Rick Wilson: Only ‘conspiracy-crazed Boomer rubes’ will support the GOP now — here’s why
Brad Reed
Conservative political strategist Rick Wilson has written a scathing obituary for his one-time party in which he predicts that embracing QAnon will become the new litmus test for Republican candidates.
Writing in The Daily Beast, Wilson begins by discussing the victory of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conspiracy theory-spouting candidate in Georgia who appears destined to be the first follower of QAnon to be elected to Congress.
After describing Greene as “crazier than a sh*thouse rat,” Wilson argues that her political rise is a symptom of a Republican Party that has come to rely wholly on the alternative realities created by right-wing media fever swamps.
“The only safe path for Republican elected officials is to tell Trump his Bahookie smells like ambrosia and nod eagerly when frothy, wild-eyed lunatics assert that JFK Jr. survived the crash just to save the chilllllldren,” he writes. “This is the future Republicans have bought with their dumb alliance with Donald Trump.”
While embracing QAnon may pay short-term dividends, Wilson argues that the long-term damage the party will suffer will be severe.
“In Trump’s world, the political utility of having a closet of conspiracy-crazed Boomer rubes is worth the downside,” he writes. “Trump may be gone soon enough — and a big part of his tiny legacy will be infesting the Republican Party that he took advantage of and then tossed aside, like his creditors and his previous wives, with these maniacs and idiots.”
