On Saturday, a longtime conservative commentator laid out the “political malpractice” that will cost the GOP its congressional majorities. According to political analyst Charlie Sykes – who broke with the Republican Party over its embrace of President Donald Trump – the GOP’s “cognitive dissonance” between its agenda and what voters really want is going to torpedo the party at the ballot box.
Sykes was speaking with journalist Jonathan Rauch when he brought up the GOP’s “complete face plant” earlier in the week, when “they went through this elaborate dog-and-pony show” trying to corner former Special Counsel Jack Smith into perjury. As has been widely reported, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) attempted to prove Smith had been at a basketball game in Atlanta, only to have it revealed that he had the “wrong state, wrong team, wrong gender,” said Sykes. “The whole thing fell apart, and you kind of wonder – we’re worried about AI and being able to distinguish what’s real and what’s fake – this is a United States Senator…I mean, how did this happen?”
“It would be funny if it weren’t so concerning,” said Rauch. “It just reminds us that the charges that are being used are totally bogus.” He noted the example of David Hearn, the Olympian who faced felony charges for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. “They fell apart at the touch of reality. They fell apart so badly that a federal judge dismissed the charges with prejudice. That almost never happens. But that means that the judge trusts the Justice Department so little that they’re not even allowed to bring back the charge no matter what they come up with. The judge is saying, we just can’t trust these people. So all these demonstrations of comic incompetence. They have a serious grim side, but it’s kind of a saving grace that the folks running MAGA are not more capable than they are.”
This behavior, argued Sykes, will have major blowback for Republicans in the midterms. “It was like a nesting ball of wrongness,” said Sykes. “Why Republicans would choose to relitigate January 6 and Trump’s violation of the Espionage Act a month before the midterms…this is what we care about? We’re going to give a national platform to Jack Smith, who is going to remind that the president of the United States engaged in serious criminal activity. And then to do it so ineptly. From my point of view, the sort of subliminal message was, if you vote for any Republican anywhere, you’re voting to put the gavel in the hands of these guys, and look what they are doing with it. The term political malpractice doesn’t even seem to cover what happened.”
The incident, concluded Sykes, speaks to a persistent issue within the GOP. As he explained, “Why would you do it right now, when people are saying, what are you caring about? Isn’t this the whole cognitive dissonance that Trump and the Republicans are having? That the public’s looking at them and saying, you are so concerned about things that have nothing to do with my life. Why are you talking about the Reflecting Pond? Why are you talking about the ballroom? And arches? And your campaign of retribution? Which is not at top-of-mind for midterm election voters. It’s not a popular thing.”