For the 2026 elections, Republicans will no doubt attempt to portray the Democratic Party as dominated by progressives and democratic socialists, and themselves as the true moderates. But to maximize their effectiveness, they should do their best to purge the GOP of right-wing radicals, including racists, antiSemites, Holocaust deniers, and other Nazi sympathizers. Failure to do so will make them vulnerable to Democratic charges that the GOP is the true radical party.
Last week, I wrote of the glee with which Republicans welcomed Representative Jasmine Crockett’s entry into the race for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator from Texas. They plan to portray her as a radical leftist. The more successful they are, the more likely she is to lose to whomever the Republicans nominate, even Ken Paxton.
And Jasmine Crockett’s decision may be part of a larger trend, reported by the Wall Street Journal, wherein progressive Democrats and Democratic Socialists, inspired by the triumph of Zohran Mamdani in New York City, seek elections to Congress throughout the country. If so, this will be good news for the GOP: The more successful the GOP is in portraying Democratic candidates as left-wing radicals, the more likely the GOP’s candidates can defeat their Democratic counterparts. After all, the electorate in a general election usually prefers a moderate liberal over a right-wing radical, but also a moderate conservative over a left-wing radical. The GOP wants to portray itself as the moderate party and the Democrats as the radicals, and with the help of Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Bernie Sanders, etc., they can more easily do so—and thereby win more elections, not only in 2026, but in 2028, and beyond.
But if the GOP wants the voters to think it’s more moderate than the Democrats, it must rid itself of the right-wing crazies currently inflicting it, including racists, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and other Nazi sympathizers. A recent gathering of conservatives and other right-wing activists, America Fest (or Amfest), convened by Turning Point USA and presided over by Erika Kirk, showed both the necessity and the difficulty in doing so.
Ben Shapiro, a Jewish conservative commentator, stood out at AmFest with a warning that the “conservative movement was in serious danger,” and vigorous denounced the poisonous views of the radical right. And biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who last year sought the GOP presidential nomination and is currently running for governor of Ohio, has likewise denounced right-wing racism.
But less forthcoming and more disappointing were the seemingly ambiguous remarks of Vice President JD Vance, already endorsed by Erika Kirk for the 2029 Republican presidential nomination. True, Vance, to his credit, said in an interview that “Antisemitism [sic], and all forms of ethnic hatred, have no place in the conservative movement. Whether you’re attacking somebody because they’re white or because they’re black or because they’re Jewish, I think it’s disgusting.”
But in his formal remarks he has tried to promote what the New York Times has called a “big tent conservatism,” denouncing “self-defeating purity tests” while calling on all conservatives to suppress their differences and unite in attacking the left. His silence on the issues Shapiro and Ramaswamy raised, coupled with his attacks on Somalis and Haitians as well as his links to podcaster Tucker Carlson, who has promoted the ideas of Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers on his own platform, will make both Vance and the GOP vulnerable to attacks from Democrats charging him and the party with, at the very least, appeasement of the right-wing nut jobs currently infesting the GOP.
And no doubt the Democrats will attack. They will inevitably attempt to make the worst of the right-wing nut jobs seem representative of the GOP as a whole. They have as much a stake in accusing the GOP of right-wing extremism as the GOP has in accusing them of left-wing extremism. The party which triumphs in the upcoming elections will be the one most successful in convincing the public that it is the moderate of the two parties.
So if the GOP wants to succeed in future elections, and if JD Vance wants to improve his chances of becoming the next President of the United States, he must lead the GOP in plain, unambiguous, clearcut denunciations of the evildoers within its ranks, However big the conservative tent may be, it has no room for those who believe in white supremacy, that the Nazis never tried to murder the Jews, or that Hitler wasn’t so bad a fellow. Such ideas are anti-American, and those who advance them are just plain evil. There should be no room for them in the Republican Party, or in American politics at all.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018, and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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