There is something happening in the Republican Party

Screengrab from Loomer tweet on X

I couldn’t open my newsfeed over the last couple of days without seeing a new story about some outrage involving the odious Laura Loomer.  I’m sure you’ve seen her various racist tweets and the stories coming out of the Trump campaign about her presence on his plane when they flew to Philadelphia for the debate, the fact that she accompanied him to the Ground Zero memorial service for those lost on 9/11 – even when she has repeatedly called the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon “an inside job.”

The latest Loomer news came from The Guardian, which reported today hat she called herself a “white advocate” at a conference of the American Renaissance movement in 2022.  The American Renaissance conference, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “is a venue where ‘racist intellectuals’ rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists,” and, it seems, Ms. Loomer.  According to The Guardian, referring to Loomer’s two losing campaigns for Congress, she told the assembled white nationalists and evangelical racists, “I was one of the first candidates to campaign in favor of mass deportations in an immigration moratorium.”

Two weeks before the American Renaissance conference, Loomer went on a podcast run by Jared Taylor, a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier who was an organizer of the conference, and thanked him for his “white advocacy and being a white advocate and pioneering the intellectual discussion, right around race and demographics in this country.”  Jared Taylor runs a magazine called “American Renaissance” that promotes white supremacy and “scientific racism” that believes in differences in intelligence among various racial and ethnic groups.

We already knew Laura Loomer is a racist nutcase and promoter of conspiracy theories and all the rest of it, which doesn’t make her all that different from many of Trump’s MAGA supporters. Now we know of her apparent “friendship” with Donald Trump and closeness he has encouraged by including her in his campaign travels.  He has been shown in numerous photographs with his arm wrapped around Loomer’s waist, and it has been reported that Loomer told Trump “I love you” within earshot of people who shared the quote with reporters.  

What really caught everyone’s attention was when Lindsey Graham and Marjorie Taylor Greene came out and denounced Loomer’s extremist views.  Graham called Loomer “toxic” and tweeted: “I think what she said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that. I mean, you know, some of the things she’s said about Republicans and others is disturbing.  I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn't become a bigger story.”

To which Loomer shot back in a tweet, “When is Lindsay coming out of the closet? We all know you’re Gay, Lindsey…. And that’s ok. It’s ok. It’s 2024. There’s nothing wrong with Gay people. I like men too. You and I have something in common we can bond over. Just be honest about it. Nobody is going to judge you for being open about who you are.”

Greene called Loomer “extremely racist” when Loomer posted on Twitter/X that if Kamala Harris wins, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”  Greene went on to denounce Loomer for hurting Trump’s chances in the election, and no stranger to hate herself, called attention to Loomer’s “rhetoric and hateful tone.”

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a state that is currently listed as a “toss-up” between Harris and Trump, tweeted yesterday, “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough.”  Loomer fired back, calling Tillis a “RINO who attacked President Trump after January 6 and called for all of the January 6 political prisoners to remain in jail. Thom Thillis IS the DNC Plant he accuses me of being,” misspelling the name, “Tillis.”

Trump spoke to the press yesterday at his golf course in Rancho Verdes near L.A. and defended Loomer as “a strong person” who has “strong opinions.  I can’t tell Laura what to do.  She is a free spirit.”

So, here is what I think is going on with the brouhaha surrounding Laura Loomer.  One by one, some Republicans are starting to tinker with the calculus of the last eight years that there is only one way to be a Republican and to get ahead in the Republican Party and that is through Donald Trump. It’s as if they’ve been on a little island with Trump and if they put their foot off the island, it sank into MAGA quicksand.

But now look at what’s happening:  Both Cheneys have announced that they will vote for Kamala Harris; so has Adam Kinzinger, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention.  And now there are Republican senators who have said they will not vote for Trump:  Romney and Collins and Murkowski and Moran from Kansas, of all places; Cassidy from Louisiana (!); and Young from Indiana. 

Speaking of Indiana, Trump’s former Vice President, Mike Pence, has come out against him along with dozens of former cabinet and White House officials, former Republican members of the House and Senate, and yesterday, former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced he supports the Harris-Walz ticket.

There is a list of former Republican governors who oppose Donald Trump that is too long to go into here, and so is the list of former Republican state senators and representatives.

It’s not a tidal wave, but it is movement in the Republican Party away from Donald Trump, and that should not be ignored.

Now there are teeny cracks showing in the ground of Trump’s island.  One story yesterday said there is a “MAGA civil war” looming about Loomer and her access to Trump.  Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine tried to parse what it is going on with Loomer and found it nigh onto impossible: “The agita around Loomer’s influence is difficult to understand in ideological or moral terms. News accounts attempting to summarize what makes Loomer’s beliefs unacceptable tend to fall short.”  Chait cast around for who to blame and found Trump himself: “The Republican angst over Loomer’s influence is not an attempt to establish boundaries. It is, to the contrary, a reflection of Republicans’ inability to confront the derangement and racism expressed by their party’s leader.”

Well, yes, but it also reflects an inability of the Republican Party to confront the derangement and racism of the MAGA base, doesn’t it?  That’s where the rubber meets the road, because if Trump loses in November, and he’s not around for another four years yapping about running for president again, who’s going to pick up the Banner of the Base?

That’s the question here.  Republicans at every level are starting the difficult process of differentiating themselves from Trump and from each other, because as they contemplate the idea that he may no longer dominate the party, they’re going to have to get ahead in some way other than pledging fealty to Trump.  A realignment of the Republican Party has begun in the most convenient way possible:  by voting the most extreme among themselves off the island. 

What’s interesting about Loomer is not her extremism but her closeness to Trump.  Loomer has shared her extremism in the past with Marjorie Taylor Greene herself among many, many others in the party.  As Chait pointed out, “Trump himself is both a racist and a conspiracy theorist. These facts are both too inculpatory for his Republican allies to concede yet too obvious for them to deny. And so their dismay is channeled into the figures surrounding Trump.” 

The figure in their crosshairs for the moment is Laura Loomer, but just wait.  There will be others.  The realignment of the Republican Party that appears to be underway, even before they know for sure that Trump will be gone, has a long way to go.  It’s going to be interesting to see, if Kamala Harris is inaugurated, who is still standing and who has fallen in the inevitable Republican bloodbath that will follow.