It’s common wisdom that Trump could be catastrophic for Republicans running for Congress. But if we look at the Republican primary last night for Minnesota’s Second District, it highlights just how self-destructive the GOP has been when left to its own devices. It’s an open seat being vacated by the 14-year incumbent Rep. John Kline (R), in a district in the Twin Cities suburbs that President Obama narrowly won in 2012. And in Kline’s place, Minnesota Republicans have just nominated Jason Lewis—a local talk radio host with inflammatory opinions about women voters, gays, civil rights, the Civil War, and states’ rights. Among his greatest hits:
I never thought in my lifetime where’d you have so many single, or I should say, yeah single women who would vote on the issue of somebody else buying their diaphragm. This is a country in crisis. Those women are ignorant in, I mean, the most generic way. I don’t mean that to be a pejorative. They are simply ignorant of the important issues in life. Somebody’s got to educate them. … You’ve got a vast majority of young single women who couldn’t explain to you what GDP means. You know what they care about? They care about abortion. They care about abortion and gay marriage. They care about ‘The View.’ They are non-thinking.
So maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump isn’t an aberration.