You recall back in 2012 that the Republican party did an autopsy on the election it had just lost and came up with some obvious conclusions about being out of touch with POCs, women, and young voters. At that time, nobody under 50 had been alive to cast a vote for Ronald Reagan, the party’s last great white hope — literally. While this self examination may have taught the GOP something, they didn’t do anything about it. Therefore, it was unsurprising when in 2015, there was a surfeit of candidates for the presidential nomination, many of them woefully unqualified and the biggest mouth in the room, the shock jock, pussy grabbing racist, got the GOP nod. Overwhelmingly, in fact. Donald Trump took the lead early on, and but for a brief spike by Ben Carson, of all people, he kept it, and the rest is history.

The GOP of 2015 was a vacuum, bereft of policy and of questionable morality, since the white supremacists and anti-abortion fanatics held a greater sway than previously. Since nature abhors a vacuum, in came Trump. And he pulled out all the stops and sent a rallying cry to the underbelly of the party. His caricature of what conservatism was, worked out just fine for him. And he knew it. His Alabama rally, in particular, was scary. The negativity in the room was palpable. You could feel the vitriol flow as Trump played the crowd like it was an accordian, squeezing the hatred out of them. Jeff Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump, and look at how that turned out for him.

This election is about the survival of democracy in America. I think it’s safe to say, although by no means assured, that Trump will go down in flames. Hopefully, he will do so by a margin that will offend his narcissistic vanity to such a degree that he’ll slink away in a pout and not contest the results. But that will not restore us to normalcy. No way. If you think it will, you are being naive. A pickle never goes back to being a cucumber. After it’s been in the brine long enough, “it is what it is” and there’s no stopping the process.

Similarly, Trump has led us down a very destructive path and he was enabled every step of the way by the GOP. That has always been the real problem, in fact, the tragedy of this entire misadventure of the past four years. The GOP did this to America. And today, the GOP is still the corrupt, anti-American machine that it was when it put Trump at the top of its ticket. And that’s where the fight in November will begin, after the champagne bubbles go flat and the helium balloons deflate. When the post-election revels end, the real work begins, because Trump is merely the figurehead of a very debased political party and they’re still going to be around. Even if Democrats regain the senate, the GOP is not going anywhere. New York Times:

In 2016, Mr. Trump didn’t change the Republican Party; he met it where it was. The party had been ready for him for years: In 2012, the congressional scholars Thomas Mann of the center-left Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute wrote, “The G.O.P. has become an insurgent outlier in American politics.” More recent studies, including by Pippa Norris of Harvard, have confirmed this assessment. In a brief summary of her research — which compared the U.S. Republican Party “with other major parties in O.E.C.D. societies” — she found the G.O.P. “near far-right European parties” that flirt with authoritarianism, like the Polish Law and Justice of Poland or the Turkish Justice and Development parties.

This is not a party poised to pivot toward moderation — even in the face of an electoral landslide loss. The inevitable calls for reform (like the party’s abandoned “autopsy” report after the 2012 election) will yield to the inescapable gravitational pull of the party’s own voters and the larger forces dominating our politics. […]

If the forces shaping party politics provide the motive for Republicans to continue down Mr. Trump’s path, the Senate will provide the means. Because of how the Senate has evolved in recent decades, it takes a supermajority of 60 votes to pass most bills. A minority of 41 senators can throw a monkey wrench into most aspects of governance, from major bills to mundane business. Republicans can muster those 41 seats using only states Mr. Trump won by an average of 24 percentage points in 2016. Even if Mr. Biden wins and Democrats take the Senate, Republicans will hold enough power to derail nearly everything the new president wants to do.

The way forward is to face the reality of what the Republican Party has become and prioritize delivering results for the American people over gauzy, pundit-pleasing fantasies. Sure, invite Republicans to participate constructively in the legislative process, but take away their ability to scuttle it.

