WAPO OP ED: Lindsey Graham's shocking admission about Trump blows up a big GOP argument

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/07/lindsey-graham-fox-news-2022-midterms/

(Demonstrates the convoluted GOP path back to winning)

Opinion by Greg Sargent Columnist May 7, 2021 at 10:02 a.m. EDT

What Lindsey Graham revealed
First, it exposes the hollowness of the Trumpist economic populist nationalism Graham himself references. A handful of Republicans are crafting a “conservative populism” designed to keep alive this Trumpist appeal to the working class.

Second, Graham’s comments are strikingly revealing about the GOP midterm playbook. The New York Times reports that as part of this strategy, Republicans are mostly avoiding talking about President Biden’s covid-19 relief bill and plans for big infrastructure investments, because they’re popular.

But, as the Times notes, this effort to win back suburbanites will be badly complicated by the need to energize the large numbers of GOP voters who remain “fiercely loyal” to Trump and “want the party to represent his values.” The blowup over Cheney has demonstrated that this is a “difficult balance to achieve.”

Why Liz Cheney is such a problem
But why might Cheney be complicating this strategy? Because it reveals the radicalization of the Republican Party, in tandem with the GOP base’s continued thraldom to Trump, exactly the figure who drove away those suburbanites in the first place.

From me: It's choice time: Their voters like Biden's initiatives, so, they have to find someone else to vilify: Is it the squishy middle voters who elected Biden, or the hard-core Qanon insurrectionist conspiracy theorists? Wither way, they're screwed.