• Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, mocked his opponent’s affliction during the campaign, leading to his defeat.
• Many other unsuccessful Republican candidates in 2022 offered voters weird, extreme, or obnoxious personas.
• Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor, indulged in obnoxious stunts in 2022, but was an incumbent executive with a record of accomplishment.
• James Poniewozik’s 2019 book, *Audience of One*, argues that Trump’s ascendancy was the product of a huge shift in media culture.
• Republicans have built career paths for young people that start on extremist message boards and lead to jobs on Republican campaigns.
• Republicans have endured four bad elections in a row, and have failed to flip a single chamber in any state legislature.
• Democratic candidates don’t try to energize their base by “owning the conservatives”; they don’t have an obvious “base” the way that Republicans do.
• The Republican Party needs to start with something more basic: at least pretend to be nice.
Published February 1, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read David Frum’s original post The GOP Is Just Obnoxious
