More cracks in the FRP

Bad Election News Pressures the Unstable Coalition

In previous posts, I have written about my view of the Former Republican Party (FRP) as an unstable coalition of three parts:¹

What are those fractious factions? What are their agendas?

• The chaos faction. It is composed of the members that forced the 15-round humiliation of Kevin McCarthy as he groveled for the speakership and accepted the poison pill ” vacate the chair “ rule that any single chaos-maker could invoke at any time for any reason. They are the ones that the members of the other two coalitions say don’t want to govern and just want to burn the place down. They are the ones who are enamored of Trump and are Trump’s beloved, the hard-core election deniers, and the ones most intimately connected to January 6. They are the ones who have no clue about how to legislate.

  Their agenda is to paralyze the House to tie Joe Biden’s hands running up to the election, to cause maximum harm to the economy, to provide fertile ground for general civic discontent, and to weaken our support for Ukraine as a gift to Putin. They are there to prepare the conditions for Trump to return to power as a “savior” with a side of retribution. Ultimately, they are the legislative spearhead of the new authoritarians in America.

• The grievance faction. This is the largest faction of the former Republican Party. They understand and are on board with the billionaire-funded Operation REDMAP/Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 plans to institute a single-party authoritarian system in America. They benefited from gerrymandering and support the rulings of a conservative doctrinaire judiciary whose rulings stoke the culture wars on which they thrive and have given enormous political power to the ultra-rich through Citizens United. They are all on board with the destruction of the professional civil service and executive branch described in detail in the Project 2025² manifesto as soon as there is a new nominally Republican president.
  Their ultimate agenda is to see continued upward concentration of wealth in this country with more tax cuts for corporations and the 1%, institution of a white patriarchal society by curtailment of minority and women’s rights, and an isolationist “America First” policy that dismantles our alliances. This is not speculation; it is what Trump started to do during his presidency. Even though he was inept, major advances on the agenda were made in the culture wars, gerrymandering, judicial appointments, and securing minority rule in state legislatures.
  However, this faction of the FRG has disagreements about supporting Trump. The billionaires have split into two camps, with the Koch-aligned camp having refused to support Trump going back to 2016, and others who are strongly pro-Trump. But After January 6, several switched sides., and their donations are moving them towards the remnants. ³

• The remnants. This is the smallest faction, those who still have some memory of what their oath of office requires of them and who understand how the legislative process is supposed to work. They are centrists, members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and some of those who won in districts that went to Joe Biden in 2020. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are scared shitless that they will be primaried. But the bottom line is that they are already on the hit list of the Republican National Committee and Super PACs that have, for many election cycles, funneled funds to those who are fully aligned with the Operation REDMAP/Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation agenda. What they are not is openly “never Trumpers” like Cheney and Kinzinger. They chose to be silent bystanders.
  Their agenda is to cling to their seats, support Ukraine and Israel, and try to see that the government is funded so their constituents are not harmed without making waves. They want the legislative process to work. They understand that there must be compromises in the legislative process. But they are conflicted between self-interest and principle.

Tuesday’s election put more pressure on this unstable coalition. The many Democratic wins on both issues and candidates are changing the calculus and increasing the pressure that I believe will eventually lead to a split.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is certainly trying to apply pressure from the right.⁴ She said, “I think Republicans are weak. They never come through on their promises that they give to voters. They never hold anyone accountable. Stop backing away from President Trump. He is winning the primary by massive numbers. He’s winning the polling for the general election. Clearly, people like President Trump and his policies.“

The five Republican candidates who qualified for last night’s debate were asked directly why they should be the nominee instead of Trump. ⁵

Ron DeSantis took the position that a lot has happened since Trump was elected. He moved towards throwing Trump under the bus by saying, "Donald Trump's a lot different guy than he was in 2016," and that Trump should be participating in the debates to answer for his record. DeSantis is all into reversing America’s decline. He noted that as governor, he has “delivered on all my promises.” He has been trial-running the culture war agenda of the grievance faction and is closely allied with the Heritage Foundation. He got in his military service in his closing statement as well.

