Thread by @mattsheffield

The Washington Post contacted all 249 Republicans in the Senate and asked them who won the 2020 presidential election. Only 10% told the truth that Biden did. 1% of them lied and said Trump won. Let's talk about the 89% who refused to answer.

Before I start the thread here, here's the link to the WaPo piece for those who haven't seen it yet: washingtonpost.com/politics/surve…

The 221 GOP members know that Biden won. It's blatantly obvious. Fear of Trump is a factor but it's more than that.

Despite their posturing, it is conservatives who practice "political correctness" much more than liberals.

In Republican politics, the cardinal sin is to disagree with the far right. To be accused of being a Republican In Name Only (RINO) is political death. You must not depart from the herd under any circumstances.

Trump survived impeachment because he realized this. Nixon didn't.

Likewise in conservative media, you will have no career if you view your purpose as to inform or educate rather than to support conservative political leaders. It's why people at RedState, Townhall, Breitbart and elsewhere have been fired or forced to leave.

Because there is no power or media advocating conservative centrism, for the past 50 years, GOP elites have viewed the far right as a sort of Golem, a creature from Jewish folklore: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

Golems are powerful but unintelligent. They can be useful or dangerous.

The far right golem was created essentially by William F. Buckley Jr. who established a dictum that Republicans should support the "furthest right" candidate who can win. This was a dangerous idea because it made extremists the GOP's conscience.

Buckley's injunction was useful to him in the mid-20th century when he and others at National Review were up against a powerful moderate tradition. But now that the moderates have been extinguished for decades, it is why the GOP keeps getting crazier and crazier.

This has been an ongoing process for 50 years but Trump has vastly accelerated it.

Since the right-wing center of gravity is on the far-right, Trump realizes that he can make the GOP do anything just by commanding far-right loyalty. This is why the members fear to answer.

Whoops. Forgot to type House also. My mistake.

The far-right base of the GOP has been the key to conservative electioneering. One GOP consultant privately told me that he was never interested in getting a majority of the public, just a majority of the voters. They all think this, even if they won't admit it.

We don't have the final adjusted exit poll data but it's worth noting that as the numbers of white evangelicals have declined over the decades, their share of the electorate has remained the same, 26%. This has happened bc GOP elites deliberately lie to them to encourage voting.

And by deliberate lying, I'm referring to things like claiming reading the Bible will be a hate crime, that Democrats want to "criminalize Christianity," that Obama was going to build concentration camps, that he was born in Africa, etc.

Trump's embrace of the birther lie, which he never believed himself, showed early on how he figured out the "one weird trick."

But the problem of lying for decades is that eventually people with even more drastic lies come along. And now, even Trump is up against this.

Trump and his allies desperately want to win the GA Senate run-off elections but now they're up against even more deceitful and deluded people, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood among them, who are telling GA conservatives not to vote.

Trump thought they could be useful to his selfish desire to remain in power but even they grew too crazy for him and he had to formally cut Powell off his strikeout force.

But golems don't just go away. They're too powerful and too literal-minded. They go for the assigned task.

And here's the thing: Win or lose in Georgia, the far right will be empowered. If Loeffler and/or Perdue lose, then it proves the conspiracy theory. If they win, then it means the nutjobs defeated the Hugo Chavez voting machines. Win-win.

Despite Trump's personal fear of losing, he subconsciously understands that losing is actually integral to American conservatism.

From the Scopes Monkey Trial down to today, fundamentalist Christians have seen themselves losing to the "godless left."

That's why Trump will absolutely talk publicly about running again in 20204. The Christian right sees itself very similar to the ancient Christians being fed to the Romans' lions.

Fighting obviously delusional political battles has become the new form of Christian "witness."

GOP elites, who are not moderate let's be clear, don't see their actions in this way, but they realize that a radicalized minority of fundamentalists are the only way their anti-government views have any chance at all of winning. That's also why they won't speak up against Trump.

Once he's finally out of office, Trump will get some criticism from Republicans but if he stokes the 2024 fires, it will be less than it naturally would. He'll essentially got GOP elites in a hostage situation. And Fox News as well. /end

Oh and I realized I made two typos, forgetting to type "and House" in the first tweet and then saying 20204 by mistake. Sorry about that. But I'm guessing those will be the only things conservative who read this thread will reply about.

The serendipity is perfect. Trump literally distilled this thread in a few seconds. US conservatism is about whining and persecution complexes:

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1335401627050795008?s=20