If Jim Geraghty of the ultra-conservative National Review had anything to say about it, the state parties in what he called “either key swing states or once-purple states” should be running normal, run-of-the-mill candidates who are practiced at the game of winning.

State Republican Parties in important parts of the country are going broke as they are taken over by extremists who don’t know how to organize or win elections.

Specifically, he’s talking about Arizona, where nutcase former TV personality Kari Lake is all over the airwaves, Colorado, Mchigan, and Minnesota. Geraghty managed to pre-blame potential losses for Republicans on those running in the states he listed as ‘tantalizing targets in a good year”

[A] key factor will be the replacement of competent, boring, regular state-party officials with quite exciting, blustering nutjobs who have little or no interest in the basics of successfully managing a state party or the basic blocking and tackling involved in helping GOP candidates win elections.

Tensions inside the Michigan GOP have gotten so bad we’ve seen literal fistfights that have landed at least one person in the hospital, and the Minnesota State Republican Party finds itself with $53 in the bank.

From Raw Story:

“The Michigan GOP has been in turmoil since it was taken over by Kristina Karamo, a QAnon-obsessed election denier who ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 2022; party officials have been arguing with her and her loyalists over financial arrangements, and tensions have escalated to the point that two officials got in a physical fight that put one in the hospital. Meanwhile, the Minnesota GOP is down to just $53 dollars in the bank, with hundreds of thousands in debt.”

The National Review writer can do nothing but conclude that it wasn’t like this before Trump and the MAGA crowd, which has brought on election deniers and QAnon-obsessed quasi-cult leaders.

Geraghty wrote that “[T]he Georgia state Republican Party is spending a small fortune on the legal fees of those ‘alternate’ Republican electors from the 2020 presidential election.” Donors to the state parties are “leaving in droves,” which makes organizing and advertising all but impossible.

“The MAGA crowd now running these state parties insisted they didn’t need anyone else. And now we see where that got them.”

This has been a long time coming. Any party that believes that can make up their own facts, insult war heroes, assault reporters, and laugh in the face of everything “regular” voters are asking for is bound for self-immolation. And they’ve got it coming.