One thing is for sure. This has to have been the longest 5 weeks in Traitor Tot’s life. The midterm was on November 3rd and ever since the vaunted red wave turned out to be a red ink blot, somebody has to take the blame.
And will wonders never cease? The vast majority of it coming from mainstream Republicans is falling squarely on Trump’s pointy head. And some senior GOP officials, campaign managers and strategists haven’t just been direct, they’ve been brutally blunt. Some of them have, with savage glee, turned Trump’s infamous We’re going to win so much that you’re going to get sick of winning! comment, opining that the GOP was getting sick of losing. Even some braver chickenshits have started to put forward that it’s time to Close the book on the Trump chapter and move on. In 76 years Trump has never faced this kind of concentrated and focused censure and disapproval.
Let’s be real. None of this is going to have the slightest effect on Trump’s rock solid 25-32% Trombie base. They don’t care if he drools in public and wets the bed, they’re his to the death. But Trump can’t win on a lousy 25-33%, even in a low turnout GOP primary, and especially if the GOP primary candidates and sane GOP voters rally behind one challenger to take Trump on from the start. That could actually sink Hair Twitler’s boat in the primaries.
But in at east one sense, it may not really even matter, since the outcome is already predetermined on one of three possible paths. Earlier tonight, former FL GOP Representative David Jolly laid out his reasoning in a series of scenarios that sang to me like Frank Sinatra. Mainly because they fit not only Trump’s psyche as we know it from bitter experience, but also the GOP’s psyche writ large. Here’s what Jolly proposed.
Scenario One. One way or another, Trump clears the GOP primary field and wins the nomination. This could happen 2 ways. Trump could preemptively carpet bomb the potential field, and scare them all off from entering the fray. The 2nd one is that the egotistical GOP challengers recreate the 2016 mosh pit, allowing Trump to pile up delegates with his miserable 25-32%. Trump goes on to get trumped by Biden in the election, and thanks to his stupid meddling in the midterms, has none of the statewide officials he needs to try to overturn the election in the legislature. Democrats roll, and likely increase their House and Senate shares.
Option two. Trump runs into serious problems in the GOP primaries, Either the GOP field settles on one candidate to oppose him, or the field is small enough that Trump can’t run away, and faces a messy floor delegate fight he’s destined to lose. In a typical Trump dick move, This time Trump screams that the primaries are rigged against him by the deep state GOP, and actually bolts the GOP with his Night of the Living Dead base for an independent run for President. National hilarity ensues, and the Democrats crush the GOP.
Scenario Three. One way or another, Trump survives the GOP primaries, and becomes the GOP presidential candidate. Do yourself a favor, don’t count out AZ Trumptard Kari Lake as VP choice. Trump is through with sane guardrails. Coming out of the conventions Trump is getting crushed. By early to mid September Trump is still getting crushed, and realizes that no electoral college pathway exists. In the ultimate Trump dick move, Trump takes to the stage, screams that the Election is rigged by the Democratic deep state administration, and in a blind rage demands that his faithful base sit this one ut. The GOP once again gets crushed, but Trump can cry to the heavens that he Didn’t lose! It was a rigged election, with massive voter fraud!
There’s a good reason why all 3 of these scenarios sing to me like Luck be a Lady Tonight. Simply because all 3 of them are exactly the kind of selfish, self destructive dick moves Trump would pull. Trump doesn’t give a shit about the GOP, if it isn’t his, why should anybody else get to play with his toys? He’ll have his apocalyptic Gotterdammerung, and bring the party down with him. Rough road ahead for the GOP.
They should tell him that if he wants to run in 2024, he has to admit he lost in 2020. Because the 22nd Amendment say you can only win *twice*.
Just to nitpick but that’s NOT what the Amendment says.
