MAGA is a losing cause, but tonight's Republican debate will embrace it. Why?

If a person comes to your door and tries to sell you a product you don’t want, don’t like and never asked for, you’re going to tell that person to bug off.

If the person comes back and tries to sell you the same thing again, you’re going to slam the door. And if a different person comes trying to scare you into buying the same undesirable product, you’re going to roll your eyes and say, “What is wrong with you all? I don’t want this.”

The MAGA movement birthed by former president and current criminal defendant Donald Trump is that product, and Tuesday night’s elections showed, once again, that American voters aren’t buying the things MAGA folks are selling.

Wednesday night, five Republican presidential primary candidates not named Donald Trump will gather on a debate stage in Miami, many of them hocking the same stuff voters keep rejecting: abortion bans; fearmongering nonsense about “wokeness”; anti-transgender rhetoric; election denialism.

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This raises a question: Will anything these non-Trump candidates say on the debate stage matter in a country where the line between “normal Republican” and “MAGA Republican” has been wholly eviscerated and the MAGA message is the only product being sold?

Aside from his presidential win in 2016, Trump and his minions in political races large and small have been good at one and only one thing: losing.

The 2018 midterm elections. The 2020 election. The 2022 midterms and the much-ballyhooed “red wave” that didn’t happen. An array of special elections. A pivotal state supreme court election in Wisconsin that went handily to the Democratic candidate.

Tuesday's elections were another repudiation of Trump's MAGA movement

And then Tuesday night: Ohio voters approved a ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution; Kentucky’s Democratic governor was reelected after campaigning against MAGA-centric issues like abortion bans and anti-LGBTQ legislation; and Virginia voters gave MAGA-adjacent Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin an electoral kick in the pants by giving Democrats full control of the legislature.

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The right-wing extremist group Moms for Liberty, which touts itself as a “parental rights” organization while trying to ban books and discussions of race or gender in schools, saw its school board candidates soundly rejected by voters in states across the country, including Iowa, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Far more often than not, when voters are presented with MAGA-centric issues or with candidates who embrace the far-right MAGA message, they recoil.

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Trump was hailed for picking U.S. Supreme Court justices who would and did overturn Roe v. Wade. He has routinely bragged about it: “I did something nobody thought was possible. I got rid of Roe v. Wade.”

And now? As Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, told The New York Times: “Seven times abortion has been put on the ballot across the country, and seven times voters have turned out overwhelmingly to defend it. Once again, voters sent a clear message to Republicans and anti-abortion extremists. We believe in the right to abortion, and we are the majority.”

While there are a number of states that have abortion bans, in any state where the issue has been put to a vote since Roe v. Wade fell, voters have sided with abortion rights.

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But even as these electoral losses have mounted and the disconnect between U.S. voters and the unpalatable extremism of Trumpism has grown more clear, the Republican Party continues to believe the MAGA movement is salable.

Congressional lawmakers recently voted in Rep. Mike “MAGA Mike” Johnson as speaker of the House, putting a man who helped guide some of Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in one of the most powerful positions in government.

Johnson has co-sponsored bills that would ban abortion nationwide and spent years as a lawyer crusading against LGBTQ+ rights. 

Even the few “traditional Republican” conservatives who remain in office have danced with the MAGA devil and, if pressed, would almost undoubtedly back Trump as the next GOP presidential nominee.

Collectively, they are the person at your front door saying: “Can I interest you in existential fear of a woke agenda? If you buy now, I’ll throw in this federal abortion ban, some random anti-transgender cruelty AND four more years of joy and stability under God-King Donald J. Trump!”

Voters have repeatedly passed judgment on Trump and MAGA

Wisely, understandably and thankfully, voters are telling huckster Republicans, over and over, to get off their porch and pound sand. And yet, as we’ll see in Wednesday night’s debate, they keep pushing the same garbage, in the Sisyphean hope new packaging might help.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is MAGA. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is MAGA. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is MAGA. Rich guy Vivek Ramaswamy is super MAGA. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was MAGA and now says he’s not, which is why nobody on the right likes him.

Trump, who won’t be on the debate stage because he’s a pompous chicken-weirdo, is O.G.-MAGA. (The "O.G." in this case stands for "original goon.")

So whatever is said Wednesday night, be it on the debate stage or at Trump’s celebration-of-narcissism rally nearby, it will be the same product Republicans keep bringing to voters’ doors.

Maybe it’s time to just ignore the doorbell. And if they keep ringing it, call the cops.

Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk