Yes, the stakes in 2024 couldn't be higher. Marauders streaming across the border to steal lettuce picking jobs from more deserving Americans... Chinese buying up farmland around American missile silos as part of some diabolical military-industrial-agro spying scheme...
At least that's what Republicans are pushing as top concerns in millions of dollars of recent ad spending.
But what are Republicans ACTUALLY pre-occupied about?
Well, in "Mizzourah", the local variety of Republican mental weed seems particularly fixated on fighting its own kind as part of some ritualistic effort to claim credit for being the strongest backer of Trump and / or being the most crazy and racist in general. So much so, the attempts are resulting in a string of court battles between various GOP entities within the state and battles between state officials and the national GOP party apparatus.
Here are some recent stories from Missouri Independent:
https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/appeals-court-dashes-missouri-gop-hopes-of-blocking-honorary-kkk-member-from-ballot/An appeals court tossed out two different cases related to candidates appearing on the upcoming August Republican primary ballot. One case involved a Republican candidate for Governor who some were working to remove from the ballot on account of him being an honorary member of the Ku Klux Klan. Note that yer humble obedient scrivner is not exactly clear what honorary membership in the KKK actually involves. Clearly, there's no honor in being a member of the KKK so it isn't clear what the objection was in this case. Were those attempting to remove the candidate upset by the membership or were they upset because he apparently didn't actually make an effort to join, buy the hoodie merch and chip in monthly dues for cross burning expenses?
The second case tosseed by the same court involved an attempt by one county's Republican party to block eight candidates from appearing on its county ballot because they had refused to submit to that county Republican committe sufficient information required by that body to convince itself they were Republican enough. None of the stories involving this case delved into exactly what information is currently deemed suitable for proving one's Republicanism. Stealing candy from children? A trail of personal and business lawsuits? Prior campaign ads featuring automatic weapons and gunsight images?
It isn't clear what the underlying legal merits were in these cases because the appeals court made its decision to toss both cases on the simplest and least informative grounds available to it. It ruled those filing the suits had simply run out of time and that ballots cannot be changed in the last eight weeks prior to the election day.
The real concern with this ruling is that with this wider set of crazies appearing on the Republican primary ballot in a state that is HEAVILY Republican, it is very possible that an even crazier strain of Republicanism may find its way into county or state offices and the public may only find out who the true crazies are after they begin exercising power.
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/07/06/missouri-gop-snubs-state-convention-results-in-new-presidential-delegate-selections/It isn't just local and statewide office contests bringing out the crazy in the Mizzourah GOP. Republicans at the national and state levels have also been doing battle with each other over the process used to choose delegates to the upcoming national Republican convention. Previously, a failure by the Republican controlled Missouri State legislature to fund costs related to conducting a statewide primary election for President required the Democratic and Republican state parties to conduct their own Presidential caucuses in early 2024.
The Democratic party managed to devise an online registration flow that sent a paper ballot for voters to mail in, making its "caucus" far less of a hassle and more participatory than a conventional caucus. The Republicans opted for the least convenient, most anti-participatory style of caucus possible. Real caucus meetings in each county held on a Saturday that required participants to spend possibly hours for the process to complete, all as a means of ensuring the Oblate Orange One emerged as the winner.
The outcome of the Republican Presidential primary was never in doubt but that didn't stop Republicans from leveraging the process as a means to further demonstrate fealty to Trump and thus further demonstrate their own insanity and incompetence. After the actual caucus on March 2, the state Republican party met on May 4 to select the delegates who would attend the national convention. In the May 4 convention, the final list of delegates actually selected all self-identified as members of a "Truly Grassroots for Trump" slate. At some point after the May 4 convention, party officials apparently became confused about how these fifty-three individuals (27 at-large delegates and 26 alternates) wound up selected. It seems a different collection of individuals had been assumed to be "the" list of delegates yet the State Republican Chairman Nick Myers never introduced that slate for a vote and this "Grassroots" slate was put up and voted in instead.
The national Republican party had a sub-committee review the process and on July 6, that sub-committee tossed out the original slate "elected" on May 4 and instated a new slate with only five delegates from the May 4 slate appearing in the replacement slate. Said the sub-committee:
The contests committee ruled that “alarming irregularities” plagued the election at the Republican state convention in Springfield. It focused on a five-hour credentialing process that it said undermined confidence that the delegates on hand were those selected to attend the convention at county mass meetings.
ALARMING IRREGULARITIES. Really? What exactly did the national committee find alarming? The FIVE HOUR "credentialing process?" Or the fact that after a five hour credentialing process to admit delegates, the party still couldn't explain how slate B even came to a vote or identify after the fact who actually voted?
While totally on-brand for the current Republican Party anywhere in the country, the fact that a party so incompetent and possibly corrupt that it cannot manage security to access its own convention and cannot manage an open ballot for a process related to selecting a Presidential candidate should give pause for anyone. This is just a hint at the level of infighting to come as a corrupt Republican Party, already insulated from moderating ideas by years of gerrymandering, becomes more extreme as it pursues ever higher levels of ideological purity in its own ranks and spends less time focusing on ANYTHING that matters to the public at large.
WTH
