the two competing theories and the battle lines they represent

In the continuously evolving post-electoral situation, as everyone sits around dazed in the rubble, two theories have emerged if my trolling through the Instapundit comment threads is any indication. Let's call these two theories idiocy vs. malice. Logically speaking, these theories are not mutually exclusive, and I don't think either side of this debate says anything like that. What each side does say, though, is that the current situation is primarily the result of one or the other. By that reckoning, I side with malice.

The idiocy theory says that the country is filled with idiots who will blindly vote for the more-free-stuff party because of reasons all related to idiocy and related traits like blind loyalty, willful ignorance, and other assorted forms of incapacity or unwisdom. This theory is scary because it means that people actively liked candidates like stroke victim John Fetterman, with his inability to remain coherent for ten minutes and that distressing growth bulging out of his neck. It means there are people actively dumb enough to want defunded police, higher taxes, more business regulations, energy dependence, quickly freed violent criminals, porous national borders, babies murdered outside the womb, etc. The implications of this view are staggering: it really means half the country has a suboptimal IQ.

The malice theory, by contrast, says the midterm-election results were all thanks to preplanning, malice aforethought, machinations, and what was basically a rehash of what happened in 2000—a Steal, as they say. The people in power want to remain in power, and the longstanding conservative contention has been that the left is all about power. (It would, of course, be disingenuous not to observe that the right likes power, too. All who gain power are afraid to lose it, says the Sith maxim.)

So on the one hand, you've got people contending that this election was a referendum on Trump 2024, and that so many stupid people hate Trump that that was enough to stop the red wave. On the other side are people who say that, with poll after poll showing the majority of the country thinks we're all moving in the wrong direction, it makes no sense for the election to have gone the way it did, hence the malice theory. So if the Instapundit comment threads are an indicator of general conservative thinking, then it's safe to say that conservatives are deeply divided in their analysis of what went wrong. 

There is another school of thought, roughly aligned with the idiocy theory, that says conservatives didn't do enough: they put out lame candidates, some of whom were RINOs, and even though they had mountains of economic data on their side, they failed to persuade anyone on the left of the need to right the economy. Some people in this didn't-do-enough group went further, noting that Trump has achieved a level of toxicity that may have brought some of these candidates down: what used to be a sort of beneficent Midas touch has become the touch that turns everything to shit.

I'm pretty convinced by the numbers argument used by the malice-theory group, but this doesn't mean I see no merit in the other points of view. The country is big and diverse, after all: you can have malicious people, stupid people, and even maliciously stupid people.

This leaves us right back where we started. I subscribe to the malice theory to the extent that the theory says malice was the primary—but not sole—cause. It just makes sense. Many have contended that, if you eliminate all opportunities for shenanigans, Republicans would win a hell of a lot more elections. To support this, they cite Florida, where Ron DeSantis just won a second term as governor. It was a landslide victory that many attributed to his election reforms: limitations on mail-in/absentee voting, limitations on when to vote, etc.—all measures that narrowed the margin of fraud. It strikes me as very plausible that DeSantis's measures played a significant role in his victory. Get more red states to make the same reforms, and you'll see more GOP winners even if the blue states never institute such changes.

It's to the GOP's credit that it's capable of any introspection at all. You're not likely to see that from the left, which is all about rage and violence when it loses. To be fair, a lot of the rightie introspection has led it to conclude the problem lies entirely with the left, but as I cited above, some righties are willing to speculate on whether the right needs better candidates and campaigns. Whatever the truth may be, whatever the real reason for the red wave's failure to materialize, there is currently a deep rift within the right: idiocy vs. malice. 

This rift has implications as everyone looks forward to 2024 because there's a parallel rift happening at the same time. People would have liked to see Trump and DeSantis join forces, but with Trump's insecure salvo of "DeSanctimonious," that's not looking likely. Instead, things are coalescing into Trump vs. DeSantis. Last I heard, DeSantis said he'd stand aside if Trump did decide to run in 2024, but conservatives these days don't seem quite so keen on Trump overall. His pugnacity has always been a strength and weakness of his, but while Ron DeSantis is a fighter, he doesn't go out of his way to insult people. "Two more years!" was a chant heard at a DeSantis rally, the implication being that DeSantis ought to run for president. Trump probably sees a second term as a means to secure his legacy, but it could be that, for the good of the country, he ought to step aside for younger blood. I don't know. I like DeSantis's personality more than Trump's, but I like Trump's overall policies more than DeSantis's. L'embarras du choix, as the French say: the burden of choice.