Younger activists, a major Republican fear
Republicans have a predictable pattern: even with government nearly evenly divided, they get drunk with power, use their votes to overreach with extreme policies, and wind up alienating voters in the next election. In June 2022, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, with three new right wing Republican justices courtesy of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, voted along party lines to take away the right to abortion that had been established in the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years earlier. This decision set off a firestorm among voters, especially younger voters, who showed up to the voting booths in droves five months later and gave the Democrats considerably better results (retaining control and actually winning a one-seat majority in the U.S, Senate, barely losing control of the House, and gaining state governorships and state legislature majorities) in an off-year election where the party in power usually does much worse.
Republicans, however, did not learn the lesson from the 2022 elections, i.e., that their extremism scared away voters. Instead, the GOP has charged ahead with even more extremist actions that could hurt them in 2024. These include:
—Further attempts to ban abortion at both the federal and state level;
—Bringing lawsuits to outlaw so-called “abortion pills,” and then shopping those lawsuits to Republican judges;
—Expelling two black Democratic Tennessee state legislators for peacefully protesting in favor of gun safety legislation after a mass shooting in Nashville (the two legislators were quickly reinstated by their respective city councils and county commissions);
—Supporting Russia over Ukraine;
–Still fighting Democratic efforts to combat climate change, even though Fort Lauderdale, FL just had a rain deluge up to 25 inches in one day, which was so devastating as to be described as a “once in every 1,000-2,000 years” storm.
There are signs, however, that Republicans are worried about the effects of their extreme positions on the 2024 elections. Abortion, for example, isn’t going away as an issue that galvanizes Democratic voters. Just recently, John Schweppe of the right wing Claremont Institute spelled out the problem, albeit with a dose of denial:
Republicans need to figure out the abortion issue ASAP. We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.
Of course, such independent voters think Republicans support full abortion bans with no exceptions because that is often the case. And these all-important independent voters, who can swing any statewide or national election and who helped the Democrats in last November’s midterm elections, currently seem turned off by Trump and the Republicans as well.
Furthermore, Senate Republicans are worried that Donald Trump will hurt them in 2024, as they feel he did in 2022 and 2020. Indeed, Trump was arrested and arraigned on criminal charges in New York just days ago, relating to an illegal hush-money scheme, business fraud and tax evasion involving porn actress Stormy Daniels, and using Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen as a go-between. Trump also faces other investigations and possible charges in Georgia, as well as from the U.S. Justice Department. Trump probably didn’t help himself or Republicans when he sued Michael Cohen for $500 million earlier this week. The lawsuit would likely keep the Stormy Daniels hush money scheme in the public eye even longer. Trump promises to be a continuing problem for Republicans, and he may well be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
Likewise, Republicans are worried about Generation Z — born from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s — who voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats in 2022, and who are not becoming more Republican as they get older, as is typical for most age groups. Among the issues where Republican policies scare Gen Z voters away are abortion, reproductive rights (such as birth control), gun safety, and LGBTQ rights.
Seeing as most voters don’t like extremism, it would seem to be a very good idea, going into the 2024 election season, for Democrats to paint Republicans as the extremists they have clearly shown themselves to be.
Photo by Mark Dixon, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/LxZDr4
