Prior to this weekend's victory, Beckwith was perhaps best known for leading a campaign to purge the shelves of young adult books at the Hamilton East Public Library, where he served as a trustee until January. (He resigned after a policy he pushed to remove books containing sex, violence or repeated foul language from the teen section was reversed.) Bopp wrote that Brown will “hold Beckwith to account” for every statement he has ever made.
Beckwith's elevation is the latest sign of the conflict that is tearing apart Republicans across the country as GOP activists demand ever-higher levels of purity and militancy from party leaders. I've written about this in Minnesota, where delegates to the state convention endorsed Lois White, an Alex Jones devotee, for senator; and in Colorado, where the state party recently called for the burning of a Pride flag. A cadre of true believers, inspired by Donald Trump and a religious movement that sees him as divinely appointed, is taking control of the party from below. This is much to the consternation of more traditional Republicans who thought they could indulge in the MAGA movement without being swallowed up by it.
The power Trump unleashes can sometimes be more powerful than Trump himself. At Brown's urging, the former president offered a last-minute endorsement of Maguire, but the convention's delegates did not seem to take it seriously. The Indianapolis Star reported that Beckwith's supporters “largely took Trump's endorsement as a last-minute attempt to influence the race, rather than a genuine endorsement from a former president who knows very little about the Indiana lieutenant governor's race.” The Star quoted one delegate as saying of Trump, “I don't think this is something he's really vetted.” Trump supporters want a candidate who emulates his unconventional style, even without his explicit endorsement.
The divide within the Republican Party, in Indiana and elsewhere, isn't really between moderates and conservatives, because most of the people involved are on the far right. Rather, it's between people who know how to work within the existing system and outsiders who want to overturn it. Bopp, for example, is not a Republican. He's a legal adviser to National Right to Life and an election denier who filed a lawsuit challenging the election results in four states won by Biden in 2020. He's worried not because Beckwith is an extremist, but because he's an extremist who could threaten the power of the Republican Party.
In other words, Beckwith's nomination is an example of the MAGA revolution eating itself. Speaking on the podcast he co-hosts, “Jesus, Sex and Politics,” Beckwith explained why he's not bound by what Ronald Reagan called “the 11th commandment”: “Don't speak ill of other Republicans.” “Remember, Republicans back then were not apologists for communism,” Beckwith said.
