Trump's influence has normalized GOP extremism, until it turns absurd

Mike Johnson stood at The Pigpen Neighborhood Bar in San Antonio and raised campaign money for Brandon Herrera, the Republican nominee for Texas’ 23rd District, even after Herrera had been linked to a joke about killing older people and a podcast discussion of owning a copy of Mein Kampf. The appearance put a House speaker’s weight behind a candidate whose rhetoric would once have been disqualifying, not merely controversial.

The fundraiser came ahead of the November midterms and marked a reversal from Johnson’s earlier opposition to Herrera. Herrera was running for the seat held by Tony Gonzales, and Donald Trump had already endorsed him after the primary, helping fold the race into the former president’s political orbit. Johnson’s decision to show up anyway showed how much the Republican Party’s incentives had shifted toward protecting candidates who fit Trump’s movement, even when their baggage was obvious and politically toxic.

Johnson’s support also mattered because he was not acting like a local surrogate but as one of the party’s chief fundraisers. This quarter, Johnson transferred an average of $100,000 to incumbent Republicans in battleground districts from a major $19 million fundraising haul, underscoring how his political operation had become a central cash pipeline for vulnerable Republicans. That kind of money gives him leverage, and it also helps explain why a candidate like Herrera could move from fringe liability to someone worth bankroll help from the speaker of the House.

Herrera’s record was not obscure. The headlines surrounding him included the joke about killing older people and the discussion of Mein Kampf, the sort of material that used to force a campaign into immediate retreat. Instead, Republican power brokers treated the controversy as manageable, and some had gone so far as to label him a “goose-stepping extremist” before sitting out his comeback bid. Johnson’s fundraiser suggested that, under Trump, the party’s threshold for outrage had climbed so high that only the most blatant cases still drew attention, and even then they did not always cost a candidate the backing of the people who control the money.