The modern Republican Party, overtaken by the anti-liberal, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant, anti-DEI — anti-anything, really — MAGA movement, is, of course, against any semblance of pluralistic political opposition within the Democratic Party.
But this poison in our politics, now embedded in the establishment of the Hamilton County GOP, also has a propensity for eating its own. This movement, over the years, has laid waste to numerous victims within its own party.
Here’s a recent few: U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis and, most notoriously, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
In local politics, the MAGA arm of the party imposed its own ideological purity test in the 2024 Republican primary for the District 27 seat in the Tennessee House. Shocking the broader local GOP, voters elected state Rep. Michele Reneau, R-Hixson, and ousted long-time incumbent Patsy Hazlewood — a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” as MAGA would say — in a razor-thin upset.
But given the alarm over the undeniable authoritarianism and fascism taking root and blossoming in the Republican Party, given Reneau’s fringe anti-science positions, the political pendulum may be swinging back.