Nikki Haley tried not to alienate the base: "I think he was the right President at the right time. I don't think he's the right President now." She called out Trump for being "weak in the knees" on foreign policy issues, including support for Ukraine. She is clearly moving away from the overt Putin and Orban admirers in the party and the isolationists in the party, so she is moving towards the remnants. Her whole closing was focused on foreign policy and US leadership in the world.

Vivek Ramaswamy is a full-on chaos caucus supporter, joining MTG in calling the current party leadership "losers" and pointing to last night’s dismal results as evidence, saying, "We got trounced last night." He is against a “fringe minority that hates America” (Democrats). He promises to “shut down the deep state” and “keep us out of World War III.” He also doubled down on election denialism and said, “Joe Biden was a puppet of the managerial class.” So he is straddling the divide between the chaos caucus and the grievance caucus Project 2025 billionaires with the subtext that he is rich and can’t be bought (or that he has bona fides to join the club) and has “young legs.” He advised Biden to drop out because he says Democrats will never run him; they should be open about who will actually run in his place so they can have “an honest debate.”

Chris Christie aligned himself squarely with the remnants, totally calling Trump out and pushing for a non-isolationist foreign policy. He did a riff on “you cannot say you love America if you are not willing to open your heart to every American”, a plea to depolarize the political climate. He sees “the exhaustion in the eyes” of Americans who are tired of the “petty personal politics.”

Tim Scott spoke about the cultural and spiritual crisis in America, positioning himself with Speaker Johnson and the evangelicals and the family values faction in the party against “the left’s valueless, faithless, fatherless society.” He went on about the need for taking personal responsibility and to “stop kneeling in protest and start kneeling in prayer,” I guess right along with Speaker Johnson’s wife. He wants to “win the war” for “Christian conservative values that changed his life.” That was his whole pitch. I think he is positioning himself for vice president to balance the ticket and to bring in the black and evangelical vote.

Where is Speaker Johnson in this? He appears to be bridging the chaos caucus and the grievance, limited-government billionaire-supported caucus. He has received campaign contributions from Koch Industries. In his role as Speaker, he assumed enormous power to enact both factions’ agendas. In the short term, he has the most potential to push America towards authoritarianism. He also may have the chaos credentials to direct that group towards some actual legislative movement towards Project 2025 goals in the coming year, but his lack of leadership experience may make that less likely. However, obstruction, which is much easier to do, may be sufficient. It will all depend on how quickly his donors school him in their priorities.

The fissures between the factions in the FRP are there. The dark money is with the grievance caucus and the Republican think tank intellectuals who wrote Project 2025, but they don’t yet have sufficient votes to win as a stand-alone party.

Ultimately, I think the billionaires will choose DeSantis because of his proven execution of Project 2025 goals in Florida with Haley as VP to balance the ticket and appeal to women voters. Trump will be thrown under the bus because he was incapable of getting legislation passed and because an insurrection would be bad for business. Trump was ineffective and he can’t be controlled, even more so now. The dark money wants to see its directions followed. Abortion rights will be left to the states; there will be competing ballot initiatives over the next several years as amendments are enshrined in state constitutions in both directions. Dark money interests will temporarily tone down DeSantis to ally with the remnants and appeal to independents.

Many things can change in the next few months before the primaries, with lots of wild cards, Speaker Johnson’s performance and foreign affairs being two of the major ones. If Johnson fails, DeSantis will wear the mantle of Mr. CanDo. If Johnson succeeds over the next few months, we will get Batman and Robin with a side of Nikki Haley.

Tighten your seat belt. It will be a wild ride.

1. https://georgiafisanick.substack.com/p/the-deconstruction-of-the-republican

2. https://www.project2025.org/policy/

3. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/billionaire-donors-defecting-trump-watch/story?id=93409938

4. https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/11/08/marjorie-taylor-greene-election-night-republicans-lead-sot-vpx.cnn

5. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211715610/third-republican-debate-miami

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