Editor's note:
John Krull is director of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
If the 2024 Indiana primary wasn’t pretty, it was revealing.
Because the Republican Party is so clearly—so overwhelmingly—the dominant political force in the Hoosier state, the most illuminating battles were within the GOP. Many of those fights were vicious.
Not all that long ago in the history of both the nation and the onetime party of Lincoln, Ronald Reagan delivered his famous 11th commandment for members of his party:
“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
That commandment now is violated with impunity.
Republicans running in the demolition derby that was the gubernatorial primary went after each other savagely.
U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, the frontrunner and eventual nominee, found himself accused of being a pushover on immigration and a shill for the Black Lives Matter movement—cardinal sins within ultra-conservative circles.
His opponents—Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Brad Chambers, Eric Doden, former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill and Jamie Reitenour—also received their share of shots.
Some of this was a product of the fact that they all were running in a crowded field in which most of the ideological differences were matters of degree, not fundamental divergences of principle. When candidates with too much ambition and too little ethical restraint engage with each other in such circumstances, the brawling can take personal turns.
That certainly seemed to be the case in the Fifth Congressional District contest.
The incumbent there is U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Indiana. Spartz initially opted not to run for re-election and then, late in the game, changed her mind. By that time, a credible challenger, Indiana Rep. Chuck Goodrich, R-Noblesville, had entered the race.
Spartz made such zigs, zags and about-faces almost her personal brand.
A native of Ukraine, she presented herself as the great defender of that beleaguered nation when Russia first invaded it, often wearing the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag to demonstrate her fervent loyalty. When the most extreme elements of the GOP base—the ones who turn out in primaries—began to spout Russian propaganda and turned against Ukraine, Spartz turned with them.
She voted against the aid package pulled together by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana—a move, The Washington Post reported, that befuddled the residents of her hometown in Ukraine that it did not enrage.
Left without a consistent record of her own upon which to run, Spartz veered between attacking Goodrich for allegedly profiting from government service and touting the fact that she had secured the endorsement of her own daughters.
Her campaign wasn’t exactly Lincoln at Gettysburg.
Some of the problem, again, was that there really wasn’t much daylight between Spartz and Goodrich on the issues, so differences and diversions had to be found elsewhere.
But it also seemed to spring from a deeper sense of discontent.
Republicans in the age of Donald Trump have operated as if they had no other goal—no other purpose—than to give free rein to their resentments and their carefully nurtured sense of outrage.
Such venting can be fulfilling for a time, but eventually it becomes frustrating, as if one expected to complete a journey by running on a treadmill.
It’s not surprising that so many Republicans have begun to snarl at each other. More than a few of them have begun to realize that they and their party are burning a lot of money and energy to go nowhere fast.
That became clear as the results rolled in from the pointless GOP presidential primary.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley dropped out of the race two months ago, yet roughly one in five Hoosier Republicans cast a ballot for her.
They didn’t do so because they expected her to win.
They did so to send a message that they were not happy with former President Donald Trump’s leadership of the party.
This is a lot of fractiousness for one party, particularly one that long has prided itself on its internal discipline and loyalty.
One of the older jokes in politics goes like this: Democrats have to fall in love to work together. Republicans just have to fall in line.
Just like Reagan’s 11th commandment, that joke is from an earlier era, a time when Republicans never would have dreamed of accusing each other of gross transgressions of character and duty.
And jokes, just like the Gipper’s commandment, can grow out of date.
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