This one isn’t a rhetorical question.
Utah senate candidate Evan McMullin promises he won’t caucus with Democrats or Republicans if he wins, preemptively surrendering all committee assignments and ensuring he would have virtually no influence on policy. But why not caucus with Democrats? The state party has already backed him. In a flyer he’s reportedly sent out (the campaign hasn’t answered my inquiry on its origins as of this writing), the candidate promises to protect Obamacare, to support an “Equal Rights Amendment,” to back Democrats’ bid to overturn state laws (include Utah’s) that require voter ID, to create more hurdles for legal gun owners, to undermine fossil-fuel production (Utah is the fourth-highest oil and natural gas producer on federal lands), to support anti-religious freedom “LGBTQ+ non-discrimination” laws, and further empower labor unions.
McMullin also promises not to vote for Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader. Which means, one must assume, unless he plans never to vote, that he is going to support Chuck Schumer.
Placating Democrats is probably the only outside path McMullin has to being somewhat competitive. Even if that flyer isn’t indicative of his views, why would any conservative be enticed to support a candidate whose only consistent position has been preening about how principled he is? I searched through McMullin’s Twitter feed — he is a creation of social media, after all — and other than accusing those who support Mike Lee of being political extremists and unpatriotic, it’s puffery. I went to the “principles” page on his website, and there was just more curated sloganeering about “the preservation and betterment of our democratic republic and the endurance of our self-government, free from foreign interference.” On his “priorities” page, we finally get things like, “Improving western forest management,” “avoiding unnecessary wars,” and other completely vacuous statements that virtually every person in Utah — and the United States — probably agrees with in the abstract. (Not one candidate I know of has ever campaigned on the necessity of fighting unnecessary wars.)
Mona Charen wrote an entire column endorsing McMullin without pointing to a single policy position the former presidential candidate holds, either. “Utahns,” claims Charen, “now have a rare opportunity to strike a blow for democracy and the Constitution” by voting against Lee, a politician, imperfect as he might be, who’s taken the Constitution pretty seriously in his career. This is most evident in his meaningful questioning of nominees to the judicial branch, but it doesn’t stop there. Lee’s texts to Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows might be embarrassing, but they aren’t illegal. Nor does the Utah senator ever suggest that anyone engage in any illegality or unconstitutional behavior. Charen’s suggestion that Lee wanted a “coup to be by the book” is completely nonsensical. A legal challenge — or a private discussion about a legal challenge — isn’t tantamount to anything approaching a “coup.” (And it shouldn’t be forgotten that McMullin was attacking Lee as a traitor to democracy before the text story broke.) No sane person believes Mike Lee is an authoritarian.
But then again, the entire case for McMullin is about aesthetics and hysterics: an insufferable one-note virtue-signal that’s devoid of any genuine philosophical or political meaning.
Okay, I guess it was rhetorical.