The MAGA Party Is Threatening Representative Democracy And Missouri Leads The Way
As Illiberalism, Populism, and Nationalism Creeps Into Every Level of Politics, Missouri Could be an Example of the Future Holds in American Politics and Government
Hello. Its been awhile.
I must admit that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to write about politics and the path that our country seems to be headed down as we move closer and closer to the 2024 election.
American democracy is in deep trouble as our political institutions become more dysfunctional and political leaders of both political parties become more incapable and disinterested in doing the day to day blocking and tackling and hard work in the trenches that needs to be done in order to govern.
Instead, we continue to descend down the rathole of chaos, conflict, polarization, name calling, grievance, victimhood, whataboutism, finger pointing, posturing, and performance politics that currently passes for “governing” and political “discourse.”
On the platform “X” the other day, journalist and author Anne Applebaum offered an interesting insight into our current situation. Applebaum argues that our current two party system has, in reality, evolved into a multiparty system that will require changes in terms of how we govern ourselves as coalition governing may become a more prevalent feature in our politics as the two major political parties continue to fracture. Thinking about it, it might make sense at a basic level.
Are We Now a Three Party System?
If we assume Applebaum is on to something, and given the current division in the Republican Party (and to a lesser extent, the Democratic Party divide between moderate and “progressive” Democrats), perhaps we are now a three party system, trying to function in a system designed to support only two parties.
So, for the sake of argument, what are the three parties? The three could be the current Democrats, the traditional, conservative GOP Republicans, and the MAGA Republican Party. MAGAs use the “Republican” label, but aren’t traditional conservative GOP Republican by any stretch of the imagination.
No matter what they are called, the fracturing of the Republican Party has created much of the political and institutional dysfunction that currently defines American politics and government. The GOP Republicans have been compromised by the MAGA Republicans, leading to chaos and division. It is really difficult to determine the actual size of both factions, but GOP Republicans have been forced to compromise their integrity to support (or look the other way) the goals and tactics of the MAGA Republicans in order to maintain the support of the current “Republican’ “base” and win reelection. This has led to many traditional GOPers leaving office, either through defeat at the polls in primary elections (Liz Cheney) or by not running for re-election (Mitt Romney), while being replaced by straight MAGA Republicans or MAGA sympathetic GOP Republicans.
This continuing dysfunction at the national level is a metastasizing cancer that threatens to destroy the American republican form of government, the political institutions that allow the government to do the people’s business, and representative democracy itself.
Like all cancers, the cancer that debilitates politics and governing at the national level has spread throughout our body politic all of the way down to the state level, metastasizing rapidly and seemingly immune to treatment and removal.
My state of Missouri may be a preview of coming attractions if the current Stage 4 cancer of political dysfunction and chaos isn’t stopped, and soon.
MAGA Republican Missouri
Missouri, a former Democratic Party bell weather state, is governed lock, stock, and barrel by the MAGA Republicans (except for the urban areas of St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City, and surrounding Jackson County). Missouri is represented in the United States Senate by Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, two high caliber MAGA culture warriors (if you remember, Hawley was a key player in the effort to nullify the results of the 2020 election). Seven of nine U.S. House seats are held by MAGA Republicans like Jason Smith, Vicki Hartzler, Sam Graves, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Ann Wagner, Eric Burlison, and Mark Alford (Hartzler, Smith, Luetkemeyer, and Graves voted to overturn the 2020 Electoral College results.)
At the state government level, the executive branch is populated by a second term, lame duck, do nothing, MAGA supporting governor, Mike Parsons. His recently appointed attorney general, William Bailey, is a MAGA Republican culture warrior who seems dedicated to setting a new league record in filing frivolous, performative politics, culture war lawsuits against groups and individuals who don’t fall in line with the MAGA culture war agenda (his successors as attorney general were Hawley and Schmitt).
Missouri’s Secretary of State is Jay Ashcroft, the son of former U.S. Senator and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The younger Ashcroft is a candidate for Missouri governor in 2024, running on a platform to make the state even “more MAGA” than it already is, a race to the bottom on issues such as privatizing education (“school choice”), book banning, and culture wars against DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), CRT, transgender and LBGTQ+ rights, abortion, curriculum content in history and social studies, and other MAGA culture war hot button issues.
The Missouri state legislature is controlled by a GOP Republican/MAGA Republican super majority that imposes the MAGA agenda almost at will (Senate-71% R and House-68%R). Democrats have little or no chance in legislative politics. Not all of the GOP Republicans can be considered hard core MAGA, but the MAGA Republican influence is wide and deep and drives the legislative agenda in the state.
