Conservatism is no longer the point

So what happened? Ellmers has become, in the past year, a favorite target for conservative groups looking for a scapegoat for the Republican party’s supposed failure to be conservative enough. She became the symbol for conservatives who charge Republicans with catering to “political correctness,” not because she was especially liberal or cooperative — she is a rock ridge conservative just like most of the party — buy because someone needed to be the conduit for conservative rage and she drew the short straw.

It’s also no coincidence that the punching bag for conservative rage happened to be a woman. Add to it the fact that the lines of her district were redrawn, making her easier to beat. For those who wanted a sacrifice to the gods of right wing purity, Ellmers was an attractive target.

The specific charges against Ellmers of insufficient right-wing purity are incredibly minor. Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity ran ads condemning Ellmers for voting with Republican leadership on the spending bill, the Export-Import Bank, and things like the wind energy subsidy. On their own, these are issues far too esoteric or wonky to really move voters against someone. But symbolically, these votes were framed as Ellmers being a classic example of a Republican who supposedly sins by cooperating with the dread President Obama.

Another big issue was Ellmers supposedly being too soft on rape victims. Last year, when Republicans went on their annual spree of passing go-nowhere anti-choice bills, Ellmers raised objections to one bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks, on the grounds that there was no exception for rape victims.

To be clear, she wasn’t overcome with pity for women who might be forced to carry rape-caused pregnancies to term. Nor was she opposed to forcing women to give birth even if their fetuses had terrible abnormalities or the pregnancies would cause disability or blindness. She just worried that a male-d0minated party being so hostile to rape victims might be bad optics, saying that the anti-victim stuff was not being “smart about how we’re moving forward”.