The GOP is broken — and the real reason goes far deeper than politics

The battles that lost the Republican Party the midterms are about more than disagreements over Iran, foreign policy or the latest political controversy.

BlazeTV hosts Auron Macintyre, Nick Freitas, and John Doyle believe that underneath the surface is a larger struggle over who will define the party’s future — as well as issues still shocking the American system.

“Will JD Vance be the future of the party?” MacIntyre asks. “Will someone like Ted Cruz or another challenger step up into that moment?”

“I think a lot of people are watching those surface-level conflicts without paying attention to the power dynamics below, and that’s really making them not understand why this keeps flourishing over and over again,” he adds.

Freitas points out that in order to understand the past and the future, we have to acknowledge one thing that “is unique to our time and place in history.”

“And that’s COVID,” he says. “COVID broke things in this country in a way that nothing else has, because there were so many institutions that everybody, regardless of where you were at, thought they could trust.”

“And as soon as they realized, ‘Oh, I can’t trust these institutions any more,’ now all of a sudden you’re grasping at what’s real,” he continues, “and there’s two ways that you can respond to that.”

“You can look at these institutions, many of which have been captured by the left, and you can conclude that maybe I shouldn’t trust them as much any more, which is perfectly reasonable, or you can come to the conclusion that the opposite of everything they tell you is true, and that gets you into some real dangerous territory,” he explains.

“But I think without the COVID dynamic and the reaction to that, I don’t think we find ourselves in the position we are right now,” he adds.

Doyle agrees, calling the “effect it’s had on the kind of epistemic framework of the right” the “true long COVID.”

“You’ve had people take an unearned victory lap because they’ve, in their careers of saying things into microphones, they’ve thrown out maybe 10,000, 100,000 conspiracy theories, and then COVID happens and they say, ‘I think the elites will abuse this,’” he explains.

“They’ve established themselves as a kind of priest class where they’re like, ‘I have all of the wisdom; I know everything,’ and people are like, ‘Dude, this guy’s been right about it,’” he adds.

But it’s not just COVID that’s changed things.

“I think we have to remember also,” MacIntyre chimes in, “that the format shift, when it comes to media, has had a huge impact. The fact that media has largely been disintermediated — we no longer have those big, gatekeeping Fox News or CNN or MSNBC being the only source. That worked for Donald Trump.”

“That worked for the right,” he continues. “That was a victory that ultimately allowed conservatives and an insurgent MAGA to take hold. But it also can be a downside once you then try to get back on message.”

“There’s no form of message discipline … and that’s something we have to remember. It’s a double-edged sword that worked for us in one area, but could also completely hurt us in another,” he adds.

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

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