It starts with “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, . . .” (the rest of the sentence describes acting as President for more than two years of a term that had been won by another person so it’s not applicable). It does NOT say “win” an election. A constitutional lawyer could reasonably argue that, despite Trump’s own belief that he’s the legitimate president who was denied his second term due to electoral hanky-panky (or whatever the appropriate legal terminology would be), Trump was not elected a second time and has not, in fact, been acting in any form or fashion as the elected President of the United States so he is fully eligible to run in 2024. (Now, whether Trump could find a constitutional lawyer willing to take on the case without getting paid a very hefty fee up-front is a different matter entirely. And whether any court would be willing to step into this fight is also a different matter.)
Jolly forgot (or maybe not) Scenario #4: Trump gets indicted by the Feds/GA, they bring a bulletproof case to bear and he heads for prison. Wouldn’t have to be that many years to make it a de facto life sentence, not at his age or with his health.
And before anyone says this is never going to happen, remember that Trump has cost the GOP three election cycles by this point. He even managed the quadruple somersault of losing them the same Georgia twice in a row during the last two cycles. The brutal math behind that means he has to go and his legacy given the erasure treatment perfected by the Egyptian pharaohs. Since he won’t go on his own, they gladly let various prosecutors have their way with him.
#4 is the non-MAGA GOP’s dream scenario. I mentioned it in an article I posted here yesterday. If Trump were to be jailed, whether by DOJ or either in NY or GA they could adopt a “Democrats persecuted Trump” strategy. This would allow them to jack up his MAGAts without having to directly court them with the kind of blatantly Trumpian rhetoric that Trump himself has gotten away with. Done well, such a strategy would keep that Trump base whipped up into a frenzy by directing their anger at Democrats instead of the GOP. GOP leaders could play the role of Championship Wrestling referee, or Sgt. Schultz (for you young folks, a character from Hogan’s Heros), a “I didn’t see anything” deal and the MAGAts would buy into it. Their second preference is for Trump to just die as Jolly said on election night less than a week ago. But what they’d really love is for Democrats to drive the stake through Trump’s heart because the persecution angle would allow them to keep Trump’s base virtually intact.
First, how many of the MAGA maggots strike you as being willing to let go of their orange idol? Damn few from where I’m sitting and if the COVID spikes we’re seeing are any sign, they’ll have even fewer meaningful numbers to bring to bear in a general election than even the last two cycles. Non-MAGA Republicans with any brains (more on that in a minute) know the real prize is Gen Z, who eclipsed every Boomer vote during the midterms. So, in every way possible, MAGA is damaged goods with a rapidly approaching expiration date. Easier to wait a few years than bother with any of them.
Second, even if the above were not true, who in what is left of current Republican leadership has the “skill” to make it work? The correct answer, BTW, is none. McConnell has lost control of that crowd, McCarthy is a lap poodle with zero game, DeathSantis is in way over his head and, to quote The Dirty Dozen, “the rest, I don’t even want to think about.”
In summary, all the fretting about MAGA would mean something if this were a few years ago. Now, outside of future terrorist activity (which will ONLY help the Dems), that collection of freaks mean less than nothing.
So what if Willard Romney said that about Don the Con. Romney voted for Trump-approved bills 96% of the time and is just as corrupt as Trumpelthinskin. The only real reason Romney said that is because he hates TFG because TFG personally insulted him & he wants to run against Trump in 2024. Willard is just as power hungry, supports all the same GOP-NAZI Party anti-democracy initiatives as Trump. Just like Trump, he’s for himself over party, party over country. For example, every year he introduces a new version of his Trust Act in Congress, a Trojan horse intended to use a backroom committee to steal Social Security $$$ from all the people who, with their sweat & blood, paid for it, and give that $$$ to the extremely wealthy (himself).
Most likely scenario is One, but only if Benedict Donald somehow avoids being sentenced and imprisoned before 2024.
Romney is a spineless windsock who gives Mike Pence a run for his money in the feckless department. He might be dangerous in a future Republican party headed up by Liz Cheney but as a leader in his own right, he’s harmless.