Ignorance has always been
Something I excel in
Followed by naivete and pride
Doesn’t take a scientist to see
How any clever predator
Could have a piece of me
Standing in the sun – Idiot savant – Something like a monument
I’m a dinosaur
Somebody’s digging my bones
-King Crimson, “Dinosaur”
As the January 6 congressional investigation winds down – for now – it has done that much more to prove incriminating behavior on the part of Vladimir Putin’s favorite oven mitt, Donald Trump. Which means that The Prince of Orange has to make that much more noise telling his cult he “may” start a run for President even as early as this year. In fact he may need to before it’s too late.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Trump may be losing a lot of his support. Of course “conventional wisdom” is one of those phrases like “military intelligence” or “ethics in gaming journalism.” But still: It attracted a certain amount of attention when Fox News decided NOT to cover his most recent speeches live, and when the Murdoch-owned New York papers launched editorials blaming him for the January 6 attack.
At last weekend’s rallies – where, as at least one journalist pointed out, the Church of Trump is STILL booing Hillary Clinton and chanting “LOCK HER UP” when that was now TWO elections ago – he got little reaction when he told Turning Point USA that “a friend of mine once said that I was the most persecuted person in the history of our country“. (What, more than Jesus?) Previously on Friday, he had appeared in Arizona to endorse Eli Crane for Congress (who, like Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, is considered something of a carpetbagger) and was actually booed. Trump then said, “But you like me, right?”
The fact that Trump has managed to get away with as much as he has, not just in politics, but prior to 2015, is a big reason why I think the whole premise of “karma” is bullshit. Still, it would certainly be poetic justice if Trump got kicked out of politics because the “base” he has been courting so fervently decided to treat him the way he treated his two-and-counting ex-wives.
Trump is- well, lemme put it this way. Back in the really old days of David Letterman’s late-night show, he would bring on this local kids’ party magician named Kamarr. And because the guy’s name sounded like K-Mart, Dave kept introducing him as “Kamarr, the Discount Magician.” That’s Trump. Trump is the K-Mart Hitler. Trump is the Dollar Store Dictator. He’s what you get when you want a ruthless, one-party banana republic but don’t want to shell out for anything serious. And anybody who actually buys this product is either that desperate or is too tasteless to know the difference.
Unfortunately, “desperate and too tasteless to know the difference” is a perfect description of both Trump and his cult. And if you’re a Republican with a brain, the problem is that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. It’s gotten beyond Trump, actually, because on those occasions when he has (in political self-interest) told his fan club to get vaccinated so that they can vote for Republicans and not die of Trump Virus, they boo him. And now at least one rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has learned to play to that crowd by discouraging virus control in his state. So if you’re one of those oligarchs who is using the Republican Party as their vehicle to turn the nation into their personal latifundium, you’re in a quandary: go with Trump, who has pizzazz and a following but is starting to lose his luster and what little brain he had, or go with DeSantis, who is encouraging virus spread to play to that base, but at least seems to know what day it is?
Of course it’s kind of ironic. If Trump’s fan club trades in their first love for a younger, hotter version of the same model, they’re just being that much more like Trump.
Last week, The Atlantic posted an article by pollster Sarah Longwell, titled “The January 6 Hearings Are Changing Republicans’ Minds.” The findings of her polls are that Republicans both before the hearings and now are consistent in holding to the Church of Trump’s current dogma: That the 2020 election was stolen and Biden isn’t the legitimate president. What’s changed apparently is that only 14 percent of polled Republicans who supported Trump in 2020 want him to run again in 2024. “Their reasoning is clear: They’re now uncertain that Trump can win again. … Even if Trump could win, they say, he could only be president for four more years. (Or so one hopes.) But if it’s DeSantis or another rising star, Republicans have a better shot at eight years of political dominance. And they like eight better than four.”
Which would probably be the deciding factor for the Powers That Be in the Republican Party, at least the ones who aren’t based in Moscow.
But again, that’s not to say it will actually happen.
According to the New York Times, “Exacerbating the fundraising problems for Republicans is that Trump continues to be the party’s dominant fundraiser and yet virtually none of the tens of millions of dollars he has raised has gone toward defeating Democrats. Instead, the money has funded his political team and retribution agenda against Republicans who have crossed him.”
