A gratifying response to the absolute disaster last Tuesday has been the fact that Republicans in general have started a good-faith debate about what the hell happened and what we should do next. Oh yeah, there are some schmucks in there gloating, and a few grifters are trying to leverage the disaster to resurrect their garbage Bush-era brand of uniparty decline, but they don’t count. Mike Pence, for example, weighed in, but he weighs nothing — the guy couldn’t be more of a lightweight, and the notion that anyone cares what Mike Pence says, whose name isn’t Mike Pence, is positively hilarious.
We’re going to be hashing this out for a while. One of the things to consider among dozens of factors is the total failure of the kind of “normal” Republican that is supposedly the common-sense, adult-in-the-room alternative to those wacky MAGA guys who allegedly blow easy layup elections. Yet, if you look at who blew easy layup elections, and some not-so-easy layup elections this time, the real surprises came from those staid and steady Republicans that don’t upset the women or the horses. I mean, look at Mike Rogers. Is there a more mellow Republican than Mike Rogers? The guy makes Mitt Romney look like GG Allin. Trigger Warning: Do not look up GG Allin.
For example, take Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) – I’d add “Please,” but the voters have already taken her, as in “out like the trash.” Again, we’re talking about Mississippi here. We’re talking about a Republican losing in Mississippi. How do you lose in Mississippi? Well, you run somebody like Cindy Hyde-Smith. She’s the most generic Republican imaginable. But she’s also a Republican who didn’t care. Now that’s not my assessment. That’s the assessment of Mississippi’s heavily Republican, super-red voters who rejected her in favor of a Democrat. Pundit Will Chamberlain pointed out an amazing ad by her opponent that took her comment about high beef prices, in which she suggested that unhappy voters choose a different protein, and suggested they choose a different senator instead. Yes. Absolutely. How can she be so tone-deaf?