The GOP's Reality TV Freak Show

A collection of creeps, former reality TV stars, and former athletes now permeate the modern Republican party. But why?

In 2010, a reality TV star had a famous on air crashout when he told a friend he was trying to control his anger with dozens of crystals on and around his body. The scene went viral because the blonde-bearded man was visibly angry and red faced, and was later seen rubbing a large white crystal rock on his forehead to self soothe.

It was visually absurd to the max, and the type of moment that made millions of Americans fall in love with reality TV.

That red-faced, blonde-bearded man is now running for mayor of Los Angeles.

As a Republican.

Spencer Pratt became the GOP nominee for LA mayor Tuesday, after prevailing over a large field of candidates challenging incumbent mayor Karen Bass. Pratt has become a staple on Fox News as he spreads wild, fear mongering lies about the city he's running to be the executive of.

If you only listen to Pratt, you would think that LA was teeming with dangerous homeless people and rampant crime. Every day he goes on Fox and lies to the rural, older viewership about his own city, playing into the fears conservatives have about major cities.

Pratt is also a weird guy in general and he's one of a growing cohort of strange men, former reality stars, and former athletes who could've stayed retired and featured in the perineal "name a guy" games that male sports play when they get together running for office as Republicans.

Another in this line of career revival reality stars is Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who first became known as Sean from Real World Boston in 1997. Originally cast as a "Wisconsin lumberjack" for the show, he quickly became known as the lecherous guy who liked to drink and dance naked, standard fare for early aughts Real World.

There are literally dozens of generic white boys who played this role through out the run of Real World. Duffy later went on to compete on Road Rules All Stars in 1998, where he met is now wife Rachel Campos. He last appeared on an MTV reality show in 2002 when he competed in a season of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge.

That same year, he was appointed district attorney for Ashland County in his home state of Wisconsin by former Republican Minnesota Governor Scott McCallum. He ran for and won election to the US House of Representatives in the Republican wave year of 2010.

After a 3 term run in the House, Duffy resigned due to his daughter's health, and ended up back on TV appearing on a show on Fox Business, where he eventually caught the eye of Donald Trump. He became the US Transportation Secretary early last year.

This is the guy who is supposed to be regulated the auto industry and making sure our planes land safely (which hasn't always happened under Duffy's leadership).

Instead of doing the job of Transportation Secretary, Duffy has reportedly been touring the country filming the Temu version of Road Rules for America's 250th anniversary, which he's dubbed the "Great American Road Trip."

If Donald Trump is running the government like a business, then the business would be a production of a reality show, and everyone is a character competing for your attention.

That is what the modern GOP has become: less a political party than it is a freakshow built to farm the massive doses of attention created by right wing media. The more outrageous you are, the more right wing news cameras will point at you, and the more political power you build within the party.

This dynamic, the attention at all costs of it all, has produced a party full of grifters, attention seekers, and anyone skilled in drawing and keeping eyeballs. Reality stars like Duffy and Pratt in this environment, along with the king of reality show politicians, the president himself.

But there are others who find a ripe opportunity for success in this fertile attention economy.

I think too of guys like Herschel Walker, who was an amazing football player in his day. I still have fond memories of running for 2000 yards with him in Tecmo Super Bowl on the old Nintendo. He was the only reason to ever play as the Minnesota Vikings in that game.

After his playing career, he bounced around from public venture to public venture. In 1992 Walker became an Olympian on the US bobsled team. He could have retired from the public eye at this point and been an amazing trivia answer for eternity.

In 2007, he got into Mixed Martial Arts, competing and winning a bout. He was a 5th degree black belt in Taekwondo.

Walker joined the reality show world in 2009, competing on the second season in Trump's own show, Celebrity Apprentice. After his stint in MMA, Walker turned to politics, becoming a coveted Georgia endorsement in GOP politics.

Four years ago, Walker ran for Senate in his home state of Georgia, running a wild campaign focused almost completely on transgender women in women's sports. He finished just a percentage point and a half of defeating Raphael Warnock and becoming a US Senator.

There has always been a measure of showmanship in the Republican party. After all, they made Ronald Reagan the actor president. But in the social media age, the conservative attention economy has hit new heights.

You can see the effects this system has on the party politics. I've previously written about how gerrymandering has produced ever more extreme Republican elected officials who only have to worry about primary challenges from the right. Couple that with this media environment that rewards constant attention seeking and what you're left with is a mass of conservative media consumers always tuning in, looking for the next guy who is willing to go to ever bigger extremes.

That's why we watch reality TV, isn't it? To see who will go furthest with the cameras on?

Welcome to the 2026 Republican party. None of this encourages good policy making or actually solving the problems of the people. Instead policy debates became reality show mini games where conservative politicians are positioned against their Democratic opposition in a game to please the masses.

Instead of creating better living conditions in politics, conservatives are engaged in a never-ending race to the extreme in targeting a handful of undesirable demographics. For Pratt, it's homeless people. For Walker, trans people. Whoever goes the furthest gets the attention.

None of them, of course, compete with the king of reality show politics: Trump. And Trump knows the key to winning the game, always be attention seeking. That's why he's building an MMA octagon on the White House front lawn. That's why he's spent his whole term trying to build his dumb ballroom. And it's why he seems to care more about rebuilding the city of DC in his own image, one gold leaf at a time.

But none of them are leading, or making better policies, or making life better for any Americans that haven't donated to their campaigns. The system makes sure that they don't have to as long as they get the disfavored demographics voted off the island, conservative voters don't care.

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