Pierce: Will the Republican Base Own Itself Again?

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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19496799/don-blankenship-republican-west-virginia/

Will the Republican Base Own Itself Again?
Roy Moore is so 2017. Here comes Don Blankenship.
By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 20, 2018


I have to admit that, after a few days of following the doomed Roy Moore campaign around Alabama before Christmas, I’m starting to feel very warmly toward the Republican base. It has gone so far around the bend that it’s lapping itself. It has gone so far off the track that it’s caught another train coming in the opposite direction. But Republicans have proven themselves so stubborn in their lunatic convictions that they believe they can walk across any abyss on the air itself. God love these people.

I thought that riding the Gadsden Mall Creeper all the way into the ground was as wild a strategy as I ever saw, but it’s entirely possible that they’ve found a path that leads even deeper into the wild kingdom. It’s in West Virginia, and it’s hard to believe. As you know, Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, is up for re-election and the Republicans saw him as a nice fat target in what might be a bad year. However, they had not reckoned with the ambitions—and, curiously, the appeal—of the walking embodiment of the New Gilded Age. From Politico:

During separate meetings with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, aides to Blankenship’s two primary opponents, Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, pointed to Blankenship’s traction and questioned what could be done to stop him. The Senate GOP campaign arm, which heard out the appeals, recently commissioned a survey to gauge the coal king’s electoral strength and determine his staying power in the race. Those familiar with the party’s deliberations say the results are clear: With a little more than a month until the May 8 primary, Blankenship, a towering figure in West Virginia politics long before this campaign and an avid opponent of unions, has vaulted into essentially a three-way tie with his rivals and is positioned to move ahead

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This is glorious. Blankenship is the guy who went to federal prison for a year because his mines were so dangerous that one of them blew up in 2010 and killed 29 people.

Since then, he’s been on an expensive campaign to convince America that he’s simply a victim of both circumstance and Barack Obama. This Senate campaign is a big part of that. And, mirabile dictu, it seems to be working.

Blankenship’s rise has been driven in part by his self-financed TV ads. Since launching his campaign in late November, Blankenship has spent over $1.1 million on roughly a dozen commercials, according to media buying totals, far surpassing his opponents. Morrisey has so far spent nothing on TV ads and Jenkins only about $38,000. Blankenship has used the ads to paint his rivals as insufficiently conservative, blasting Jenkins over his positions on Obamacare and climate change and Morrisey on abortion. He’s positioned himself as an unshakable ally of President Donald Trump, who received 68 percent of the vote in the state. Yet he has also undertaken an effort to clear his name. The spots have accused the Obama administration and Manchin — who was governor at the time of the mine disaster and has said Blankenship has “blood on his hands” — of conspiring to imprison him. He has also featured testimonials from his daughter, Jennifer, who’s described her father as a soft-hearted family man and provider for West Virginians.

So the guy who loves completely deregulated capitalism even when it kills a couple dozen people, and someone who believes he was the real victim in the explosion that killed those couple dozen people? Don Blankenship is straight out of central casting, if your casting director is the unbridled, rampaging Republican Id. And that is not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

National Republicans have been struck by the potency of Blankenship’s campaign. Earlier this year, Blankenship and his longtime political strategist, Greg Thomas, traveled to Washington to meet with the White House political affairs office. During the meeting, Blankenship described his battles with Manchin and outlined how he’d used his deep pockets to fund Republican campaigns in a state that until the past decade had been dominated by Democrats. White House officials, who’ve also met with Jenkins and Morrisey, came away thinking that Blankenship was for real.

The numbers are so ugly right now that you can’t half-blame them for being curious about any Republican whose breath clouds the mirror. But, really, people? Don Blankenship? Did somebody lose Bernie Madoff’s phone number?