Coop Scoop: Understanding The GOP's Howler Monkey Strategy

The Republican Party is no longer interested in persuasion.

February 8, 2023

By Marc Cooper

Put aside for the moment Joe Biden’s unexpectedly effective and piercing State of the Union Speech.

Let’s get right to the speech of the night, hell, the speech of the year.  I refer to the cult-like and robotic recitation of lies, myths and distortions delivered by who Steve Schmidt calls the “hideous” Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Wowza! 

She went Full Monty, lamenting how a “woke mob” has highjacked the “radical left” Democratic Party and then groaned on about the ethical heroism of her former employer, the soon-to-be-indicted former President of the United States. And then as a punch line, she actually said the choice is not between left and right but rather between normal people and crazies. True enough, she just happens to have the sides reversed.

All in all, it was a big old hunk of dripping red meat lobbed directly at the flock of knuckle-draggers and MAGGITS who would gobble up anything served up by the Trump inner circle, especially those of a dystopic, dark “American carnage” flavor. Reagan’s shining city on a hill has been transformed into a decaying and feared Gotham.

I’m surprised by the number of friends, countrymen and pundits who are how wondering why the Republicans would pick one of the most egregious, most reviled, most easily identifiable liars  and fringe actors in America to rebut what was a knock-out speech by Joe Biden.

On the surface, it’s a legit question. But, indeed, it reflects a superficial and rather obsolete view of what today’s Republican Party is all about. 

Allow me to try a somewhat deeper explanation:

The GOP of the last decade is no longer a party at all interested in persuasion i.e. in convincing marginal, undecided, centrist or middle of the road voters to pull the lever for them.  The leadership knows very well that there is an infinity of Republicans who are more sympatico, less revolting and far less polarizing than SHS, the daughter of one of the more gifted conservative grifters of the last several decades.

They also know that a more respectable figure would attract more centrist voters. Just like they know that such a figure would alienate and drive away what is now its core know-nothing MAGA base. It’s got to be one or another. And it’s the other that wins out.

The Republican Party cannot win a majority of the popular vote in the foreseeable future.  Just like they have failed to win a popular majority in seven of the last eight presidential elections. The current GOP strategy rests, then, on the following data points:

It is a minority party incapable of winning a majority.

Its loyal base does not want and will not accept any alliance with more “moderate” RINOS.

A majority in congress – and any win in a presidential run-- can only be won through a combination of gerrymandering, suppression of Democratic votes, and manipulation of the antiquated electoral college to achieve minority rule.

Putting forward gargoyles like SHS, MTG and Bozo Boebert and so on, is a conscious decision to consolidate, motivate and, to the degree possible, expand the fascist-adjacent base it already has.  Why bother with the risky business of persuasion that could lead to base erosion, if you only need to win by a few votes in a half dozen or less states that the electoral college has elevated in clout. 

This fundamental knowledge has been accepted by the entirety of the party but not without some diversity in interpretation and preferred tactics.

On the one hand, old silverbacks like Mitch McConnell, understand that senators, unlike House members, are elected by statewide vote and therefore it’s not a great idea to run “poor candidates” (meaning howling werewolves) like Kari Lake or Doctor Oz. By definition, a senatorial candidate must have broader appeal in order to win and when Mitch makes that point some people conclude he’s just more moderate.

Negative.  Mitch is just a bit smarter. And while he has completely enabled the most extreme fringes of the MAGA agenda, he knows that his senatorial ilk must at least shave their palms to appear as “quality” candidates.

Move a notch down the evolutionary ladder and consider the case of Kevin McCarthy.  While, again, totally buying into the non-persuasion strategy, McCarthy can do the math and can see how tenuous the GOP position is within the House. The MAGA base is just enough, on a good day, to keep a  very slim majority. Now and in the future. 

He therefore engages in an awkward juggling act by fully empowering his howler monkeys and flying chimps while at the same time trying to instruct them to at least not act too aggressively to stoke the anti-partisan vote of “normies” who just might be horrified by the gross idiocy of his vanguard  troops.

Let me underscore that point.  Kevin has no interest in persuasion per se.  He just wants to throttle the crazies if too many ordinary people happen to be looking.  That explains his aberrant behavior during the SOTU when he was painfully mouthing a STFU to the bench of hecklers, screamers and howlers.  After all, there were 30 million or so voters watching and this was not the moment to encourage “radical left Democrats” – or for that matter skeptical semi-rational RINOS-- to get off their butts to vote against his pampered squad of lunatics.  If Boebert, MTG, Jim Jordan and other crazed back-benchers, insurrectionists, racists and neo-fascists are gonna roll around on the floor and howl at the moon with their eyes rolling back in their heads, it’s much more effective if they do so in more limited venues, the ones packed with base voters who are as fucking nuts as they are.

The current Speaker, however, is the embodiment of an empty suit and it was painfully evident that he has absolutely no control, not even much influence over his extremist shock troops. They ignored his coded facial messages to cool it, and kept swinging from the chandeliers, screaming and tossing handfuls of poop at the president. So great was Kevin’s fear of his own extremists that he could not bring himself to stand up for or even applaud such tepid nostrums as low unemployment or knocking down inflation.  He sat there transfixed, terrified, and paralyzed by witnessing how his own strategy plays out in real life.

Biden, for his part, seemed to finally understand this reality and for the first time, at least in my view, his appeal to “bi-partisanship” was not a nostalgic fantasy but rather a wicked rhetorical weapon that quite effectively isolated the GOP leadership and forced it ever deeper into the arms of the flying monkeys.

That’s where we are at in early 2023. As Sarah Sanders said it’s all about normal people versus crazies. No more nuanced analysis necessary.

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