It sure needs to. There are some hopeful, albeit still small, signs.
There are so many stories about crazy Republicans you can get lost in them. You have to look at the big picture. That’s where the hopeful signs are.
Chief among them: Trump’s influence and grip on the GOP appear to be weakening. Only about half of the candidates he’s endorsed in the 2022 primaries have won, suggesting his stamp of approval (which largely depends on endorsing his election lies) is neither essential nor all-powerful.
And GOP donor money is now going elsewhere. With many media pundits and most Republican voters still expecting Trump to run in 2024, his chief rival Ron DeSantis is raising more money than he is. (DeSantis certainly isn’t a good candidate, but he’s not Trump.)
There’s no letup in the craziness of the crazy wing of the GOP, but they’re losing at the polls. They’re as delusional as ever about challenging election results, but the fact is Republican primary voters are rejecting them. Politics has always attracted fringe candidates, and if they’re getting nowhere at the ballot box, as in times past, that’s a hopeful sign.
For all Republicans, though, one area that still needs a lot of work is admitting they’re wrong when the evidence staring them in the face shows they’re wrong. (For example, when their own partisan “audits” confirm the official recounts, it’s time — if not way past time — to stop distrusting and election system and stop believing elections are “rigged.”)
There are still pockets of silly Republicans who choose election deniers (and purveyors of violent rhetoric) to lead their state and local party organizations, for example in Idaho, which has always been a hotbed of rightwing extremism. Missouri isn’t exactly a garden of rationality, either, but there a plausible new candidate in the GOP Senate primary race has a chance to displace an utterly toxic frontrunner. (Whether that happens remains to be seen; and if it doesn’t, then the question will become whether Missouri voters prefer a Democrat to a corrupt wife-beater.)
It also helps for Democrats, who habitually are weak-kneed, to stand up to Republican craziness and call it what it is. Some are beginning to do so.
But ultimately it’s voters who must come around, if we are to purge the detached-from-reality, violent, anti-democratic tendencies that have run out of control in the GOP from our national, state, and local politics. Voters ultimately decide what kind of country we’re going to live in. They’d better make the right decisions before those who don’t believe in the right to vote take that power away from them. We’re not out of the woods yet.