Or, at least, something to keep in mind
Josh Marshall makes an observation I haven’t seen anyone else make and while it may not prove to be prophetic it’s certainly worth considering. He starts off by noting that while we’ve known for quite some time that the GOP congress is nota serious governing party, this congress has taken it to an entirely new level. As he says, it’s been on “longrunning shutdown drama” and is now only able to function at all with the GOP Speaker running the chamber with Democratic votes, courting his own ouster every single day. More than a few powerful and well-known GOP Reps are retiring, some walking away mid term.
But there’s a lot more:
Then you’ve got the seemingly unrelated Trump takeover of the RNC. Let’s set aside the very important issues of corruption, cronyism and creeping strong-manism. There’s every sign that Trump and his family are going to steer significant amounts of the RNC’s money into a legal slush fund for Trump and his various co-defendants. It’s hard to imagine this won’t further depress giving to the RNC. Some donors won’t care. They either like it or are trying to curry favor. But some donors definitely will care. They either won’t give as much or they’ll direct their funds into other super PACs.
Trump’s new family managers at the RNC instituted widespread layoffs on arrival. It’s conceivable they will replace the canned staffers with better people. But it’s hard to see why that would be a logical assumption. And even if it were true just the disruption and dislocation would have real consequences.
Parties aren’t what they used to be. But the two party committees still play an important mobilization role and an important role supporting state parties. If the RNC is significantly weakened or turned into a Trump legal defense fund that has big implications for the whole election.
Even when you step back and look at the rest of the party committees there’s a similar picture. Democratic House and Senate committees are significantly outraising Republican ones. The NRCC and the NRSC are still under standard management, as far as I know. But the money differential is still important.
I don’t think we can count out the possibility that a combination of demoralization and division, structural breakdown and insufficient funding could lead to a dramatic underperformance in GOP congressional and other campaigns this year. Again, I’m not predicting this. I definitely would not bet on it. There’s a very decent chance Republicans could have a trifecta next year, though I’m increasingly dubious about their chances in the House. We can just look back to 2016. The presidential campaign was a total clown show, led by three different campaign managers in succession. Congressional candidates wavered back and forth over what to do about their presidential candidate. And yet, when the dust settled Republicans controlled everything.
But it’s sort of like playing Jenga. After you pull a few pieces out of the tower it starts to get unstable. That’s just a fact. And they’ve already pulled out a few pieces. To use a slightly different metaphor, that mix of division, committee breakdown and underfunding can catalyze each other. But back to Jenga. You can only pull out so many pieces.
Think about it this way. If something like I’ve described did happen, I think it’s pretty clear people would be saying that all the signs were there and people didn’t put them together or draw the obvious conclusion.
Just something to keep in the back of your mind.
Institutionally, the GOP is now a rag tag mafia family less effective than the Sopranos. If we didn’t have this sick suspicion (born of one too many shocks and disappointments) that nothing will stop Trump, everyone would be talking about this. As it is we are superstitious about assuming anything with this crew so we just note this in passing and move on, afraid of getting our hopes up.