The only way to move forward is to face the reality of what the Republican party has become. Trump is a freak show, yes. He’s an outlier from reality TV, yes. But did he get where he got alone? No. And that has been the takeaway from 2016 and it will be the takeaway from 2020, however it goes. If the GOP really saw the handwriting on the wall and realized an “error” had been made with Trump — they’d pull him off the ticket, invoke the 25th Amendment, whatever needed to be done. Why don’t they? Because Trump is the GOP mascot, a vain, stupid man with a floofy blond comb over and a uniquely bizarre worldview — but not so unique or bizarre that it doesn’t touch on a lot of of their own dark principles. That’s why they keep him around. Trump’s relationship with the GOP has been described as “sullenly transactional” but transactional it remains, sullen or otherwise. Whatever price GOPers pay in dignity — and some of them are going to pay a lot more, when the ballots are counted — they do it for a reason.

They’ll put anybody on the ticket, Trump, or Kanye West, or Alvin the Chipmunk, it doesn’t matter. If the GOP can put a popular figurehead on the ticket and win an election, in order to pursue their agenda, they will. They don’t care about the downside. If they did, they would have never put Trump on the ticket to begin with, or they would have pulled him off after the pussy-grabber episode. The fact that they did not, was all the evidence you need that the Republican party is a directionless mass — and mess — kind of a political dark star, in the process of burning out and turning into a black hole, sucking everything and everybody in. They embrace power for power’s sake and in this day and age, they stand for nothing. Whether that will change or how it will, remains to be seen. If it does not change, then get ready for way down south in the land of Cotton, and I’m talking about Tom Cotton, in 2024. And if that’s the case, then you’ll know that the GOP didn’t learn a damned thing, they only got worse.

Let’s take things one step at a time and worry about November 3. But it never hurts to look ahead and see the twists in the road before you wrap your car around a tree. The advent of Trump was foreseeable and the continuation of Trumpism is assured.

Here’s Exhibit “A” to that premise. Take a look at one of Trump’s “suburban housewives.”

This is a part of who we are. Michelle Obama’s beautiful speech at the Democratic convention Monday night is also a part of who we are. There are two Americas. Sad but true.

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1 COMMENT

    • No not funny. Do not take what she did lightly. This is what’s under girding 45. Racism. Xenophobia. I take this shit very seriously because this is how Germany did what it did. Hitler fed them the “them” issue to get them to join him and so many did. 6 million died (probably more) at his, and their hands. She is the perfect example of his base.

    • The Confederate flag flanked by the Trump signs is something. One or the other would have made a statement. Together, they’re really something.

          • That’s my point exactly. Trump can’t do any of this without the GOP and the GOP is feeding off of a lot of lost souls in America right now. And getting rid of Trump, while certainly helping the situation, does not mean everything is just fine and we all live happily ever after. This isn’t a fairy tale, this is real life.

  3. Excuse me if I lack your fear, Ursula. It’s only a problem if you’ve got the leadership to make it work. And let’s recall how temporary right-wing allies will be doing everything in their power to take back what they consider theirs. Trumpism is a mirage, one man’s bottomless ego mistaken for a movement.

    • I’m calling the malaise that affects the GOP right now “Trumpism.” Call it what you will, racism, misogyny, being out of touch with the electorate, all of the above. But that was there long before Trump and it will be there long after he’s gone. And that’s what we’re up against.

    • Bareshark, I like your assessment. When it’s no longer encouraged much less tolerated from national leadership, some of the trombies will rethink their options.

  4. The Republican Party is well past the point of no return. They nurtured a monster for decades, deluding themselves into the belief they could control it. When the Tea Party rose up the powers-that-be refused to accept the monster could no longer be controlled. Given how much they’d relied on it, on being able to use it to attain the power they wanted they deluded themselves into thinking they could regain control of it. They had their chances to “put it down”, or more bluntly take a proverbial shotgun and blow it away but that would have meant stepping back from having, much less wielding significant power for 8-10 years, and they’d made so much progress in dismantling the New Deal they couldn’t bring themselves to pull the trigger.

