The revelations of Republican muckrakers like Steve Bannon and Peter Schweizer illustrate how the Republican Party is bent on self-destruction. It reminds me of the old saying, “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”
Both are among the well-connected right-wing activists who have helped energize the Tea Party and oust Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner. Bannon has made a career of documenting political corruption in the tradition of the Drudge Report. He is now executive chairman of Breitbart News, a successor to Drudge.
Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), authored a best-selling book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. In a few days, the GAI will publish Schweizer’s e-book, Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich. Like the Tea Party, Bannon and Schweizer are equal-opportunity despoilers, attacking establishment candidates of both parties.
Bannon and Schweizer channel some the same populist disgust with establishment politics that fuels both the Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) campaigns. Ironically, the “glass house” that is the Republican Party may be more vulnerable to this sort of stone throwing than the Democratic Party. As Sanders argued during Tuesday’s Democratic Party presidential debate, the Democrats usually win when voter turnout is high. The Republicans typically benefit from low voter turnout. Populist mobilization of righteous voter anger over the corruption of the Washington establishment is more likely to benefit the Democrats in 2016.
This may seem counterintuitive, since the White House is in Democratic hands, so it might seem that the “throw the bums out” mentality would argue for a change of Presidential party leadership. However, the Republican Party dominates both houses of Congress, so it is not so obvious which incumbents are more detested.
There is also some symmetry in the fact that both parties have an outsider” candidate not beholden to corporate campaign contributions: Donald Trump in the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats. Both outsiders mobilize voter disgust, but neither is likely to win their party’s nomination. So what is the difference? The difference lies in the character of Trump and Sanders and, as Sanders hinted, the likely impact in voter mobilization.
When Trump shows up at the Republican convention with less than a majority of the delegates (by far the most likely result), party leaders will try their best to unite around a more acceptable candidate without Trump’s protectionist leanings, which are such an anathema to most of the party’s corporate funding base. Since no other Republican candidate has shown much ability yet to excite the voters, whatever dark horse they settle on will lack a broad mandate. Trump may stew at being sidelined.
Originally published at The Street on October 17, 2015 – Allegations of Political Corruption Fuel Republican Self-Destruction