Unity, or Else

There is a peculiar strategy taking hold within the Republican establishment these days: nominate candidates Republican voters struggle to support, dismiss the convictions that make those voters Republicans in the first place, and then demand “unity” when Election Day rolls around.

When that doesn’t work, apparently the next step is yelling at them.

If you want Republicans to rally behind the nominee, perhaps you should care whether the nominee is someone Republicans can support without abandoning the convictions that made them Republicans in the first place.

That seems obvious. And yet here we are.

𝐍𝐄𝐖𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐊 

You cannot demand unity from voters while treating the principles that unite them as negotiable.

For years, the Republican establishment has seemed to take special pleasure in sticking freedom-loving conservatives with candidates who compromise our values and then presenting us with the same tired ultimatum: fall in line, or else.

And perhaps nowhere is the problem more obvious than with the nominee we are now being ordered to support.

Darline Graham Boggs Nordone did not arrive on the political scene after years of knocking doors, organizing precincts, fighting for the Republican platform or building a conservative record South Carolina Republicans could examine. Following the death of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, she was appointed by establishment puppet Gov. Henry McMaster to temporarily fill Graham’s Senate seat after President Trump publicly backed her for the vacancy. As previously reported by SC Confidential, Nordone has no previous political experience and little public record on major political issues.

And yet, almost immediately, came the expectation that Republican voters should rally around her candidacy for the seat permanently.

For many conservatives, that has been a difficult sell.

Conservatives have expressed concerns about her positions on abortion and DEI, her ignorance and dismissal of national security issues, as well as the considerable money from Democrat PACs spent in support of her campaign. 

These are not trivial issues to voters, for good reason.

And yet the response from much of the establishment has seemed less like, “Here is why she deserves your vote,” and more like, “She has an R beside her name. What more do you people want?”

Well, principles, for starters.

If the party wants voters to overlook a candidate’s political history (or lack thereof) along with positions they believe conflict with the Republican platform, it has every right to make that sales pitch.

But conservatives also have every right not to buy it.

𝐃𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊

And that is really the heart of this entire mess: you cannot sell voters a candidate they do not believe represents their values and then accuse the customers of disloyalty when they leave the store empty-handed.

Many Republican activists have rightfully had enough.

As we gear up for November 3rd, some conservatives are now considering writing in Ralph Norman instead of nominee Nordone. Others are considering voting third party. Some may simply sit this one out.

And what has been the establishment’s response to these voters?

Persuasion?

An honest examination of how we got here?

Perhaps a little soul-searching about why longtime Republican activists no longer feel represented by the Republican party?

Of course not.

Instead, they’ve chosen the bludgeon.

We are now being treated to endless warnings that failing to support the nominee amounts to electing a Democrat. A write-in vote for a conservative Republican, we are told, is somehow actually a vote for a Democrat.

That is an interesting bit of electoral alchemy.

It is made even more fascinating by the fact that many of the same establishment voices sounding the alarm about the catastrophic possibility of a Democrat winning a Senate seat routinely defend Republican legislators who vote WITH Democrats to kill Republican legislation.

Apparently voting for a conservative can make you a Democrat, but voting with Democrats does not.

Got it.

𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐘𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋

The fearmongering over a Democrat potentially winning this Senate seat, while simultaneously excusing Republicans who routinely help Democrats defeat Republican priorities, is a masterclass in hypocritical gaslighting.

At some point, someone has to say it:

The emperor wears no clothes.

And this is the bed the establishment made. Threatening those who refuse to lie in it will not manufacture the loyalty that years of compromise destroyed.

Because beneath all the noise is a very simple principle: a vote belongs to the voter.

No candidate is entitled to it. No political party owns it. And no voter should be shamed into surrendering it.

South Carolina gives voters a write-in option for a reason. If someone chooses to write in Ralph Norman, that voter has not “voted for the Democrat.” They have voted for Ralph Norman. You may believe that decision helps another candidate mathematically. You may think it is strategically unwise. You may make that argument until you are red the face.

But the vote still belongs to the person casting it.

And persuasion is still preferable to coercion.

𝐔𝐍𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐒

Unfortunately, the response to the write-in Ralph movement has now moved beyond scolding voters.

On its heels, we are witnessing what increasingly resembles a rabid witch hunt against Republican Party officers and delegates, led (rather deliciously) by some of the very people who never tire of preaching “unity.”

The particular offense in question is a party rule prohibiting officers from endorsing candidates other than the Republican nominee.

Fine. Rules are rules.

But if we are suddenly entering our strict constitutionalist era when it comes to party bylaws, perhaps someone should alert the rest of the SCGOP.

The selective outrage over which broken rules demand investigation, punishment and retribution, and which warrant a strategically averted gaze, is fascinating.

Standards are useful things. They become considerably less impressive when they are pulled out of storage only to discipline the people who have become inconvenient.

There’s a special kind of hypocrisy in watching members of what’s supposed to be the “Liberty Party” resort to brown-shirt bully tactics against anyone who refuses to swallow one more bite of whatever slop the establishment puts on their plate - claiming the mantle of conservatism while simping for the very Uniparty machine they pretend to oppose.

𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐄

For the record, I have not made an endorsement in next month’s election.

What I have endorsed, and will continue to defend, is the right of Republican voters to think for themselves, vote their conscience, and expect the people seeking their votes to earn them.

The establishment network would be wise to spend considerably less time hunting dissenters and considerably more time listening to them.

These voters are not necessarily abandoning the Republican Party.

Many of them are furious because they believe the Republican Party has abandoned the Republican Creed, the Republican Platform and the principles they were asked to fight for in the first place.

That distinction is important.

You do not rebuild their trust by calling them traitors. You do not inspire loyalty by threatening them. And you certainly do not create unity by demanding that one side continually compromise while the other side gets to define what “unity” means.

If Republican leadership wants conservative voters back in the fold, there is a remarkably simple solution:

Give them something worth uniting behind.

Because eventually, “vote for us or else” stops sounding like a political argument.

It starts sounding like an admission that you no longer have one.