Thread by @RadioFreeTom

So, this is a small story about #RhodeIsland politics, and my position about voting out the GOP down to the grass roots - and how local actions have consequences for national parties. /1

A few years back, some folks on here thought I was pretty hard-assed for voting against a local GOP candidate for RI House. She should have been my ideal pick: A PhD in poli sci (I knew her work back in the day. It was good stuff.) Pro-choice, pro-business. /2

But she was a Trump delegate to the GOP convention - even though she said she wrote in Carly Fiorina. (Whatever.) I told her directly that I believed in starving the GOP for support until it cleaned house on Trumpism. A year later, she runs for GOP state chair. /3

Her backer for chair was a Trump-adjacent GOP senate challenger and former mayor named Fung. Also working the phones for her? Local guy named... Sean Spicer. As you can see, Fung elicited the standard Trump endorsement from her:
providencejournal.com/news/20190330/…
/4

Without any elected base to work from, the GOP chair ends up being a former town council president. Losing two elections helped keep someone who caved and went for Trump's support from becoming a state GOP official. This is how it works. This was the point. /5

The RI GOP, of course, is and will likely remain microscopic. The point is to early on to act to prevent a future GOP from looking like the current one: You oppose anyone who wasn't openly opposing Trump from the get-go, and especially if they bent the knee later. /6

"But what about my local GOP officials" isn't a thing in a party this is, from top to bottom, a cult of personality. Even if it seems pointless, making GOP candidates pay right at the grass roots level is how you clear the party for the entry of new people later on. /7x