Republicans in Michigan
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Here’s a heartwarming story for you:
The Michigan Republican Party is starving for cash. A group of prominent activists — including a former statewide candidate — was hit this month with felony charges connected to a bizarre plot to hijack election machines. And in the face of these troubles, suspicion and infighting have been running high. A recent state committee meeting led to a fistfight, a spinal injury and a pair of shattered dentures.
This turmoil is one measure of the way Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have rippled through his party. While Mr. Trump has just begun to wrestle with the consequences of his fictions — including two indictments related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 results — the vast machine of activists, donors and volunteers that power his party has been reckoning with the fallout for years.
As the party looks toward the presidential election next year, the strains are glaring.
Mr. Trump’s election lies spread like wildfire in Michigan, breaking the state party into ardent believers and pragmatists wanting to move on. Bitter disputes, power struggles and contentious primaries followed, leaving the Michigan Republican Party a husk of itself.
The battleground has steadily grown safer for Democrats. No Republican has won a statewide election there since Mr. Trump won the state in 2016. (Republicans have won nonpartisan seats on the State Supreme Court.) G.O.P. officials in the state are growing concerned that they do not have a top-tier candidate to run for the open Senate seat.
While Trump’s election denialism and the kookiness encouraged by now-extinct gerrymanders were major factors, I’d also cite Dobbs and an excellent Democratic governor. (Irrespective of what you think opened the field it’s really impressive what Democrats in both Michigan and Minnesota have been doing.)
In related news, I bring you the dying gasp of the segment of the anti-anti Trump “left” that pretended to see an existential difference between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for reasons that are not hard to parse:
Sure, Gretchen Whitmer is the first governor in decades to sign a repeal of right-to-work legislation, but critical pro-labor policy outcomes ugatz I WAS PROMISED A LEFT DISCOURSE BASED ON HATING LIBERAL WHINEMOMS!