Two weeks ago journalist Emerald Robinson published a startling article about How The GOP Committed Suicide Trying to Stop Trump. Much of it is about Mitch McConnell (R, KY), whom Robinson accuses of doing his damnedest to prevent Donald Trump from functioning as president, and of subsequently aiding the anti-Trump forces in their attempt to remove him from office. A snippet:
McConnell wanted Trump convicted, that’s for sure. He pushed that sham until it was clear that he didn’t have the votes. The GOP establishment wanted Trump dead and buried to clear the way for Their People in 2024. At the 11th hour, McConnell realized that he didn’t have the votes and so he told his Republican colleagues: he would no longer vote to convict President Trump. The entire pointless exercise had only served to enrage the GOP base. This time there was no ground cover to hide his double-dealing.
For the GOP’s Senate caucus to have a leader who was ardent to impeach and convict a GOP president suggests that there was something rotten in the party. The stench had begun much earlier during the Trump Administration. Trump’s initiatives received little to no support from McConnell and other GOP bigwigs. Trump’s major platform point, securing the southern border physically, hardly even got lip service from Congressional Republicans. The ultimate absurdity – “We can’t afford a border wall!” – emanated from Republican and Democrat legislators both.
It’s no longer in doubt that the Republican Party turned against its president, and thus against the party base, which supported him enthusiastically. The evidence is too plentiful. The question that remains is “Why?”
I think it started in a more diffuse sort of aversion: an antipathy felt by Republican officeholders toward Republican voters that was born decades earlier. It grew aggressively during the “Tea Party” movement, when the financial upheavals of 2006-2010 helped to blot the presidency of George W. Bush. When the voters spurned two dozen Establishment Republicans in favor of Trump for the 2016 presidential nomination, it reached peak loathing.
Whatever his value as a leader figure for the Right, Trump, in the eyes of the GOP Establishment, was not a member of the Club. His wealth and commercial prominence didn’t matter to them. Politically he was a parvenu who had forced his way into the highest political circles through mere popularity with the hoi polloi. And the Establishment didn’t like that one bit.
No one likes criticism. The elevation of Donald Trump said to the GOP’s kingmakers that the voters had had enough of their nonperformance. What else could this embrace of an outsider who hadn’t “paid his dues” in a succession of lower positions, waiting patiently for the party kingmakers to decree that his time had come, possibly mean? Whatever the GOP’s luminaries thought of their performances in office, the voters’ embrace of Trump smarted.
So they took it out on him…and on us.
Whatever the relations between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party before Trump, once he was in office their top cadres united to thwart him. He could not be allowed to show them up. On only one legislative initiative, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, did Trump receive enough backing to get his proposal passed into law. Otherwise he was relegated to executive actions his successor could easily reverse. Fortunately, Trump’s judicial nominees did receive the support of the Senate GOP caucus, or all would have been for naught.
The Establishments of the two major parties had allied against the outsider. We may reasonably expect that the identity of that outsider was of little importance. Instead of Trump, it could have been Curt Schilling, Ted Nugent, Kinky Friedman, or any other popular figure from outside the Beltway. The laagering of the two party establishments would have looked little different.
There may be financial motives in the mix, but we may be very sure that simple vanity – political elitism and an unwillingness to accept electoral criticism – was a dominant influence. It still is; the McConnells of the GOP are frantic that Trump may yet return to the Oval Office. It’s not just his policy preferences they resist; they scorn him personally, and not because of his brashness or his tweets.
The prospects for November are murky. The Democrats, whose election-stealing tactics worked four years back to deny Trump his second term, will surely deploy them again wherever possible. If in 2024 they have the covert assistance of the Republican leadership cadre and the electioneering facilities it commands, it’s likely that no turnout in support of Trump would suffice to carry him back to the White House.
And at the bottom of the mire will be vanity and envy, as it was before.
