The Future of the Republican Party

While you would think in the abstract that becoming increasingly uncompetitive in a state would cause Republicans to moderate, what generally happens is that they just give up and become more even more wingnutty. I see this is definitely happening in Virginia, where an incumbent House member has been replaced with a mini-Trump because he presided over a same-sex wedding:

Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who became a target of conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding last year, was ousted Saturday by GOP voters in a drive-thru district convention.

Convention-goers picked Bob Good, a former county supervisor who ran to Riggleman’s right, especially on social issues, to be the party’s nominee in the general election. Good won the support of 58 percent of delegates who voted on Saturday, the district GOP chairman, Melvin Adams, said.

Good’s victory came after a day-long convention held in the parking lot of a central Virginia church. He ran as a staunch social conservative, campaigning on a traditional view of marriage, his support to make English the official language of the U.S. and to end birthright citizenship.

I assume there’s a Federalist Society committee dedicated to coming up with “arguments” for why the 14th Amendment doesn’t mean what it says right now. Hey, they’ve already done it with the next one!

While on one level it’s good that Republicans are giving up on being competitive in Virginia, the very dark side here is that where they do retain power Republicans remain a major threat to LGBTQ people.