If you feel like you’re hearing even more extremist rhetoric this year than in past election years, you’re not imagining things. By our count, more radical candidates appear to be running for office in 2022 than in any year in recent memory. Here at RAM, we’re watching them closely and doing our best to stop them from riding a wave of division and demagoguery right into office.
What have we observed about the radicals this week? In the fight to appeal to the lowest of the low, they often end up attacking each other. Check it out…
Mo Brooks (AL): It’s hard to believe that someone who spoke on stage at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally could possibly lose the support of perhaps the biggest radical of them all—Donald Trump—but it happened this week. When Rep. Mo Brooks, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, suggested that voters should move on from the 2020 election, Trump rescinded his endorsement, saying Brooks “went woke.” Brooks is now coming clean about Trump’s plans to overturn the election to which he was privy. Yet another example of intense loyalty to Trump ending very badly for the supplicant.
Eric Greitens (MO): Radical U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens appears to be losing Trump’s support too, but then again, he’s losing a lot of support this week over allegations that he physically abused members of his family. Greitens has so far ignored calls to end his campaign from prominent Missouri Republicans, including retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, whose seat he hopes to win. Unfortunately for Missouri, even if Greitens exits the race, fellow radicals Eric Schmitt and Billy Long are there to pick up the slack.
Josh Mandel (OH): In Ohio, there’s also no shortage of radicals vying for Rob Portman’s soon-to-be-open U.S. Senate seat. At a recent candidate forum, Josh Mandel distinguished himself from the pack by nearly turning the debate into a wrestling match—literally. In an embarrassing display, Mandel came close to exchanging blows with fellow candidate Mike Gibbons, then used some vulgar language to describe his opponent.
Luis Miguel (FL House): Vulgar doesn’t begin to describe the way Luis Miguel, a so-called “based patriot” running for the Florida House, describes anyone to the left of, say, Adolf Hitler. He takes the radical cake this week for proudly posting on Telegram that he likes his “commies like I like my steak…bloody and beaten with a hammer.” And he’s not talking about China.
What does all of this tell us about the radicals? They simply don’t care. Not about you. Not about your family. Not about the country. For them, politics aren’t a means to a positive end—taking office and doing the hard work of legislating to move the country forward. Instead, politics are the end, in a never-ending performative spiral to the bottom. If radicals can’t even work with each other, how will they ever work across the aisle for us? Answer: They won’t. They’re incapable of it.
It is RAM’s mission to build a national cross-partisan coalition that stands up for democracy and for the principles that make this nation strong—and to expose radicals everywhere as the charlatans that they are. Stay tuned for more updates soon.
