State GOP parties in disarray
by David Atkins
This is what happens when you have a paranoia-based organization run by nutcases:
Plagued by infighting and deep ideological divisions, state Republican parties from Alaska to Maine are mired in dysfunction. Several state Republican leaders have been forced out or resigned in recent months, and many state GOP parties face financial problems and skeptical national leaders.
Democrats are not immune to such problems, but the conflicts on the Republican side highlight the tug of war over the GOP’s future as national leaders work to improve the party’s brand. At the same time, the Republican dysfunction raises questions about the GOP’s ability to coordinate political activities in key battleground states ahead of next year’s midterm congressional elections.
“There’s been a lot of division and disharmony in the Republican Party,” newly elected Maine GOP Chairman Rick Bennett told The Associated Press…
The Illinois state GOP chairman resigned in May after party moderates clashed with social conservatives over the chairman’s support for gay marriage. The Alaska Republican Party is on its third chairman this year; party activists ousted the first two over fundraising concerns. The Minnesota GOP also has cycled through chairmen and long has been troubled by financial issues.
And state parties in Nevada and Iowa are largely controlled by members of the GOP’s libertarian wing, a group that’s known for criticizing the very same Republican establishment leaders they’re supposed to be cooperating with heading into the 2014 campaign season. Problems have been lingering for much of the past year.
Sure, Democrats have been known to have organizational problems as well–but not like this. The GOP’s issues are rather amazing, considering that the Democratic Party is a mixture of disenfranchised groups, labor (whose interests are not necessarily neatly aligned with disenfranchised groups or environmentalists), environmentalists, and fiscally conservative wealthy social liberals. That’s an uneasy coalition to be sure.
But Republicans have even bigger problems. The libertarians, social conservatives and neoconservatives have hated each other for a while, but they were at least tethered to reality. Between the Fox News epistemic closure, gerrymandering and the Tea Party takeover, it’s gotten far far worse.
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