Coop Scoop: It's Hard To Fight Fascists If You Are Funding Them
Democrats ignore danger of supporting "easy to beat" extremists
July 29, 2022
By Marc Cooper
Top Democrats from Joe Biden to Nancy Pelosi on down all loudly claim they are dead serious about fighting all attempts to crash our democracy. Yet, Democrats are handing millions of dollars – as much as $50 million-- in campaign funding in as many a half dozen states to assorted extreme right wing crackpots, wingnuts, anti-democratic militants and neo-fascists.
It’s all part of a Rube Goldberg bank-shot electoral strategy: Help extremist Republicans beat more moderate ones in the primaries (with Democratic help) and then take on those extremists in the general and whup them. They are easier to beat than moderates, goes the “logic.”
This is not a new ploy. It has been used over the years with mixed results. Ironically, the rise of Donald Trump in 2015-16 is owed in part to back door support given then by Hillary Clinton’s campaign who was sure he would be an easier general election rival.
And a lot of people are convinced this is not the right moment, that the stakes are too high, that the anti0democratic movement is strong enough as it is and elevating its candidates could lead to a serious backfire. In Pennsylvania, neo fascist Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, considered mostly an unelectable crank, is all of a sudden rising dangerously in the polls after he got an assist from Democrats who think he would be a sure loser in a general election.
More vexing is the case of Michigan Republican Representative Peter Meijer currently running for a second term. Just days after coming into Congress two years ago, Meijer was one of the very rare Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump. He’s been in the GOP dog house ever since. And a fire breathing extremist, John Gibbs, hand-picked by Trump, is now trying to terminate Meijer’s career in the upcoming primary. Gibbs was probably on track to beat Meijer in any case, but he has to be pleased that this week that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is running a half-million dollars worth of TV adds boosting him.
That’s one helluva of a way to treat a courageous Republican who broke from the pack. Instead of trying to eliminate and kill off some of these more moderate GOP’ers, wouldn’t it be more productive in the long run to accommodate them to some degree? Do Democrats really want to pare down the number of possible allies inside the Republican Party? Is this how you build a more civil politics? By attacking those opponents who are closest to your own views?
Of course, these are the wrong questions to ask the Democrats. They certainly are not the ones they are asking themselves. Instead, their primary, constant concern is: How Do I get Re-Elected?
This Democratic funding of extremist Republicans reveals, more than anything, the darkly cynical, highly restricted view that these pols have of what “politics” means. To them, it means ONLY getting elected and re-elected. It’s only about campaigning, voting, and messaging for re-election. In general, pols have little to no interest in any politics outside of and beyond elections. Democrats who support this kind of extremist funding, whether it is Pelosi or Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, have little to no interest in nor understanding of real grass roots politics, building social movements, and gaining civilian political power. I guess Pritzker, Pelosi and others figure if the extremists lose and election, it’s game over. As If politics stops at the foot of the voting booth.
This rather constipated view of what constitutes politics has been, quite unfortunately, widely shared on that increasingly mysterious thing called The American Left (not sure it really exists).
Many leftists refuse to understand that casting a vote is not signing a marriage contract but rather is making a strategic move in a chess game controlled by others. What counts much more than a 5 minute stop in a voting booth, is what you are or are not doing the other 364 days of the year. Beyond voting, what are you doing?
The Right knows this stuff much better. It has demonstrated far superior skill in patiently cranking up forces and local constituencies to reach long term goals. So when these far right wing candidates eventually get defeated by a Democrat, they do not necessarily pack up and go home. They might find themselves, after the electoral defeat, more elevated, more accepted than they were before. Thanks to that Democratic nudge, they might have increased mailing lists, some new supporters, or with their increased name recognition they might now be in good position to run for a lower office. At a minimum, the Democratic strategy has the net effect of releasing more election denier, more Big Lie microbes into the body politic.
“It’s hard to convince some of our folks that we are serious about defending democracy against fascism when we are helping pro-fascist candidates improve their profiles even if they lose,” says one Washington state Democratic staffer. “We are not playing with fire as some say. We are playing with nuclear weapons.”
As the work of the J6 Committee has now clearly nudged the DOJ to sharpen its investigative focus on Donald Trump, even some of the committee members have endorsed this dangerous Democratic strategy. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the DCCC, said on MSNBC on Tuesday morning: "If you're talking about trying to pick your opponent, you might see us do that, sure. And I think sometimes it does make sense."
The toughest words slamming the fund-your-enemy strategy came from the two committee Republicans. "No party, Democrat or Republican, should be promoting candidates who perpetuate lies about the 2020 election and try to undermine our democracy. We all have a responsibility and obligation to put our duty to the country above partisan politics," said vice-chair Liz Cheney.
Adam Kinzinger added: "I think it's disgusting. ... While I think a certain number of Democrats certainly understand that democracy is threatened, don't come to me after having spent money supporting an election denier in a primary ... and say, 'Where are all the good Republicans?'" ++
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