The Primary Reasons Congress Is So Extreme

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The Primary Reasons Congress Is So Extreme

How Extreme Fringes Came to Control Congress

Lost decorum, religious “my path is the only path” zeal, billionaires using their cash to keep taxes low while promoting pet but extreme positions, the anonymity of the Internet, the ability to avoid unpleasant truths with severe media filtration, the search for simple solutions to complex solutions (lots of outsourcing of personal opinions to passionate zealots) and a whole lot of “the ends justify the means” justification. Change is threatening, especially where there is a perception that “you” are being left behind or replaced.

The recent flood of lifetime appointed federal judges who simply have elevated extreme personal beliefs, often anchored in the rationale of deep-felt religious convictions that even overrule constitutional restrictions, has not helped. Courts have been particularly instrumental in making sure extremists with rightwing beliefs are well-armed with few restrictions. The litany of Supreme Court cases reinterpreting a very old Second Amendment have certainly given even the most extreme factions access to military-grade assault weapons. The sustaining of voter restrictions and gerrymandering, a boon almost exclusively to Republican candidates, and their according of virtually unrestricted flows of money into campaign issues has literally shifted the red states into MAGA-only representation. Is the MAGA GOP the true RINO faction?

Why? Extreme and uncompromising candidates seldom had access to the donations they would need to mount a credible primary campaign. When the Supreme Court issued Citizens United vs FEC in 2010, extremist candidates simply followed billionaires espousing extreme causes to find their sponsors. That wealth has pretty much erased the power of traditional fiscal and social conservative Republicans, replacing their political power with pure MAGA conspiracy theories and white Chistian nationalists.

Indeed, as Will Carless, writing for USA-Today (March 7th) notes: “Trump has ramped up his spiritual imagery. He told a convention of religious broadcasters last week that he was ‘taking bullets’ for Christians. ‘They want to tear down crosses where they can,’ Trump said of his opponents. ‘But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.’…The concept of Christian nationalism — technically, the belief that the secular government should favor Christianity or even be replaced by it — existed long before Trump’s rise to power. But experts said the former president’s embrace of the movement and his increasing use of Christian nationalist language is something altogether new.

“The fervor for Christian nationalist ideology has catalyzed an active political movement, experts in both religion and extremism told USA TODAY. So while they have long been alarmed about Christian nationalist ideas, they see the new movement as an army of sorts, ready for a mission, with Trump as its general. They’re worried about what action the most extreme members could be directed to take if he wins – or loses – in November.

“The contemporary movement has created its own doctrines, including one known as the ‘Seven Mountain Mandate.’… This concept – which followers believe originated with a message from God to a trio of evangelists in 1975, and which became popular in the early 2000s – proposes that American Christians should seek to dominate seven ‘mountains’ of modern society: religion, education, family, media, entertainment, business, and government…

“At the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, referring to Trump, far-right influencer Charlie Kirk declared: ‘Finally we have a president that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence’… ‘God created government,’ Parke said on the show, which the host also often uses to promote QAnon conspiracy theories, ‘And that's why he is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now.’ And experts agree that the recent leap from fringe idea to fundamental motivator comes from the popularity of a single person – Donald Trump.” Trump’s character is hardly representative of Christian values. But this is a “Christian movement in name only.” This is bad enough, but the very notion of partisan primaries has added fuel to this extremist “use any means necessary to take over” mission statement.

Writing for the March 3rd New York Times, Nick Toriano explains how this works: “The average U.S. House district encompasses about 590,000 people of voting age. How many of them would you expect to cast a ballot for their representative in Congress? Half? A quarter?

“In 2020, the representative for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District was effectively chosen by 43,813 people who voted for the winner of the Republican primary — just 8% of eligible voters. In 2018, the representative for New York’s 14th District was chosen by 16,898 people who voted for the winner of the Democratic primary — just 5% of eligible voters. In these districts, one deep red and the other deep blue, the dominant party’s primary was the only election that mattered.

“Since their initial victories with those slim totals, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have significantly affected the priorities and direction of their parties, pushing them toward ideological extremes. And both MTG and AOC are beneficiaries of the prevailing partisan primary system, which strongly favors candidates who can appeal to a paltry yet passionate base in a lopsided district.

Nonpartisan primaries like the one California holds Tuesday are a rare exception — one that can show us the way to national political reform… Greene and Ocasio-Cortez are far from alone. “Research by Unite America found that only 8% of voters nationwide cast ballots in the primaries that determined 83% of House contests… How? First, 83% of congressional districts are, like AOC’s and MTG’s, considered “safe” for one party or the other. While some of this has to do with gerrymandering, most districts are uncompetitive because of the increasing partisan divide between urban areas (which lean Democratic) and rural areas (which lean Republican)… You might think we have a two-party system in America, but in most parts of the country, we really have two one-party systems. In these places, primaries are the only elections of consequence.

“Second, very few voters participate in primaries. That’s because 22 states prevent independents from voting in primaries, according to a recent Unite America Institute report, disenfranchising 23.5 million registered independents. And this problem is only getting worse: The share of voters not registered with a major political party has increased nearly 20% since 2010… Primaries not only determine the winners of most elections but also give disproportionate power to tiny, fringe factions. The result: More of our elected officials are less representative of America and less willing to work with the other party to solve problems.”

All of these distortions are built into the system without taking into account the manipulative mendacity of malign artificial intelligence audio-visual political productions or the targeted and often automated election interference of nations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. We did all of this to ourselves where even the prestigious UK The Economist labels the United States as an unrepresentative “flawed democracy.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is clear that a rather large segment of Americans are fighting for a clear white Christian nationalist theocracy to replace democracy, and if the rest of us do not react against this powerful trend, American democracy will be relegated to the history books…which will undoubtedly be censored.