    Even when Trump showed just how powerful the monster had become they still thought they could control it. Where I might disagree with you just a bit is that for an all too brief time during this administration significant numbers in the GOP, and especially the Senate were willing to stand up to Trump. At first Mueller was given props, and despite Trump’s irritation they publicly gave support. There was also that overwhelming (in the House too) vote for a sanctions package on Russia that summer. The number of Republicans in the House and Senate combined who voted to sanction Russia was in the single digits. And there was a budget package that enough of them voted for, one which contained stuff WE really wanted that Trump felt he had no choice but to sign. He was pissy about it but he did.

    However, as the power of his twitter feed and its ability to wreck the life or career of anyone who stood up to him grew, cowardice in the ranks of the GOP grew even more. Those who wanted to go back to the days of dog whistle stuff faced a choice – either organize for a bruising fight with Trump to if not drive him out then cut him down to size and for many of them risk GOP oblivion or submit to Trump and compete with each other for favored status among his minions.

    The GOP collectively chose the second option, and there’s no going back. Lindsay Graham is a case in point. He still has to be considered the favorite in SC this November, but he’s now forever tied to Trump and covered in the orange hued stink. To overcome things he said opposing Trump and Trumpism he’s sold out so completely he simply can’t backtrack. Even if he wins in November his time is over. He’ll either get primaried out of his seat the next time around or lose to a Democrat because he will be mortally wounded by having someone, a black guy for chrissakes come close to taking him out! If Harrison has a boatload of flip-flops to use against Graham this time around (and he does) what will it be like next time?

    The GOP has faced the choice before, and kept doubling down on the side of “we weren’t conservative enough” instead of jettisoning the religious wackos and hard core racists and rebuilding with sane people, and in the process ceding one or more probably two Presidential cycles. That would mean allowing Democrats to partially rebuild the New Deal and they just can’t accept that. However, this time it’s worse for them because anyone with a hint of moderation in them knows damn well that trying to exert it, much less remake the GOP into something closer to what it was in Reagan’s first term (crazy hard-core right wing but not bat-shit crazy) will be crucified upside down.

    Even in a blowout loss this fall over fifty million people will vote for Trump. In many respects, Trumpism is more like the virus in those Resident Evil movies and the GOP is the top folks at the Umbrella Corporation who will sacrifice anyone to secure themselves safely in isolation, having made goddamn sure they had the means to do so (just in case) before the virus broke containment. In some respects, there are similarities to a real world example in the Odessa. Yes, there are disputes as to whether it was (and remains) a real thing but it must be noted that despite some big fish that got hauled up to Nuremburg, or even Eichman years later a lot of the SS disappeared into thin air having carefully prepared to live out a quiet life of luxury under a new identity before the final battles in Europe.

    For me, if the country and world were just there’d be a modern day version of Nuremberg, and those who committed crimes including and especially crimes against humanity (tearing children from their parents and locking even babies up in cage for example, or our complicity in atrocities with “new allies” such as what’s been going on in Yemen, or giving cover to dictators to commit their own atrocities) and jailing all convicted in some godforsaken, spartan with no creature comforts other than food and competent medical care. Seems like Gitmo would be a good spot.

    • The Tea Party was the single greatest mistake the GOP made this century. It gave Trump all the support he ever needed to usurp them in one tidy package. Now they’re going to pay a steep price for not following their own advice post-2012.

      • If not for the Koch brothers there wouldn’t have been a Tea Party. They had systematically worked the system to dismantle the New Deal and stack the deck in their favor they got greedy. Both being pretty old already they let visions of a “final victory” overcome their steady, insidious progress towards an America they and their heirs would control like puppeteers. The arrival of a Black man in the Oval Office was too big an opportunity for them to resist, and they decided to give the GOP monster a giant shot of radioactive waste and it mutated beyond anyone’s control. I’ve written before that for so many of the GOP power players both elected and quasi behind the scenes like the Koch brothers what distressed them wasn’t Trump’s working the racist and nationalist stuff, but ignoring all that messaging so carefully tested over the decades to speak in code to rouse the rabble/deplorables. He just went full bore and spoke plainly to both the white supremacists and the religious nuts and stripped away every bit of so-called plausible deniability the modern Republican Party (post Civil and Voting Rights Acts) hid behind. I truly believe they were horrified by what Trump was doing and as I keep saying thought they could once again somehow, some way stuff the shit back into their “golden goose” of coded, dog whistle politics.

