Is the Republican Party worth fighting for, or should non-Trumpers abandon it?

Our politics are in a dismal state. Big fixes are needed.

After the primary results, there’s little question about Donald Trump’s continuing grip on the Arizona Republican Party. It is now a political organization in servitude to him.

The clearest example was Abraham Hamadeh winning the primary for attorney general. 

Hamadeh has some admirable service in the U.S. Army Reserve. But he is just 31 years old. He only graduated from law school six years ago. He’s only been out of college for a decade. 

He has some limited experience as a line prosecutor, but nothing that would qualify him to be the state’s chief legal officer or administer a huge state agency. 

Hamadeh’s only real claim to the nomination was that he was endorsed by Trump and was willing to parrot whatever myths Trump concocts about the 2020 election. But that was enough to put him on top in a race that included a former state Supreme Court justice (Andrew Gould) and someone with 15 years of prosecutorial experience, including as border security section chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office (Lacy Cooper).

What does it mean to be Trump’s party? 

Trump attempted a coup of the 2020 presidential election, one of the most nefarious acts in all of American history. The heart of it wasn’t the storming of the Capitol that has gotten all the attention. It was the orchestrated attempt to get Republican controlled legislatures to ignore the election results showing that Joe Biden won their states and instead take action to designate the Trump slate as the official electors.

In Arizona, that was thwarted before it could gain any traction because of the heroic refusal of House Speaker Rusty Bowers to go along. Bowers was just defeated in a primary to move to the Senate by a 2-1 margin by a Trump cultist.

Since the Reagan realignment, the Republican Party has been the party of the right and the Democratic Party has been the party of the left.

So, what should those who generally prefer the policies historically advanced through the Republican Party, but who can’t stomach the current domination of it by a would-be usurper, do? Fight for the future of the Republican Party? Or abandon it and seek other ways to advance preferred policies?

The answer may be different in different states. In Arizona, for the foreseeable future, the Republican Party seems locked into being, first and foremost, the party of Trump.

There have been battles over the future of the Arizona Republican Party in the past. Fringe elements have taken control of the party apparatus. Periodically, Republican bigfoots such as Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, John McCain, and Jon Kyl have invested time and energy in returning it to mainstream Republican hands. 

But today, based upon the primary results, Trump cultism isn’t a fringe movement. It is what the Arizona Republican Party now stands for. 

McCain handily won Republican primaries against J.D. Hayworth and Kelli Ward. He was the Republican mainstream. Apparently no longer.

Now, in reality, Republican voters weren’t given much of a choice, except in the Bowers race. Virtually all the candidates were running to one degree or another as a Trumper, pledging their support, echoing his themes and style. Arizona Republican voters, unlike those in some other states, weren’t given a choice of an anti-Trump candidate or even a candidate running independent of Trump.

And the current Republican bigfoot, Doug Ducey, unlike his predecessors, did nothing as the party apparatus went down the Trump rabbit hole.

That’s not much of a silver lining on some very dark clouds. For those on the right who can’t stomach Trump’s dominance and abhor his nefarious attempted coup, there’s little reason to believe that the Arizona Republican Party is redeemable and capable of being returned to the party of Goldwater, Rhodes, McCain, and Kyl, rather than that of Trump.

In our current two-party system, that leads to some highly unpleasant general election choices: coup supporters or liberals wanting to move the state and country in the wrong direction.

A third party grounded in pragmatic centrism might find some purchase among the Arizona electorate. Better would be removing political parties from any official role in the elections, through a nonpartisan top-two primary system. Make political parties entirely private organizations. This would significantly dilute the disproportionate influence the existing primary system gives to Trumpers in the Republican primary and woke progressives in the Democratic one.

Our politics are in a dismal state. Big fixes are needed.

Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.