Ever since His Lowness took office, the media in general, as well as the public as a whole was alarmed at Trump’s almost immediate turn towards autocracy. His repeated attempts to force personal oaths of loyalty that would override their constitutional oaths, the gutting of departments, his appointment of soulless sycophants to management positions. The alarm went up that Trump was out to set himself up as a dictator for life in the US.
But they’re missing one critical component. No single strong man, regardless of how strong, is capable of creating or maintaining an autocracy on his own. Just ask Danny Ortega. Or Manuel Noriega. Ferdinand Marcos can vouch for that fact. As can Anastasia Samosa. A strong man requires two things in order to thrive and survive, the loyalty of the military, and a government process set up for authoritarianism.
Trump is no longer President not just because Biden beat him, but also because the military very quietly, but very forcefully made it clear to El Pendejo Presidente that they would not be leaving their barracks to declare martial law just because he signed the Insurrection Act. Despite Trump’s best efforts, the groundwork was not in place for an authoritarian transition.
Trump’s loss to Biden in 2020 was a crushing blow to the party. Because Trump literally was the party’s last hope. The GOP had lost the popular vote nationally in in seven out of the last eight national elections. Their base was shrinking, and their extreme ideology was choking off new members coming in to replace the actuarial tables. Their own autopsy report mandated a complete overhaul of the party that would take a decade to complete before the party became viable nationally again.
But that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. You don’t corrupt a government, you destroy it from within. That is what the GOP is doing right now, and has been doing since 2010. The GOP is facing electoral extinction, and with or without Trump, is taking every step they can to ensure that they remain politically viable.
After their 2010 wave election, the GOP monolithically set about gerrymandering the states that they controlled to ensure that they could at least maintain control of the House. That worked better than expected, it took 8 years for the Democrats to flip the House back. But the GOP was just getting started.
The GOP used their majorities, and in some cases super majorities in various red states to start to ensure their permanent dominance in those states by making it harder for anybody but a Republican to vote. Some of the laws were struck down by the courts, but others survived to make voting more restrictive for people not friendly to the GOP.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you create an authoritarian government from the ground up. You get a hold of a state, and then you reengineer the state government to make it almost impossible to boot you back out again. Every time you get lucky enough to flip a state, you immediately use legal, legislative means to ensure that you can’t lose it again. When you have enough states, the next time the GOP gets a hold of the House and Senate, then they can begin to change the national laws to help to complete the process. Which is easier with a Supreme Court super majority. And if those two benighted fools Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema thing that McConnell will hesitate to pull the trigger on the filibuster, they need a psychological intervention.
Look, forget about Trump, he’s nothing more than a loud distraction. The GOP is literally fighting for it’s existence! And the only way for them to remain viable is to make sure that it is impossible for them to be removed from power. And they have spent more than a decade in engineering the process in the states that they can convert to federal elections.
Trump is immaterial. If 2024 rolls around, and the GOP sweeps the House Senate, and you have a President Cruz, or Hawley, it doesn’t make any difference, because it is the party that will be calling the shots, and will engineer the government to maintain their control. Just look how close Trump came with the Barr Department of Justice.
This is how you lose a democracy. Forget one delusional moron with Messianic tendencies at the top, it takes a structure in place to be able to maintain authoritarian control. And that is what the Republican party is going balls-to-the-wall to set up as we speak. You’ve been warned.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
