Registered Republicans appear committed to testing the general electorate’s tolerance for their preferred nonsense.
On Tuesday night, the GOP underperformed once again in state-level legislative special elections in two critical states, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. In the latter case, the Republican candidate’s loss has serious political implications insofar as her opponent’s victory cedes to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party narrow control of the state’s house of representatives.
Elections are decided by voters who are balancing several competing priorities, and it’s rare that any one issue determines the outcome of a particular race. And yet, the Republican candidate who lost her race in the Keystone State, local Republican Party chair Erin Connolly Autenreith, did have one glaring liability that likely contributed to her defeat:
One [Facebook] post, dated January 7, 2021, indicates that Autenreith was in Washington, D.C. at the time of the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Autenreith wrote that she was in the city because “there is only one person who has stood up to Pedophilia, Sex Trafficking of Children, and Satanic Worship and it is Donald J. Trump. . . . He is the only Leader who has every addressed the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.” . . .
Autenreith said that while she had no evidence of tampering in the 2020 election, “I question it,” in part because of procedural changes in the handling of mail-in ballots (which in Allegheny County were previously handled by workers at polling places and now are counted in a central warehouse).
From questioning the outcome of the 2020 election, to her presence at the January 6 “stop the steal” rally, to her praise of Donald Trump for being the only candidate with the “courage” to discuss the epidemic of covert child-sex-trafficking in the United States, Autenreith lent credence to every paranoid shibboleth that signifies membership in the MAGA tribe. She paid for her fealty to Donald Trump’s movement with her candidacy, and her constituents will be the ones who suffer for it.
But Autenreith isn’t alone. Republican Northwood selectman James Guzofski ran for a district in New Hampshire that Donald Trump won by four points in 2020 — a district Governor Chris Sununu carried in 2022 by 22 points. He faced a progressive Democrat whose policy preferences were out of step with his state and who had previously lost the electoral contests he waged. But Guzofski went down to defeat handily. That outcome might have been inevitable given his appeals to the Trumpiest elements of the GOP.
Guzofski argued that the Covid-19 vaccines with which at least 270 million Americans were inoculated are a deadly menace — an odious feature of the “Plandemic.” He condemned Mike Pence, who “betrayed the president and the Constitution” by failing to halt the electoral-certification process on January 6, 2021. He circulated an absurd petition calling for a 2020 election revote. In a sermon (which the candidate promoted), he defended the “prophets” who “said the election was stolen and President Trump is still the legitimate president because the election was stolen.”
This stuff is weird. It is a bizarre genuflection before a series of narratives that most Americans do not believe. These are expressions of backward-looking grievances that are utterly divorced from the concerns voters have today and will have tomorrow. It’s kookery that American voters have rejected in election cycle after election cycle after election cycle. And yet, Republican primary voters seem to resent the unmistakable signals they are receiving from the electorate, and they continue to stuff down their throats candidates with views and values they wholly reject.
Registered Republicans appear committed to testing the general electorate’s tolerance for their preferred nonsense. General-election voters appear to be as eager as ever to demonstrate the folly of their judgment. Until this dynamic changes, Republicans will continue to lose races up and down the ballot.