MAGA Masochism: When Voters Realize Their Own Party Hates Them
Why would anyone choose to belong to a political movement that openly despises them?
Here we have two stories on that same theme.
“Reid Rasner, an openly gay Republican running for Wyoming’s sole House seat, is spending the final stretch of the campaign on a project he didn’t expect: suing members of his own party for defamation,” reports Dave Weigel in Semafor. “On Friday morning, Rasner will settle one case against an Iowa man who called him a ‘pedophile’ under several of his campaign’s Facebook posts. Rasner is pursuing another case against a former GOP Wyoming state senator who he alleges led a whisper campaign accusing him of sexual misconduct.”
It is genuinely brave to be openly gay in Wyoming and especially within the Wyoming Republican Party. But saying this?
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my entire life. … This just isn’t the Wyoming I knew or thought I knew. The state needs to come to terms with the hate and ignorance that’s fueled death threats and violence against me, all because of my sexuality,” Rasner said.
Rasner is 42. He was 14 when Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Wyoming because he was gay. Wyoming is arguably the most conservative state in the country, and it remains one of only a tiny handful of states without a hate-crime law, despite Shepard’s murder.
Rasner is wrong. This is exactly the Wyoming anyone paying attention would expect.
The second story comes from Texas.“Benny Melendez voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. But since Trump returned to the White House, it has been increasingly difficult for Melendez to run his small construction company in south Texas,” reports Politico. “He says immigration officers have detained workers at his job sites and while driving his company trucks. Since the beginning of 2025, more than 10 of those workers have been deported.”
Melendez now says he’s leaving the Republican Party and will vote for Democrat James Talarico in this year’s Texas Senate race.
“How can we continue voting for someone that is targeting our community?” Melendez told Politico. “There’s no way possible we’re going to support that. No way.”
Except … there was.
Trump has been targeting Latinos since the launch of his first presidential campaign, in 2015, which he kicked off by attacking Mexicans.“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting.”
And it wasn’t just Mexicans he targeted. He also attacked people from “all over South and Latin America” and “probably from the Middle East.”
None of this was hidden. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t buried in some obscure policy paper. It was the central message of Trump’s political movement from the very beginning.
So yes, Benny, it’s good that you’ve finally figured out Trump intends to cause the harm he promised to cause. Better late than never. That’s still a better outcome than for Rasner, who apparently intends to remain in a party whose members are accusing him of being a pedophile because he’s gay.
I probably shouldn’t sound so bitter. People can change their minds, and democracy depends on voters doing exactly that.
But it is frustrating to watch people act shocked when a movement built around grievance, exclusion, and scapegoating eventually turns on them, too. Republicans didn’t hide who they were. They built their ascent to power on it.
Maybe this time, enough people are finally willing to believe them.
Markos Moulitsas is founder and editor of the blogging website Daily Kos and author of three books.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
