GOP has become the party of the primal scream

The GOP reminds me of Sam Kinison. It has become the party of the primal scream.

Students of stand-up comedy may remember Kinison, popular in the 1980s. He was a squat, heavy-set man, who stomped on-stage and glared at the audience as his comic cadence rose from a whisper to shout to a ferocious, visceral howl. His brutal anger was aimed at anyone and anything: women usually, but it didn’t really matter.

As the nation heads into the Electoral College vote this Wednesday, that’s Donald Trump’s chunk of the GOP.

At least 11 Republican senators and senators-elect plan to challenge Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6. Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-La.) tried to go even further, with a failed lawsuit against Mike Pence that claimed a vice president has sole power to override the Electoral College and install as president anyone he chooses.

Republicans involved concede their efforts are doomed. But having exhausted every other course of action available, having shocked the system through paper-thin lawsuits and circus-like news conferences filled with wild accusations that are less political science and more science fiction, there is nothing left but to screech into the abyss like Sam Kinison.

As I’ve noted before, Trump has the patter and style of an insult comic. People rushed to his rallies for the entertainment value; it was a thrill to listen as Trump mocked the establishment that had belittled him and his followers for so long. But insult comedy is a dangerous game — you have to continually increase the outrage or the audience gets bored.

The best insult comics dance around that trap or shift their act. Kinison couldn’t because he was, in some ways, a one-trick pony. All he had was his anger and that primal scream. So when he was faced with the ultimate conundrum — how do you keep bulldozing your audience? — he had only one answer: Scream louder. Scream more. 

The Trump-most wing of the Republican party is like that now. Thanks to Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, and right-wing radio, that audience expects high voltage. Want them to keep paying attention? Want them to donate again and again? There is only one thing to do.

Scream louder. Scream more.

And now they have screamed themselves into a corner with no escape. They need to embrace groundless conspiracies and wrap their arms around the “Kraken.” They need to take actions that call into question something as foundational as voting. That’s what the nation will witness on Wednesday.

But chances are these actions won’t be enough to mollify the Kinison-like fury the party and its president have nurtured. The recent viewership climb at far-right outlets Newsmax and OAN proves that. So, what now? How do you top trying to undermine an election and undo millions of votes?

For Kinison, the scream soon lost its power. No matter how loudly he shrieked, he could no longer shock: Fans now expected the barking — it’s what they came for. It wasn’t outrageous anymore. But he had nowhere else to go — he was already screaming as loud and as often as he could.

Kinison was pushed to the side; the crowds thinned out, the energy waned. He fell into a depression as he became that one thing true entertainers fear most: irrelevant.

It’s possible Trump’s version of the GOP could face the same future — fewer zealots, less impact, as their constant howling becomes a form of radio static: annoying, but with nothing to say.

Kinison died in 1992 in an auto accident outside Los Angeles. He had just wrapped up one final attempt to recapture his lost influence and standing, one final comedy album. It was released a year after his death and won a posthumous Grammy Award.

Sam Kinison — a preacher’s son from Yakima, Wash., — called the album “Live From Hell.”

Joe Ferullo is an award-winning media executive, producer and journalist and former executive vice president of programming for CBS Television Distribution. He was a news executive for NBC, a writer-producer for “Dateline NBC,” and worked for ABC News. Follow him on Twitter @ironworker1.