        They were wrong of course. What horrified them was having to finally accept that for anyone to have any influence in the GOP it was Trump’s way or else and after they failed to overturn Obamacare legislatively, the premature celebrations on THAT were the final blow. Trump not only didn’t even try to be Presidential anymore and started targeting people in his own Party. With each capitulation he forced, like a vampire he became stronger with each person he drained of their political lifeblood. As 2018 unfolded it became increasingly clear that the once unthinkable was possible. That all that money and effort that went into that massive project to, beginning in 2010 and via Tea Party activism deliver gerrymandering of state houses and Congressional delegations that would ensure Democrats would be in a “permanent” minority in the House in particular much in the same way Republicans had once been for decades prior to 1992’s midterms. Well before the election it was clear those marches the day after Trump was inaugurated weren’t a one-off, and that1 every bit of that energy and more was out there and ready to give them an ass kicking. If not for all that vicious gerrymandering, they’d have lost at least 70-80 seats!

        By the time in 2018 that it was evident the Democrats had a good chance at taking the House and even making gains in states Trump had grown too powerful in the Party and they were caught between the rock and hard place they themselves created. Still rather than take their medicine they chose to ride out the storm with Trump and risk losing a significant chunk of what they’d spent decades doing. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping the hurricane doesn’t get you isn’t the recommended path to a long life whether in actuality or politically but that’s what former GOP power players did.

        The GOP post 60s was bad enough, and the morphing into the Party of neocons in power that gave us the Iraq war and resulting mess in the middle east was worse but now? We are at a whole new level and that Party needs to be ripped out by the roots.

        If we are to survive as a Republic it needs to be disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up. The very economic globalization conservatives cultivated to enrich themselves at the expense of American workers and manufacturing capability & capacity has allowed both our allies and our enemies to grow. Conservative blunders early in the 21st century have bled our military and troops (and their families) to the point where it’s being held together with duct tape and baling wire. Now the world knows that not only was Bush 43 a one time fuckup on our part, but that every four years something worse is possible due to the antiquated Electoral College. They know we can no longer be counted on for more than a four year span and that’s going to cost future generations in ways that can’t yet be defined but the pain will be real. Our ONE chance to in perhaps a generation but more likely two generations is to squash the Trump Republican Party into dust, disavow and apologize profusely AND atone and then while we will never have the almost unquestioned role of leader of the free world we will be at the table and taken seriously.

        But Republicans simply won’t accept they have been at fault, and do what has to be done.

        • Remind me…up until THIS maladministration, when have Republicans EVER accepted what was clearly THEIR fault? And “leader of the free world”? Denis, that ship has long since sailed, even before Trump’s rise. All he did was make it official.

        • Excellent review of the devolution of the GOP. The other part of the story, of course, is how the Democratic Party over the same period deliberately kneecapped itself. As a matter of survival (for the country, let alone the party), this must not continue. When you write “The very economic globalization conservatives cultivated to enrich themselves at the expense of American workers and manufacturing capability & capacity has allowed both our allies and our enemies to grow — ” we mustn’t forget just how much the Democratic party bought into that same global neoliberalism. While this has been a passive rather than an active cause of Trumpism, it’s definitely a cause. Had the Democratic Party truly walked the walk of instead of just talking the talk, Trump and his party of evil clowns would never have gotten anywhere.

  6. Not only are we going to have to live with the dregs of humanity long after tRump is gone, those dregs are going to include his evil spawn who have gotten a taste of power and notoriety during this recess from civility and function, and who greatly overestimate their cache’. Idjt Jr. especially, I see as being a tool for every loathsome RWNJ wanting to keep the pot stirred, since Jr. can’t keep his foul face anus from spewing out sewage, trying to impress Daddy. It’s probably too much to hope that The Princess will fade back into the obscurity she had before Daddy came to Washington, though her musings tend more to vapid than vicious. Then we have the likes of Gaetz, Gohmert, Rubio, Cotton, Johnson, Gym Jordan, Lindsey, Meadows, Mitch, et al, all the traitorous POS that sold their souls and their country to Russia (just what was in those repug emails anyway????). There is still a whole lot of stupid and evil operating in this country, even after we cut the head off the beast. We’ve got a long, long way to go.

  7. Here’s a point I wish that the folks who so ardently believed in the fiction of a Sanders’ nomination in 2016 would have realized in 2016:

    “Because of how the Senate has evolved in recent decades, it takes a supermajority of 60 votes to pass most bills. A minority of 41 senators can throw a monkey wrench into most aspects of governance, from major bills to mundane business. Republicans can muster those 41 seats using only states Mr. Trump won by an average of 24 percentage points in 2016. Even if Mr. Biden wins and Democrats take the Senate, Republicans will hold enough power to derail nearly everything the new president wants to do.”

    All you need to do is replace “Biden” with “Sanders” and the REALITY of a Sanders presidency (which, to his supporters, would’ve resulted in a liberal utopia) becomes far more apparent. Sanders’ supporters in 2016 were all claiming that only Bernie could win against Trump because he had some “magic” that would (somehow) overcome all GOP obstruction in the Senate. I do NOT see that Bernie’s name on the general election ticket would’ve boosted any Senate races for the Democrats. For instance, in Wisconsin. Ron Johnson won with 50.2% of the vote while Democrat Russ Feingold only pulled in 46.8%. The Presidential race had 28,805 more total votes cast than the Senate race and Feingold still got 2000 fewer votes than Clinton did while Johnson got 74,000 more votes than Trump (and these figures despite 187,000 voters casting their presidential vote for someone other than Trump or Clinton). In Pennsylvania, the Senate race attracted 113,000 fewer votes than the presidential race. Toomey pulled in 2,951,702 votes to Democrat Katie McGinty’s 2,865,012 (with 235,142 votes going to the Libertarian candidate). Meanwhile on the Presidential side, Trump pulled in 2,970,733 votes (19,000 more than Toomey’s total) and Clinton pulled in 2,926,441 votes (61,000 more than McGinty) and 268,304 votes going to someone other than Trump or Clinton (notice: That number is 33,000 more than the vote going to the Libertarian Senatorial candidate). It’s really stretching the imagination that Pennsylvanians who voted for the Libertarian candidate for Senate would’ve been more likely to vote for McGinty than Toomey (Libertarians tend to skew slightly more conservative than liberal and, in a strict two-person D/R race, are more likely to vote “R”).

    North Carolina was unlikely to go “blue” in the Senate even with Sanders leading the Dems. The state went for Trump by 173,000 votes (with 186,000 voters choosing someone other than Trump or Clinton) while Republican Richard Burr outdid his Senate opponents’ combined total by nearly 100,000 votes. In Missouri, there was a very close Senate race (Republican Roy Blunt outperformed his Democratic opponent by just 78,000 votes while 123,000 votes went to other people); however, Trump seriously outperformed Clinton by more than 500,000 votes (and there were 143,000 votes cast for someone other than Trump or Clinton).

    Most other Senate races were simply not going to be affected in the least if Bernie had been the Democratic nominee (17 states were either already considered “safe” R or “safe” D) and the two states where the Dems did pick up the Senate seat from the GOP were in states that Clinton did win.

    And yet, this myth that *somehow* Bernie would manage to overcome all GOP opposition and get all of his radical, progressive agenda flourished all the way through the primaries, up to the general election and, most especially, after the November results came in. (I remember reading a lot of post-election mythologizing from Sanders’ supporters of “If Bernie had been the nominee, the Dems would’ve regained the Senate” but not a single one of these deluded people seemed to recognize the simple point that the Times so clearly explained in the above-quoted piece.)

    • Bernie’s falling in line, which is all I care about right now. But I will say the myth outlined above is why I have no patience for the “what if” game. That moment has passed and we are where we are. If Bernie can play “what now”, so can the rest of his supporters. And they damn well BETTER.

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