The squeaky wheel gets the oil Old Saying
That may well be true, but let’s take it a step further, just for shits-n-grins. But what happens once that squeaky wheel gets the oil? It stops squeaking! And once that happens, nobody pays attention to it anymore!
You know, I actually almost feel sorry for GOP Senate traditionals like Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey. They, especially McConnell, want their fucking party back! They’re tired of the clown show cluster fuck. And they realize how damaging this GOP House obsession with Putin can be, especially for the midterms. And so they’re getting in front of every microphone they can find, and denouncing the House collaborators as a noisy but small minority of the GOP as a whole. But there’s just one small problem.
They’re being drowned out. Right now, using practical terms, the GOP sane Senators are talking into a microphone, while the GOP House turncoats are shouting into the PA system at Yankee Stadium. The Trumpista traitors have unfettered access to FUX News, NewsMax, OAN, and from there social media and streaming services online. The GOP Senators are limited to what crumbs they generate on network coverage. It’s not even close to being a fair fight. And maybe that’s a good thing for the establishment Senate.
Remember, The squeaky wheel gets oiled. And right now the GOP House kamerades are that squeaky wheel. And as I wrote in my previous article, two respected GOP strategists, Rina Shah and Shermichael Singleton have both predicted that the primaries and general election of 2022 will be a bloodletting for Trump supported candidates. Their continued loud, almost gleefully arrogant support for a butcherous madman with nuclear codes is going to make people aghast. And they’ll pay for it at the polls.
Yeah, it’s going to be bitter wormwood on the tongues of McConnell and traditional Republicans to become only the third party in history out of power to lose seats in a midterm election. They will mourn the opportunity lost. But in the long term, it may well be the best thing that could happen for the survival of the mainstream Republican party. Here’s why.
If the majority, or even half of the Trump backed incumbents and challengers lose in 2022, that greatly cripples Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican party. Because Trump desperately needs that image of invincibility from his Trumpaholic base to scare everybody else back in line. If they take a shellacking at the polls in November, not only do they become less powerful, but Trump himself is weakened as a candidate in 2024.
Which is all that staunch anti Trump stalwarts like Miles Taylor, Mike Murphy, and the entire Lincoln Project have been begging for. They are well funded, and the breaking of Trump’s grip on the party would allow them to recruit and groom sane, intelligent candidates, with actual agendas, and a sincere desire to govern. People largely voted Biden President on a desire for a return to normalcy, and the thought of a functional government again. And Boy!, has Biden delivered, in spades.
If the GOP could actually elect some representatives and Senators that actually want to constructively debate and govern, even if they’re in the minority, who knows? Even the American people might begin to have a little faith in the American two party system again. And that’s a good thing, since it’s the only one we’ve got. Don’t touch that dial.
The GOP is like an injured athlete that needs to be sacrificed for a season although doing so will probably derail realistic championship hopes for their team. But the surgery and rehab will ensure lots of future seasons for the athlete and franchise if they undergo that season ending surgery and subsequent rehab. Sometimes athletes and/or franchises make the wise, long term choice and sometimes they don’t. In the latter case a career can be ruined and a franchise along with it for years, even decades to come. Think about Bill Walton back when the Portland Trailblazers were ascendent with an almost perfectly contructed team. Ownership and the team doctor lied to him about the injury to his foot and he played out a season in poor form when he should have had surgery and a year off. He was never the same again, showing only flashes of what he once could do because there were limitations on how many minutes he could play. And the Trailblazers fell back into the pack for over ten years! The GOP needs to submit itself to the necessary surgery and rehab, losing ground for the time being but winding up more solid (and sane) in the long-term. Sadly, that’s been obvious even to some of the elders in the GOP since Obama was elected but they refuse to accept that they have been and are continuing to “play injured” and making that injury worse seemingly every day.
I’d personally say that the state of GOP disrepair was also evident just in the aftermath of W. The 2008 GOP nominees for the Presidency were proof of how much the party had weakened itself with a) disastrous mistakes that were coming home to roost by 2008 and b) a quiet purge of potential leadership rivals which only got worse with Obama’s election. It left a gaping big hole in their operation which their terribly shortsighted Tea Party push compounded the damage on. As a result, Trump had all the support he needed to win the nomination in one place.
Now the situation is worse than ever for them, a fact not lost on folks like Liz Cheney. They’re going to be years picking up the pieces of all this, whatever the midterms results.
Excellent analogy and explanation! Makes perfect sense to me, Denis!
Hopefully it’s not too much longer we have to wait until the GOP at large, especially the former GOPers, finally realizes that Trump branded conservatives are a small, and more radioactive every day, segment of the right wing. They don’t even have to purge them from the party, they just have to realize that their true base is much larger than the Trump minority and stop listening to them.
We had four years of corruption, gerrymandering, thousands of lies and misinformation, and Trump trying to use the federal government for his own unethical purposes, enough is enough! Democrats have their problems too but we can all clearly see that the Trump GOP is a new low for this country.
Again, I remind folks of what happened in 2010. The GOP had a chance to dump the radical Tea Party movement but it bore the risk of losing any chance of regaining Congress and possibly being out of power for several more cycles. The GOP had already been out of power for a mere four years and it was driving the leadership crazy so it accepted that year’s batch of crazies and they regained the House (and came pretty close to retaking the Senate).
The GOP will NOT ever accept losing, no matter what positives it might gain from the loss.
Then they’re going to lose again…badly. Ukraine is turning into a reverse 9/11 and I anticipate equal reverse results to these midterms vis-a-vis the 2002 midterms, which you’ll recall used 9/11 as a cudgel to sweep aside Dems. The beatings will continue until the crazies have left the room…and they WILL leave the room.