Let’s talk for a minute about Martha Roby, Republican congresscritter from the great state of Alabamy. She has been an entirely loyal hoplite in the wingnut phalanx. In 2015, she was one of the more entertaining sideshows at the hearings into Benghazi, Benghazi, BENGHAZI!, so much so that she drew the attention of the regulars here in the shebeen on more than one occasion. Roby then went on to give the president* one of his more important endorsements during the Republican primary process. Then, the Access Hollywood tape was released, and all that talk about moving on people "like a bitch" and grabbing them "by the pussy" revolted her, so Roby withdrew her endorsement.

The president*, of course, won anyway, and, since the inauguration, Martha Roby has voted with him nearly 100 percent of the time. That apparently wasn’t enough to erase the stigma of having abandoned the president* in his hour of desperate need. On Tuesday night, Roby was forced into a run-off in her GOP primary race for re-election. Her opponent is one Bobby Bright, a former Democratic congresscritter who switched parties, and who ran his campaign as a loyal Trumpian who was not bothered by moving on people like a bitch, or by pussy-grabbing. From Vox:

Former Rep. Bobby Bright, her opponent in the Republican primary on Tuesday (who previously held the seat — as a Democrat), has made Roby’s critique of the president the cornerstone of his attack ads. “Roby turned her back on the president when he needed her most,” Bright’s attack ad says.

Roby likely will be returned to office, barring a massive blue wave, but the runoff is the tell. The campaign this fall is going to be fought entirely on the question of Donald Trump’s fitness to be President* of the United States. This question may be posed in various forms of issue-based camouflage—immigration, the environment, the incoherent foreign policy—but that will be the fundamental issue on which the election will be based, and Republicans are going to be forced to decide that question for themselves before the voters decide it for them.

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So far, the evidence is not promising. They’re scared to death to cross the man, and of the dark elements that always have been there in the conservative Republican base which he has shown a unique ability to energize. Voting with him 100 percent of the time is not enough anymore, not if you objected once to the fact that the man obviously has the interpersonal skills of a boar hog in the rut.

This sets things up for an intensely ugly election. The Republicans are caught in an extended loyalty test to an incompetent and dangerous president*, if they want to maintain their majorities in the Congress and in various state houses. Not one slip, past or present, is allowed. All ambiguity on the subject is poison. Early results, especially in the states, indicate that this is killing them at the polls, so their only alternative may be to go spelunking through the sewers behind the head of their party.

There is no goddamn logical reason that any Alabama conservative would vote against Martha Roby, but there is no goddamn logical reason left in the Republican party, and that could be a problem.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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