Gosh, it’s like the only reason Donald Trump does anything is to fuck over the rest of the world and make money off of suckers.
The real issue is that even if Trump himself can’t make a comeback in his party, it may not make any difference.
The “Stop the Steal” bullshit has gone far beyond just performative agreement with Trump. It has become a full-fledged political network that accounts for such organization and initiative as the Republican Party still has. From a New York Times article: “In 17 of the 27 states holding elections this year for secretary of state — the top elections officer in 24 states — at least one Republican candidate is running on the claim that the 2020 election was illegitimate, according to States United Action, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for free and fair elections. In four of the eight Republican primaries held so far, that candidate has won.” (This was before August 2)
In this year’s Republican primary elections, the “Big Lie” isn’t just reinforcing Trumpworld’s antagonism towards the rest of America, it’s being used by Republicans against each other. In Nevada, Joey Gilbert lost the primary race for Governor to Joe Lombardo by more than ten points, yet still filed a lawsuit (after the formal recount) using a model that one columnist referred to as “New Math.” For example, claiming that in Clark County/Southern Nevada, 55,000 votes were “stolen” from Gilbert, in a county where the tally shows he only got 30,000 votes, so he’s saying that somebody took almost twice as many votes as he actually got. And in the August 2 Arizona primaries, most of the candidates – including apparent winner for Secretary of State, Doug Finchem – are totally on board with the idea that the 2020 election was stolen and next time the Secretary of State (that would be Mr. Finchem, he hopes) should fix the results the way they “should” be. But in the Senate primary, Blake Masters, who endorsed the Big Lie, won against multiple challengers, including Jim Lamon, who also endorsed the Big Lie. Does that mean Lamon doesn’t have to admit he lost either? What would Doug Finchem say?
It’s one thing if the party is dictated to by one whiny little baby who has actual influence and the support of the mob. But what if you don’t have those things and you still want to be a whiny little baby? How do you expect to resolve disputes? By following rules and acting like an adult? Well, clearly that’s not cool in the Republican Party any more. So what happens when you have two or more people who don’t have a clear majority of supporters, expecting to speak for the Party, expecting to exercise supremacy when they don’t have it? What do you have then?
You have the Franks, Huns and Slavs who raided the carcass of the Roman Empire looking at your ass and going, “GOD, you’re stupid.”
Cause those guys, as savage and unlettered as they were, could at least come up with some ad hoc substitute for the civilization they destroyed. The Party of Trump can’t even do that.
Why? It all comes back to the famous quote of Robert E. Howard via Conan the Barbarian: “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
The Republican Party incentivizes bad behavior instead of imposing discipline. As the Times article indicates, it’s been playing to the more-whacko-than-thou crowd for years before Trump. Indeed, that’s the reason Trump was such a big hit in the 2016 party primaries, because he was the only candidate who fit their model instead of compromising with liberal-bourgeois mores like “shame”, “decorum”, “the rule of law” or “reality.”
Trump bonded with the pre-Trump Republican “base” because he showed them it was possible to be like Trump and still succeed in politics. It has been said by many people, many times, but Trump gave Republicans freedom to be their worst selves. And even if he is no longer the ideal Leader, they’re not going to give that freedom up.
If you really think the Republicans are over Trump, or even trying to be, consider that the politicians who have all the buzz about being potential successors, namely DeSantis, still won’t buck the dogma that the 2020 election was stolen, which at this point is the Church of Trump’s profession of faith.
As another example, in that aforementioned Turning Point USA event, the shindig was hosted in DeSantis’ Florida. During the event, neo-Nazis displayed swastika flags and black SS flags – along with flags with slogans like “DeSantis Country.”
And of course liberal rags like Huffington Post are wondering why DeSantis didn’t speak out, as even the Turning Point organizers were able to do. But why would you expect DeSantis to object to Nazis in his Party? He knows his base.
Basically, this is an entire party of Eric Cartmans. And at some point, someone is going to have to tell them that dressing up like Hitler isn’t cool.