So who are some of our illustrious legislative players?
MAGA Republican state senators Nick Schroer and Bob Eigel conduct a never ending MAGA culture war campaign and use “X” to attack anyone who opposes them or their opinions. You might have seen the “X” video showing them “burning down the “woke” agenda” with flame throwers, or their video showing them crushing “woke” Bud Light beer cans with a baseball bat on the lawn of the state capital. Eigel threatens to burn school and library books he considers to be “porn”. (Eigel is currently running for governor against Ashcroft, so I guess “you gotta do what you gotta do” in the race to the bottom.)
The state House isn’t much better. The House MAGA Republican poster child is Representative Ben Baker. During his career, he has sponsored or co-sponsored bills that permitted concealed carry of firearms in churches and the inclusion of elective courses on the Bible in public high school social studies curriculum. During the last legislative session, Baker stood on the floor of the Missouri House, and during a debate over abortion, passionately argued that it is “OK” for a pregnant twelve year old girl to marry an adult male as an alternative to abortion. Baker created quite the sensation on “X” when he posed in full assault troop battle gear and armed with an assault rifle with scope, threatening to shoot down the Chinese weather/spy balloon that transited the United States last year (a real “gravy SEAL” or “Chairborne Ranger”). No, he never served in the military.
How does this translate into the Missouri legislative agenda?
Missouri has real challenges, especially in rural areas. Among the issues on the list are rural health care, food security for children, infrastructure, transportation, economic development, financially challenged public school systems, broadband access, failing family farms and the sale of farmland to foreign investors (particularly China), jobs, workforce development, crime, drug addiction, and a host of other issues.
At the beginning of the last legislative session, Caleb Rowden, MAGA supporting GOP Republican president pro tempore of the Missouri state senate, was asked about the most pressing issue facing that body in the new term. His answer? Dealing with “transgender issues” was at the top of the list. Instead of dealing with the real problems facing the state, the state house and senate spent the majority of their time passing laws dealing with transgender participation in sports, transgender medical treatment, very restrictive abortion laws, voter suppression (constitutional ballot initiatives), and other “culture war” issues that drive the MAGA agenda.
What might this mean for the future?
You get the point. All the MAGA Party is concerned about is performative politics and culture war issues. They aren’t interested in governing. Using buzz words like “liberty” and “freedom”, they continue to manipulate the voters and impose their soft authoritarian agenda. Those who consider themselves traditional, conservative GOP Republicans are inclined to “go along to get along” because they fear their “base” and their prospects of being primaried because they are supposedly RINO (Republican In Name Only) rather than MAGA.
Missouri isn’t the only state facing these challenges. Kansas, Alabama, Idaho, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states are facing, to one degree or another, the same MAGA Republican influence and agenda setting.
Is this the future in American politics and government? If state level trends continue, and if by chance, at the national level, MAGA Republican candidates increase their presence in the House as part of an ever expanding “Republican” majority, gain a majority in the Senate on the backs of MAGA Republican candidates like Kari Lake in Arizona, and Donald Trump is elected president in 2024 (there is a good chance this could happen), this could be our future.
The MAGA Republican Party is no longer the traditional conservative Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, George G.W. Bush, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Jack Kemp, Gerald Ford, Mitt Romney, Bob Dole, the late John McCain, and other Republican luminaries of the recent past. It is no longer a party that believes in limited government, free markets, personal responsibility, fiscal conservatism, and a strong and robust foreign policy that supports the rules based world order created after World War II. It is no longer our mother and father’s Republican Party.
Rather, the MAGA Republican Party has coopted the “Republican” name and has become the party of Donald Trump. Matt Goetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gosar, Tommy Tuberville, Josh Hawley, Eric Schmitt, William Bailey, Nick Schroer, Bill Eigel, Jay Ashcroft, Ben Baker, and a host of others just like them. This is a party that is interested in minority rule, soft authoritarianism, nativism, populism, isolationism, culture wars, government intrusion and control, fiscal insanity, of government knowing what is best, and owning the other side just to own the other side. They are not interested in actually governing. It’s all about performative politics, faux grievance and victimhood, “donothingism,” fund raising, and holding on to personal political power.
What now passes as the traditional conservative GOP Republican Party is the debris of the ideological and cultural war that has rendered GOP Republicans politically impotent.
Is this what we want? Is this what the United States is really about?