Retiring the Demagogue: A Strategy for Spring

The best time to beat the Demagogue and remove him from contention is not in the runup to the 2024 presidential election. It’s not in the general congressional elections this November. It’s this spring, and it begins now. Here’s why and how.

The Demagogue has little power over Democrats or Independents. Even his still-astonishing power over Republicans is contingent. It depends on his ability to select and endorse winning primary challengers to sitting members of Congress—for House members every two years. To a lesser extent, it depends on his power to raise money through his fanatically loyal base.

The money should not trouble us. Although a lot in a political off-year, it’s a pittance by business standards, let alone for oligarchs. The Demagogue reportedly raised an early-2021 record amount of $3.5 million in a single day, after his speech before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) last year. But any one of our richest oligarchs could donate $1 billion to defeat him. That’s almost the same amount for every day until the 2022 general election.

Would Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who each have pledged $30 billion to charity, step up to save our democracy? I hope so. Maybe Jeff Bezos and/or Elon Musk would chip in. A broken democracy, national dissolution or a second civil war would be bad for business; yet that’s exactly what would follow a second “win” by the Demagogue resulting from electoral fraud or trickery or open subversion of the popular vote.

The real problem—and the source of the Demagogue’s enduring power over Republican leaders—is credible threats. A number of Republicans who tried to break free have gotten death threats from the Demagogue’s extremist followers. More directly, he has threatened to remove sitting Republican members of Congress from office by “primarying” them if they oppose him.

So far, all but a few have knuckled under or announced their retirement. Some of the intimidated have privately expressed a desire to break free, but all are afraid. Break that fear, and the Demagogue’s power over the party he commandeered vanishes. But how?

The earliest and best chance is this spring’s Republican primaries. If most or all of the Demagogue’s anointed loyalists lose, normal Republicans may examine their backsides and discover they had spines all along. They could save their party and, with it, our democracy.

Defeating the Demagogues’ primary champions will require unusual cooperation among traditional Republicans and Independents. Instead of staying home on primary day, ordinary Republicans will have to turn out in record numbers and vote to preserve their party and their democracy. Independents and Democrats can cross-register as Republicans and vote for moderate Republican candidates, unallied with the Demagogue. (They can re-register later as they choose, before the general election or later.)

Some Democrats might think this strategy is self-defeating. If too successful, it might elect more Republicans to Congress, even flip the House. But that view ignores the Demagogue’s existential threat to American Democracy. Getting rid of him is Job One. After that, voters can pick up the pieces of the Republican Party and make a new start. Who knows? No longer fearing the Demagogue’s wrath, moderate Republicans might even try to get some bipartisan things done.

The key to making all this work is a simple statistical fact. Only about one-third of eligible voters generally participate in party primaries. That fact underlies almost all the extremism, divisiveness and antagonism of American politics today. True believers turn out in primaries to select the champions of each party. By the time the general election rolls around, hapless party regulars are faced with a Hobson’s choice: voting for their own extremist or for the other side’s.

This simple fact is responsible for much of today’s political division and dysfunction. But it also offers a simple arithmetic solution: get just one-half of the refraining moderates to turn out in primaries, and you have a jump ball. Get a few more of them to vote, and/or some Independents and Democrats to cross-register, and moderate (aka “normal”) Republicans can win the party nomination. A small cohort of re-registered Dems and Independents can help Republicans save their party and the nation.

There are other reasons for striking early, this spring. The more time lapses, the more time the Demagogue has to downplay the Insurrection and his part in it and get voters to forget. The more time he and his followers have to intimidate resistant Republicans. And this spring is also a time when the Demagogue is likely to be preoccupied with criminal indictments, civil suits, and a possible criminal referral from the House committee investigating the Insurrection. So it’s a good time to strike.

No one should expect gratitude for making all this happen, even if it saves the Republican party from itself. Republicans are not known for gratitude, but for seizing every opportunity, fair and unfair, that comes their way. Saving the nation from authoritarian government, loss of democracy, dissolution of the Union, or civil war should be its own reward.

All it would take is a little organization and fund-raising by experienced operatives to get started. I’m not an organizer, but I’m ready to contribute right now.

Endnote: There is one dark source of the Demagogue’s power that voters alone can’t fight. It’s death threats and other personal intimidation aimed at Republican pols and their families. Republicans who fail to tow the Demagogue’s line have reportedly suffered both. (For a former Republican insider’s view of the depths to which the Demagogue’s loyalists have sunk, watch the Deutsche Welle feature “Is the US on the Brink of Civil War?” available on YouTube.)

Here the Justice Department and FBI can help. They can make the crime of threatening a politician or a pol’s family with death or bodily harm a top priority for prosecution. They can publicize indictments and convictions widely. They can set up (and publicize) special units for investigating and prosecuting these crimes.

Congress also can help by beefing up existing criminal law as necessary, allowing for private civil suits, and generously funding the special investigation and prosecution units. Since Republican pols are apparently the main recipients of these threats, beefed-up laws might pass with truly bipartisan support.

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