Conservative warns of startling GOP midterms message: 'Insurrection and authoritarianism’

Conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot on Monday warned of the message the Republican Party was sending heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

"I am haunted by a recent Gallup poll showing a significant shift in party identification: 2021 began with Democrats ahead of Republicans, 49 percent to 40 percent, and ended with Republicans ahead of Democrats, 47 percent to 42 percent," Boot wrote. "Obviously, a lot of it represents unhappiness with President Biden’s policies. But you don’t have to identify as a Republican to signal displeasure with inflation or the covid-19 pandemic. By joining the GOP, you endorse what the party stands for."

Boot noted President Joe Biden asking “What are Republicans for?”

"House Republicans have recruited former speaker Newt Gingrich to come up with an agenda, and he wants to haul out old chestnuts like a 'balanced budget amendment.' A balanced budget after former president Donald Trump added $7.8 trillion to the national debt? LOL," he wrote. "The Republican Party has also lost all credibility on foreign policy after Trump spent four years genuflecting to dictators. Now Tucker Carlson, the most popular TV host in MAGA land, has become America’s leading defender of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban."

Boot noted that the Republican Party doubled down on its support for the insurrection when the RNC voted to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

"It’s true that former vice president Mike Pence on Friday belatedly condemned Trump’s attempt to overturn the election as 'un-American.' Good for him. But he has much less support than Trump does. He doesn’t speak for the party. The RNC does. That means the GOP has become the Jan. 6 Party. It stands for insurrection and authoritarianism," he wrote. "Opposing the Jan. 6 committee is only a small part of the GOP’s antidemocratic agenda. Republican legislatures are limiting voting rights, ostensibly to fight nonexistent voter fraud, while MAGA minions run for positions overseeing elections to ensure that Trump will never lose again."

Despite that, the Gallup poll still showed voters moving towards the GOP.

"The Jan. 6 Party has little in common save its name with the one I joined in the 1980s. It is no longer a conservative party but a radical nationalist-populist party that poses a dire danger to U.S. democracy — and to the lives of ordinary Americans. The fact that so many voters are flocking to the Republican banner anyway sends a dismaying signal about America’s future," Boot wrote.