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Greene and Tommy Tuberville are the face of the @GOP. They're far more representative of the party base and ethos than @SenatorCollins, @MarcoRubio, @LindseyGrahamSC or @SenTedCruz, who are mainly emblematic of the cowardice and ideological fecklessness of Republican officialdom. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1327656399560642560
If you were to ask who will be more influential over, and speak more for average Republicans over the next four years, the answer will be clear: it will be Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tommy Tuberville. Does anyone even doubt that at this point? Trumpism IS Republicanism.
The irony is that President Biden will be attempting to negotiate with what he remembers as "normal Republicans" -- McConnell, Graham, Collins, et. al. But they have the same amount of influence over the party base that they had over @realDonaldTrump: namely NONE.
Senators like Graham http://et.al . speak only for the super-rich Republican mega-donors, who only want three things: 1. their industries deregulated, 2. to pay almost no taxes, and 3. federal judges who will ensure 1 and 2. The party base is driven by something else:
Fear of a changing society, where white Christian men (and their wives) lose status: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/26/14340542/white-fear-trump-psychology-minority-majority
Understanding American elections is as simple as that: https://www.prri.org/research/white-working-class-attitudes-economy-trade-immigration-election-donald-trump/
This is why, for example, a majority of white women keep disappointing their white progressive sisters by consistently voting right alongside their husbands for any available Republican, and even for white nationalists like Donald Trump. https://bostonreview.net/race/jonathan-m-metzl-politics-white-anxiety
It's why the only way Democrats win elections is via massive turnout by non-white voters, especially high-proclivity Black women voters and by holding majorities of Black voters overall, Latinos, Asian-Americans and younger + college educated white voters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/elections/exit-polls-changes-2016-2020/
And that vast dichotomy in the party bases is why once-presumably "normal" Republicans like @LindseyGrahamSC, in their quest for power, over time and particularly in the Trump era, start sounding more and more like John C. Calhoun and Strom Thurmond... http://werehistory.org/lindsey-graham/
Presumably "normal" Republicans like Graham had two choices when Trump came to power: stand up to him and try to reign him in, or kneel to him and let his ethos, with its lure of racial panic, consume the party entirely. They all chose to kneel. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/lindsey-graham-senate-trump-928948/
So that's where the parties stand. And now Biden has to find a way to deal with the fallout, in the midst of a global pandemic. He will need every bit of the political skill he's accumulated over 40-plus years in office plus all the luck in the world... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/14/joe-biden-president-republicans-democrats
