Does the crazy meanness ebb with MAGA’s electoral spanking?

The Neanderthal imagery is apt because there’s been much knuckle-dragging on the GOP side of the fence in recent years. Donald Trump has taken the once-proud Grand Old Party hostage, converting many so-called leaders into quivering butt kissers.

Trump’s MAGA has brought in, encouraged or embraced QAnon, anti-vaxxers, stop the stealers, xenophobes, bigots and all sorts of caustic, conspiratorial loudmouths.

You know, jerks.

And don’t forget the clown car Cabinet of Robert Kennedy, Pete Hegseth and Todd Blanche, etc., the experts brought in to Make America Great Again.

Voters across the nation, from Maine to (perhaps) Alaska and (certainly) Kansas decided to kick Trump and his malignant nonsense to the curb.

Trump tries to sooth his ego by saying he wasn’t on the ballot. But several Georgia Republicans I spoke with said he certainly was.

“This lands squarely at the feet of the president; he was on the ballot,” said state Rep. Scott Hilton, who narrowly lost his north metro seat Tuesday night. “In fact, I’m a two-time Trump victim.”

He also lost his seat in 2018 in a midterm election during Trump’s first go-round.

Hilton said a friend likened the election to a controlled forest fire, that “takes out a lot of unhealthy vegetation.”

The diseased vines are what Trump has wrought. Hilton hopes a more positive crop of young candidates will sprout from the ashes.

Hilton and his team knocked on thousands of doors in his “country-club Republican district” in north Fulton and Gwinnett counties.

“I kept hearing ‘I just want to punish Republicans,’” he said. “I kept hearing, ‘We want people to be for something, not against.’”

John King, who lost his reelection bid for state insurance commissioner, kept hearing the same complaints.

“People were so angry,” King told me. “It was a loud and clear message to the president. And I don’t disagree with them.”

Still, he was surprised by the lopsided outcome.

King, a former police chief and National Guard general, is Hispanic. He was appointed to his position in 2019 by Gov. Brian Kemp after Commissioner Jim Beck was indicted and later sent to the pokey. He defeated a Trump-backed primary challenger in 2022 on his way to reelection.

Trump’s aggressive immigration sweeps backfired, King said. Hispanics, he added, “were tired of being harassed. We scared the hell out of the Latino community, even those who were lawful.”

“People want less crazy, from both sides,” King said.

In 2024, Trump won partly because voters were tired of left-wing proselytizing on social issues.

But, then again, voters this year weren’t clamoring for a different dose of culture war from the opposing team.

The New York Times this week mentioned a Democratic postmortem of the 2024 election that found the best candidates were “perceived as moderate” and focused on the economy.

Not those picking fights.

Jason Shepherd, the former head of the Cobb County GOP, who fell out with the MAGAs, noted “Democrats are still unpopular, Donald Trump is just worse.”

He also noted U.S Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat said: “We have a moment, not a mandate,” meaning his party needs to resist overreaching and needlessly annoying voters.

Almost 30 years ago, Shepherd worked for Speaker Newt Gingrich, who in 1994 brought the GOP a majority in the House after decades in the wilderness.

In 1998, he said their office kept hearing complaints about Gingrich’s efforts to impeach President Bill Clinton.

“We kept getting letters saying, ‘Stop talking about impeachments and talk about issues,’” Shepherd recalls. The GOP lost five House seats in that year’s election, and Gingrich quit that week.

I called former state Rep. Wes Cantrell, a conservative Republican and a Baptist preacher who once asked his buddy, Pastor Andy Stanley, to come to the Capitol and urge his colleagues to be nicer (or at least less obnoxious.)

I asked him if this week’s election will teach anyone a lesson on civility.

“No, no,” he said, with a laugh. “You think people are going to actually learn?”

Actually, he was kidding. A bit.

“I think we learned that people don’t like mean people,” he said. “It wears thin.”

Former GOP state Sen. Buzz Brockway went online this week to chide MAGA types who still argue Republicans suffered because RINOs — Republican in name only — are keeping the party from being strident enough.