Republicans have mastered the politics of opposition

Republicans have mastered the politics of opposition

By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Today at 12:57 p.m. EDT

Not long ago, Republicans were a party in disarray. They had lost the presidency, the House and the Senate. They regularly expressed the fear that if they didn’t support efforts to overturn elections, their most extreme supporters would literally kill them and their families. Donald Trump, deeply unpopular and perhaps the greatest sore loser in history, still held them in his grip.

But now they have their groove back.

The GOP is still in many ways a chaotic mess. But Republicans are demonstrating their mastery of opposition politics. They’re like an experienced team of technicians deftly using their finely honed tools to mix ingredients and produce a chemical reaction. What they’re manufacturing happens to be a cloud of poison, but boy do these folks know what they’re doing.

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Consider Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. It’s a committee stocked with Republicans who have mastered the art of fake outrage and will likely run for president in 2024 if Trump opts out: Ted Cruz (Tex.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.).

Garland was peppered with questions about various inane right-wing preoccupations (What is he doing about Hunter Biden? Will he prosecute Anthony S. Fauci?), but what really had the senators animated was a memo that the Department of Justice released a few weeks ago instructing federal prosecutors to work with local officials to address threats and intimidation directed at school board members and educators.

That memo made clear that the department wouldn’t restrict anyone’s First Amendment rights, but the conservative elite knew political gold when they saw it. They immediately began telling their gullible audiences that President Biden’s Justice Department wanted to brand every concerned parent a terrorist.

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So Wednesday’s hearing turned into a truly epic performance of pretend indignation. Sasse and Cruz denounced “the politicization of the DOJ.” Hawley accused Garland of seeking to prosecute parents merely “because they want to be involved in their children’s education.” Hawley and Cotton both called on him to resign, “in disgrace,” as Cotton put it.

From a substantive standpoint, the hearing was not particularly consequential: No new information was revealed, and no legislation will result because of it. Yet on Fox News, the central hub of the conservative media wheel, they treated the hearing as though it was as important as the moon landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Fox carried parts of the hearing live, then recycled the sound bites from Republican senators over and over throughout the day and into the next. Senators were then brought on Fox shows to recount their triumphant battle; other Fox hosts made the hearing the subject of extended rants.

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Meanwhile, throughout the conservative world, the issue of “education” — i.e., the rage of conservative parents over the idea that their children might be taught that racism is something more than a 19th-century curiosity — has consumed the right. On National Review, you could find half a dozen articles just on Wednesday and Thursday about the Garland hearing and its associated issues.

Teachers across the country are caught in the middle of the latest flash point in America's culture war: critical race theory. Here's what it entails. (Adriana Usero, Drea Cornejo, Brian Monroe/The Washington Post)

This is happening while Glenn Youngkin, the party’s candidate for governor in Virginia, has decided to center his campaign on the supposed threat of critical race theory. The closeness of that race has convinced everyone on the right that this issue will be extremely profitable for them, paying untold dividends in rage and resentment, the fuel that powers their movement.

So let’s pull our view back.

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There is no real federal policy question at issue here. And if there were, these senators would barely know what to do with it; none of them has ever written a truly significant piece of legislation. That’s not part of their jobs as they see them.

They don’t care any more about the details of school curriculums than they did about proper email management procedures or consular security when they used those “issues” to torpedo Hillary Clinton.

Benghazi is the real model here: a regrettable incident that they successfully milked for years as though it were the crime of the century, mounting no fewer than eight separate congressional investigations.

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But here’s a newfound demonstration of their skill: Back then, they had control of the House and then the Senate, giving them the institutional authority to create news events by holding hearings at which they could preen and shout. They don’t have that now. But their propaganda system is both agile and mature, so that as soon as they find an issue that appears to induce the proper anger among their base, they can find ways to whip it into an absolute frenzy.

At some point they’ll decide that this has run its course, and they’ll find something else to pretend to be mad about. If you watch Fox for a day, you’ll see a dozen fake issues being road-tested to see what might catch on. But one thing is clear: Republicans are back in their comfort zone.