Splintered political movements can outpace their leaders, Trump included

Pennsylvania senatorial candidate Kathy Barnette’s tart pronouncement that Donald Trump is beholden to the people, the people are not beholden to Donald Trump was notable in that — after speaking such heresy — she remained a semi-viable contender in the Republican primary to the end.

One in five Pennsylvania Republicans apparently agreed that the movement was bigger than the man, a troubling philosophy for the man himself, for whom the details of the movement matter little, so long as he’s the head of it.

Sensing this threat, Trump warned that Barnette “has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted." In response — and you might want to be sitting down for this explanation — Barnette blamed the mainstream media, saying that the press had irresponsibly failed to expose her closeted skeletons.

“It's the job of the media to do the vetting," Barnette told Steve Bannon. "And they've been derelict in their duty like they are derelict in so many other things. It's not my job. It's not my fault that they didn't vet me.”

Uh, OK. This argument is so out-there, not even Trump had thought of that one.

To Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Barnette conjured memories of 2010 and Christine “I Am Not a Witch” O'Donnell, who was a member of a lightweight class of GOP senatorial candidates that got rolled in November and kept the chamber in Democratic control.

It seems almost quaint that, back then, O’Donnell was ridiculed for calling masturbation a sin. Overthrowing democracy was still a decade away.

The Pennsylvania senatorial primary gave us the full smorgasbord: Pretend MAGA, mainstream MAGA and what President Biden calls ultra-MAGA.

To a normal person, the differences among Barnette, Mehmet Oz and David McCormick might seem indiscernible when not under a microscope. With policy issues so far in the rearview mirror, personality and rhetoric become the driving forces in elections, and in political movements themselves.

McCormick’s resume was riddled with the Deep State and corporate elite connections that generally spell an instant disqualification in the modern conservative. Establishment Republicans may be breathing a sigh of relief, but if he wins it will only be because MAGA and ultra-MAGA split the remaining vote. Trump favorite Oz seemed to know the MAGA lyrics but not the tune, an inauthenticity that was OK with the former president, who has never minded phonies as long as they’re his phonies.

But it wasn’t good enough for ultra-MAGA, which believes in the sanctity of Trump’s ideas more than Trump does. And while the current GOP factions each have their constituencies, the big question is how well these constituencies unite in November.

During the French Revolution, the initial wave of anti-royalists — who had reasonable ideas about democracy and liberty — was quickly overrun by a more radical sect, which was itself overrun. Everyone was suspicious of everyone. The radical Jean-Paul Marat wound up dead in his bathtub, killed not by a royalist, but by a slightly less hysterical member of his own tribe, who had slightly different views of the way things should ultimately be.

If history is a guide, Barnette’s movement is a more serious threat to Trumpism than are the progressives, who can’t organize a two-float parade. Barnette offers Trump no ill will — he is free to come along into the increasingly dark rabbit hole of conspiracy and hate. But it’s clear that if he doesn’t, the radical wing has no compunction about leaving him behind.

In May of 2022 it seems impossible that MAGA will at some point find Trump expendable. But in May 1791, the French would have said the same about Robespierre.

The hallmark of any radical movement is division among its ultra-passionate adherents. Small rifts that are overlooked when the movement needs every vote it can get, suddenly become yawning chasms once power has been achieved.

How bad could things get? The dependably MAGA Supreme Court seems radical now, but surely it will, at some point, issue a decision that is not radical enough for the extreme right. What happens then?

Andrew Jackson, upon hearing of a court decision he didn’t like reportedly said, “(Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Is there anything in ultra-MAGA’s history that makes you think they would feel bound to do as the court ordered?

And how many milliseconds would ultra-MAGA be in power before destroying the filibuster, which mainstream conservatives say is so precious to maintaining public order?

In the French Revolution, ever-more-radical elements sent those past leaders, now not-radical-enough, to the guillotine until the arrival of Napoleon who, while an authoritarian, was at least predictable.

The radical movement by then was too exhausted or too dead to fight back. The great revolutionary and intellectual Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, asked about his greatest accomplishment of the revolution, answered simply, “I survived.”

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Splintered political movements can outpace leaders, Trump included