Pedophilia
Marjorie Taylor Green is a money-raising machine.
She has enormous grass-roots support among GOP voters.
The media is making a fuss over comments by U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R. Ga). She stepped over the line this week by making the same mistake made by U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R. NC). She included Republicans in her attacks on politicians. Cawthorn said he was invited to cocaine and sex parties by unnamed, but apparently fellow-GOP Members of Congress. It is one thing to make casual accusations against Democrats, but this implicated Republicans. He got taken to the woodshed by Kevin McCarthy. Marjorie Taylor Green also went too far in tweets about the three U.S. Senators who announced they would vote to confirm Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court. Her accusations weren't casual.
Marjorie Taylor Green is a gift to Democrats. She, like Trump, hurts the GOP brand. This blog has asserted that Trump's unhinged mono-mania about the 2020 election is the single best asset for Democrats. Democrats have the headwind of Biden's inarticulate feebleness, but Republicans have the headwind of Trump's mono-mania. This gives Democrats a chance to avoid the normal off-year oscillation away from the party in the White House.
Marjorie Taylor Green is a firebrand and un-typical of Republican officeholders, but the Jackson confirmation hearings demonstrated that she is not an outlier. Most GOP politicians do not oppose her. They follow in her draft. She is saying--crudely--things Republicans believe. Or sort of believe. Or at least refuse to say they do not believe. Senators Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, and Lee all have obvious presidential ambitions. They picked up the pro-pedophile theme and used it repeatedly in criticizing Jackson in her senate confirmation hearings.
To most Americans Marjorie Taylor Green's comments sound "ludicrous," as the L.A. Times headline reports, quoting Senator Susan Collins of Maine: "She obviously can say whatever she wishes, but that’s clearly ludicrous and sadly typical of what I expect of her."
There is a reason ambitious GOP senators would pick up a pedophilia theme that is so extreme and viscous on its face that it is surely a net-negative for most voters. It is opposite of sober Pence, who represents a return to solid, conservative GOP sanity. Yet ambitious senators are crowding into the MTG-adjacent lane, not Pence's. Why? Because the kinds of things Marjorie Taylor Green says are not ludicrous to many Republicans.
A significant number of GOP voters tell pollsters at PRRI, the independent and non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, that they believe the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.
Really. Satan-worshiping pedophiles.
Public belief in Q-Anon themes persisted throughout 2021 and continue into 2022. It has not exhausted itself over time, nor in Trump's absence from the White House. Q-Anon believers represent a significant plurality of the GOP primary election voter. Q-Anon believers and mostly-agreers skew toward poorer and less educated Americans, especially in the American South. Believers primarily watch Fox, Newsmax, and One America News. Q-Anon believers skew Republican, with 25% of all Republicans believing the major themes of the Q-Anon message. The presidential candidate who has the support of that block can win the GOP nomination.
The message in yesterday's blog post, and in many previous to that, is that the brands and policies of the two parties are being shaped by their extremes. Politicians hoping to appeal to the general electorate first need to be compliant with the reliable, activist partisan voter. For Republicans in 2022, that means making the claim that pedophilia--possibly by Satan-worshipers--is a widespread problem carried out by people who represent the Democratic establishment, most recently Judge Jackson.
Do Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, and Lee believe Judge Jackson is pedophilia-friendly? Of course not. But they say it because a lot of GOP voters want to hear it because they believe it. Or sort of believe it.