to let a vigilante-enforced ban on abortions after six weeks remain in place in Texas. Similarly, there is deafening silence from GOP leaders over disastrous anti-mask and anti-mandate policies in Texas and Florida, where the pandemic rages unchecked and deaths reach record levels once again. McCarthy has even sided with eleven House seditionists in attempting to block their phone and email records from being turned over by telecommunication and social media companies, going as far as to threaten political reprisals against those companies should they comply with Congressional investigators.

But a hide-in-the-bunker mentality cannot survive long into a new political season. Left unrebuked, the extremists in the GOP will only grow more brazen, fundraise more successfully, and win more primaries. And while the GOP seems bent on tarring every Democrat with the label of “socialist,” the Republican party must contend with the very real risk that the electorate will rightly label them “radical” and vote accordingly. This is also but a preview of the potential disaster that looms for the GOP in 2024 should Donald Trump be atop the presidential ticket.

Indeed, in 2022 if Democrats are to have any hope of overcoming the GOP’s systemic and gerrymandered advantage in redistricting and its cynical and widespread efforts at voter suppression, their messaging must raise this very alarm. A victory by the GOP would normalize a party whose base is steeped in—and whose leaders regularly traffic in—conspiracy, violence, racism and misogyny. The upshot of this has already proven to be chaotic and deadly.