David Duke, Marjorie Greene, and the State of the Republican Party

Marjorie Greene (R-GA)

If you find someone who nerds out about American elections, you'd be hard-pressed to ask about the 1991 gubernatorial election in Louisiana without a long lecture.  I'm an elections nerd, so I can't totally avoid a long conversation about it, but I will try to keep it brief.  Essentially, in 1991 Louisiana's Governor Buddy Roemer switched parties relatively close to the election (Democrat to Republican).  Roemer thus became unpopular with both parties, and as Louisiana has a jungle primary (where the top two winners advance to the general regardless of party) he was not the only Republican in the race, and had not been the only Democrat in the race.  The Republicans endorsed Rep. Clyde Holloway, and the Democrats backed former Gov. Edwin Edwards (who was scandal-plagued and eventually would go to prison), and so Roemer wasn't ensured a spot in the general.  With the Republicans splitting the vote, Edwards was an easy call for the first spot of the general, but Roemer slipped into third despite his incumbency, and it wasn't Holloway who made it into the second spot, but instead the state picked State Rep. David Duke (R), less known for his time in the state legislature and more known as the former Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Suffice it to say, this race went from random gubernatorial contest to attracting national headlines.  Duke was now the standard-bearer for the Republican Party, and had a decent shot of becoming the Governor of Louisiana.  Republicans had a choice-they either could endorse Edwards, losing the seat but in the process ensuring that an avowed white supremacist would not hold major political power in the country, or they could invite David Duke under their wing.  The Republicans ended up making the morally upstanding choice between the two; Gov. Roemer quickly endorsed Edwards, whom he had beaten just a few years prior to win the governorship in the first place, as did then-President George HW Bush, who called Duke unfit for office.  Edwards won in a landslide, and served a final, fourth term as governor.

Why am I bringing up a thirty-year-old election today?  Because the Republican Party appears to be in a similar situation in 2020, and while it hasn't attracted the sort of press that it did in 1991, it probably should.  Marjorie Greene, a Georgia businesswoman, has advanced to the primary runoff in Georgia's 14th congressional district.  This is a ruby red district, so winning the primary is tantamount to winning the general election.  Greene, though, is not your average hardcore Trump supporter-she is also a supporter of the conspiracy theory QAnon (which I had avoided learning about because I can only handle so much ridiculousness in my everyday life, but did research so I knew what I was talking about for this article).  QAnon believes that Donald Trump is part of a war against Democratic elites that will eventually lead to the arrest (or worse) of top leaders in the Democratic Party.  It involves a lot of elaborate conspiracies, almost all of which are founded on nothing more than anonymous symbols and, well, bullshit, and I would not recommend researching it further for fear it will cost you brain cells.  Greene is the second QAnon figure to receive electoral success-the first, Jo Rae Perkins, won the Republican nomination for the Senate in Oregon, but has virtually no chance of winning the seat against incumbent-Sen. Jeff Merkley, who will easily win in the blue state.  Greene, should she advance in the primary, would be a formidable favorite to win one of just 535 seats in Congress.

Greene is unacceptable as a congresswoman-it's embarrassing even in a district this red that she would have made it this far.  She's had her ads banned from Facebook and confronted David Hogg in person about his stance on gun control (yes, she harassed a teenage survivor of a school shooting to his face).  But instead of endorsing her primary opponent, or denouncing her beliefs, Donald Trump called her a "big winner" on Facebook and congratulated her for winning despite her ad being banned on Facebook.  Marjorie Greene is in many ways a David Duke moment, someone who is completely unacceptable to sit in Congress, and yet instead of taking the chance to endorse someone else or be bigger than party, Donald Trump cheers her on.

This is obviously not surprising.  Donald Trump has no moral backbone when it comes to acknowledging that someone who supports him could be "bad" (just look at Charlottesville or Kim Jong-Un or even David Duke himself), but it shouldn't be forgotten.  Polls show Joe Biden is favored to beat Trump in the coming months; hopefully that happens.  But even if it does, it's probable that Trump's legacy will live on in the fact that he allowed someone like Marjorie Greene, who has taken the next step further in Trumpism, gain major political power, something the Republican Party just a generation ago refused to do for the KKK.