Trump’s Ideas Flourish Among State and Local Republicans

January 14, 2021 ☼ trumpgop

Source: The New York Times - Link

In Cleveland County, Okla., the chairman of the local Republican Party openly wondered “why violence is unacceptable,” just hours before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol last week. “What the crap do you think the American revolution was?” he posted on Facebook. “A game of friggin pattycake?”

Two days later, the Republican chairman of Nye County in Nevada posted a conspiracy-theory-filled letter on the local committee website, accusing Vice President Mike Pence of treason and calling the rioting a “staged event meant to blame Trump supporters.”

As Mr. Trump prepares to exit the White House and face a second impeachment trial in the Senate, his ideas continue to exert a gravitational pull in Republican circles across the country. The falsehoods, white nationalism and baseless conspiracy theories he peddled for four years have become ingrained at the grass-roots level of the party, embraced by activists, local leaders and elected officials even as a handful of Republicans in Congress break with the president in the final hour.

Interviews with more than 40 Republican state and local leaders conducted after the siege at the Capitol show that a vocal wing of the party maintains an almost-religious devotion to the president, and that these supporters don’t hold him responsible for the mob violence last week. The opposition to him emerging among some Republicans has only bolstered their support of him.

What has he done for them, really, other than to make “the libs” mad? The economic gains were modest, and mostly the result of a trillion dollar deficit. The regulatory removals don’t affect most people. Maybe it’s the anti-science stance his folks have taken at the EPA, CDC, and NOAA and people don’t like expertise. Maybe its some fever-dream of freedom. Maybe it’s the fear that guns will be taken away (not going to happen folks).