There are two parties in Congress but there are five voting blocs in this country. There are the fully aligned and committed members of the two, there are two groups of consistent voters for the two parties who, for whatever reason, choose to call themselves “independents” and there’s the five to ten percent of true swing voters who, unfortunately are basically white people who pay no goddamned attention to anything that happens because they “hate politics” and yet still feel compelled to vote. The Maximum Racist Feargasm Strategy is calculated to fizz up the base voters to get them engaged enough to volunteer, scare the Republican aligned “independents” into voting and, above all scaring the idiot indies into rushing into the safe protective arms of the authoritarian party.
This strategy worked for them in 2002, 2004, 2010, and 2014. It failed in 2006, 2008 and 2012.