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From this article, I’d nominate the incumbent GOP as a perfect example of Lenin’s “useful idiots”. The D party realizes that the 2024 elections may be their last and best chance to cement one party rule in America. Should the D party come out victorious this November, there’s a distinct possibility that they will do everything they can — by whatever means necessary — to move to cement one-party rule.
Should that come to pass, the GOP idiots will be some of first the D Party will line up to face The Wall. Probably not literally, but figuratively … at least in the beginning. The now fragmented remaining patriots will face a Deep State wall of rules, regulations, laws and practices backed by unlimited resources applied to AI programs designed to frustrate, silence, demoralize and impoverish them in any way possible.
A news note for your examination, from the Daily Wire, on a new DOJ operation designed to federalize the “Red Flag” laws which are meant to disarm people judged “a threat to others”. What is now a somewhat transparent and accountable local / state function will quickly become an arm of the DOJ in the interest of “protecting children against gun violence”. Announced yesterday, a Saturday, the center will provide “valuable resources” to assist the spread and enforcement of these Red Flag laws.
We can all readily see the desired endpoint in the Garland DOJ: kneecap their political enemies by removing 2nd Amendment protection by eventually making any resistance to the Party a federal “red flag” that provides little hope of having those rights restored.
Read the article and then the official DOJ statement linked within. Note the usual pablum and weasel words from the DOJ on what great things this will do, including throwing a few hundred million dollars around.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/doj-launches-national-resource-center-to-aid-authorities-in-taking-firearms-from-people-deemed-threat-to-themselves-or-others
I note only one truism for the record: You can vote yourself into socialism, but you will have to shoot your way out.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck’.” — Robert A. Heinlein
The saddest thing about today’s “elites” is how small and petty they are. Rather than jump on a rising tide of populism from the middle and working class that could secure Republican majorities for at least a decade, the McConnells, Romneys and Bushes would rather continue losing while getting paid off by Blackrock and Raytheon and the rest.
The same is true with our billionaires. Gates and Zuckerberg and Bezos have more money than the rest of the world combined. And what do they do with that money? Do they do things that will make life better for everyone? Nope. They use their money and power to censor, misinform, control and oppress their fellow man. Its all just so pathetic. Hopefully at some point in the future (might be in the far future) we’ll have leaders with compassion and morals and a desire to do the right thing. Just image the possibilities if we had “elites” who were decent people.
Its also amazing how short-sighted Republicans are. They don’t care if they lose elections just so long as most of them continuing getting their graft. They don’t seem to realize that by betraying their voters, they are headed for oblivion. If Trump weren’t running, then I would not be voting this year. I see no reason to rouse myself off the couch to vote for Rick Scott or Marco Rubio. I don’t agree with their policies. I don’t agree with the Republican party’s policies. I disagree with their support for massive immigration. I disagree with their warmongering. I disagree with their capitulating to Big Business/Big Pharma/Big Tech etc etc. Why would I vote for these people? Voting for the lessor of two evils is no longer a motivation since I’d have to voting for evil either way. I know I’m not alone feeling this way either.
If the Republican candidate was DeSantis or Haley millions of people simply would not vote. McConnell and friends think that’s no big deal. Their friends across the aisle will still take care of them. But Pelosi and Schumer are ancient. The next group includes Omar Ilhan and Rashaida Tlaib. Once the Democrats secure one party rule, do you think Ilhan and Tlaib would have any problem lining Republicans like McConnell and Romney up against the wall? Or they could just hand them over to BLM and antifa to do as they wished. The Republican party’s Washington Generals act is going to result in more than just a loss on the scoreboard. It’ll result in an awful lot of loss of life including most opposing party politicians.
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If the names you cite above were of others — politicians, perhaps — the explanation might be a craving for power. But the three above are of another kind. They want to matter. They had a taste of the limelight and, much like a movie star who’s aged out, they want it back. Their large achievements are behind them, but they still have all that money, so they use it to do things that will command attention. And perhaps they even act from “highest motives,” as Heinlein once conjectured. But the result is the same. It always is when you start to meddle in the lives of others.