We all know what a “MAGA Republican” looks like–he’s the guy who wants to burn it down. He wants to give Donald Trump unlimited power to impose a reactionary agenda on America regardless of what the majority of Americans think, because, after all, tens of millions of them are not “real Americans.” Lying about the 2020 election and taking steps to rig the 2024 contest are just steps in getting from Point A to Point B.
As Biden correctly noted, many Republicans are not “MAGA Republicans” by this definition. How should we deal with the evil kind? There are two broad choices:
- Try to split the “MAGA Republicans” from the rest; or
- Identify the OK kind of Republicans as “MAGA Republican” enablers, and call on the electorate to reject them both in order to save American liberal democracy.
Biden started his speech by drawing a clear distinction between “MAGAs” and others, which is consistent with #1, but he subsequently implied that anyone who rejects the Democrats’ position on a variety of controversial substantive issues is a “MAGA,” which is consistent with #2, but makes the “MAGA” distinction irrelevant.
The two alternatives are mutually exclusive. Making both arguments at the same time makes no sense. The Democrats need to either tone down the rhetoric and make concessions to relatively moderate Republicans in order to save liberal democracy, or ramp up the pressure and call the entire GOP a threat to the system in order to drive up turnout and elect more Democrats.