The GOP has given itself over to right-wing trolls and is “losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff,” an LA Times columnist wrote Tuesday.
Writer Jonah Goldberg compared the Republican party to an online website which is pandering to the comments section trolls.
“In comments sections — including such mega-versions like Twitter — the nastiest commenters post more, and more obnoxiously, than the decent ones until, eventually, the decent folk just decide not to hang out anymore,” he wrote.
“The only remedy for this is comment moderation, where grown-ups in charge try to thwart the trolls lest they lose their more valuable customers.”
But the Republican strategy has been the opposite – dropping the ‘decent folk” and "pandering to the comment section warriors to boost traffic and 'engagement.'"
As a result, “They have to win the endorsement of a crowd in an echo chamber having a conversation that the rest of the country thinks is too nasty or weird to join,” he wrote.
He said it’s the same problem Fox News had. “Fox’s decision to “respect the audience” amid the postelection tumult — the loudest, most hardcore viewers, before and after the 2020 election — led to huge public relations, legal and financial disasters.”
The recently settled Dominion lawsuit highlighted texts from former political editor at Fox Chris Stirewalt warning: “What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.” He was fired for his opinion, Goldberg said.
Another example he gave was a Kari Lake speech in Arizona in 2022, given as Steve Bannon stood by her side.
"'We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we?' she asked from the stage. 'All right, get the hell out,' she declared. 'Boy, Arizona has delivered some losers, haven’t they?'
"John McCain was arguably Arizona’s most successful Republican politician since Barry Goldwater. Anyone attending her rally was at least open to voting for her. Yet Lake would rather entertain the comment section trolls than win over real voters."
Pandering to the loudest and most voracious trolls has resulted in state parties being taken over by conspiracy theorists and MAGA worshippers who “think worrying about “electability” is the stuff of losers, cucks, RINOs and globalists,” Goldberg wrote.
“This is the dilemma GOP candidates face if they want to supplant Trump," he wrote.
