Why Republicans Nominate Such Weak Candidates
The party has a broken culture, and no amount of top-down strategizing will be enough to overcome that.
Remember: Today is an election day! The first round of Chicago’s mayoral election is wrapping up as this hits your inbox. Polls close at 7pm CST (8pm ET). You can follow along as results come in here.
If you want a refresher on that election, check out the article I wrote earlier this month, Chicago’s Mayoral Election, Explained.
On to today’s article…
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker
We’re just a few months into the 2024 election cycle, and things are already starting to look good for Democrats regarding candidate recruitment. This is most pronounced in the Senate, where Democrats have already notched several important recruitment victories.
Consider, for starters, the states with Democratic incumbents that Trump carried in 2020: Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia. If Democrats want to stave off defeat in these red states, they will need to put up very strong candidates. The best people for the job would be the Democratic incumbents — Jon Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia. For Democrats in solidly Republican states, all three are surprisingly popular.
Fortunately for Democrats, it’s likely that all three of these political unicorns will run again. Brown committed late last year; Tester announced his run last week; and while Manchin hasn’t made anything official, he’s doing a political dance that seems to indicate he’s seriously considering another bid. As the candidates with the best chance at keeping their Senate seats blue, the fact that they’re all looking toward reelection is a big success for Democratic recruitment.
Things look similarly bright for Democrats in other competitive states. In Michigan, Representative Elissa Slotkin just announced yesterday that she is running to replace the state’s retiring Democratic senator. As a moderate Democrat with considerable cross-party appeal who flipped a Republican seat in 2018 and held it in 2020 and 2022, Slotkin is among the strongest candidate that Michigan Democrats could put up in 2024. In other competitive states — Nevada and Wisconsin — strong Democratic incumbents seem likely to run again. The only exception to this trend is Arizona, where the fallout from Kirsten Sinema renouncing her Democratic Party affiliation may lead Democrats to split their vote between her and the official Democratic nominee. In short, with the single exception of Arizona, Democratic Senate recruitment for 2024 is already looking quite successful.
The same, to say the least, is not true of the GOP’s recruitment efforts. No particularly notable candidates have announced in Montana, Ohio, or West Virginia. In Michigan, one of the GOP’s strongest potential nominees, Rep. John James, has already indicated he’s not interested. And in Nevada and Wisconsin, the potential field looks similarly disappointing. Worse still, in Arizona, the deeply flawed candidates who lost their elections for Senate and Governor in 2022, Blake Masters and Kari Lake, have publicly expressed interest in running next year. The same is true of other 2022 losers, including Michigan’s Tudor Dixon and Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano.
What explains this dramatic difference between the Democratic and Republican recruitment?
In short: the GOP’s culture is completely broken. Rather than rewarding candidates who can win competitive elections, the institutions within conservative politics reward the loudest and most radical voices in the room. Specifically, support from the party’s base, small-dollar fundraising, and backing from conservative media are mostly reserved for the most bombastic and extreme GOP politicians rather than the competent and moderate ones.
This was the case in 2016, when Donald Trump bulldozed a field of more competent opponents; It was the case throughout the Trump presidency as the party ostracized temperamentally moderate figures like John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker; It was the case in 2022 when the party nominated candidates like Kari Lake, Blake Masters, and Don Bolduc while it kicked out Liz Cheney and Peter Meijer; It was the case during the recent fight for the House Speakership, when the party’s most extreme figures like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert earned concessions from Kevin McCarty and plaudits from the GOP base.
This is an altogether different picture than that of the Democratic Party. While Democrats are by no means immune to political extremism, in broad strokes, the party typically rewards the figures who forge compromise, moderate, and can appeal to the political center. That’s what happened in 2016, when Democrats nominated Joe Biden over more progressive options like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren; It’s why the party didn’t face the same kind of revolt over Nancy Pelosi’s speakership in 2018 that the GOP did this year; It’s why the party was able to eventually get its most progressive members to vote in favor of so much compromise legislation over the last two years; and it’s why the party nominated such a solid field of candidates in 2022.
In other words, the culture of the Democratic Party generally rewards traits that can help win elections (like moderation, compromise, and competency) while the culture of the GOP rewards the opposite (bombast and extremism). Heading into 2024, some within the GOP establishment are developing a strategy to counteract this tendency. To this effect, the leadership will be taking a more aggressive approach in primaries to support candidates who will perform better in the general election.
Unfortunately for the GOP leadership, I think that strategy is doomed to fail. The party’s broken culture is just too strong for a top-down program like this to overcome. With the deck stacked against them, few moderate Republicans will decide to run in 2024, and even fewer will win their primaries. That, I think, is responsible for the trend explored in the first half of the article in which the GOP is already falling behind Democrats in 2024 candidate recruitment.
Ultimately, what the GOP faces is a crisis of culture. Until the party is able to fix this — a tall task that I can’t imagine happening anytime soon — Republicans are doomed to nominate weak candidates and lose elections they could have won.