Sooner or later it had to come to this. You could feel it in your bones. Like two veteran boxers, they’ve been feinting and jabbing, keeping their mitts up, neither wanting to open himself up too early. But not for much longer.

It’s been bubbling under the surface for more than a year. After January 6th, Mitch McConnell was blunt and forceful in his condemnation of Trump for spearheading the insurrection. Trump lashed back out at McConnell, and McConnell backed off, moderating his comments, but without sniveling down to Mar-A-Lago for penance like Kreepy Kevin McCarthy.

McConnell and Trump have since largely ignored each other since then, and recent reporting shows that the two haven’t actually spoken in more than a year. Then the RNC boned the bow-wow with their censure of Kinzinger and Cheney. McConnell reiterated his January 7th condemnation, and this time didn’t bother backing down or moderating. Trump called McConnell a RINO, and demanded his ouster from leadership. It can’t get much worse than that.

Oh yes, it can. NBC News is reporting that while His Lowness is busy in Mar-A-Lago, vetting and endorsing his own slate of 2022 GOP Senate candidates, McConnell is quietly working behind the scenes and under the radar with his closest, most trusted aides and advisors, desperately working to interview and vet quality moderate GOP Senate candidates, as well as putting the arm on every money man connection he has in order to ensure that they’re well funded.

Welcome to the revolution my friends. These are the contours of the GOP civil war we’ve all been talking about. This is not some ragtag band of anti Trump crybabies, running around playing the political version of weekend militia. Mitch McConnell has been in the congress for as long as Biden. He is a master tactician, both legislatively as well as politically. And he has an underground network of sources and allies that Trump could only dream of.

This is worse for the GOP and the RNC than anything I had imagined, simply because of McConnell’s management and tactical skills. For instance, if McConnell is hitting up deep pocket donors to donate directly to the alternate slate of candidates McConnell is brewing up, you can bet your ass he’s telling the same donors to stop making donations to the RNC, so Trump doesn’t get the money to offset what McConnell spreads around to his candidates. If that works, the GOP House is fucked.

This is a disaster for Trump and the GOP simply because there are so many 2020 battleground states with 2022 Senate races. Pat Toomey is retiring in Pennsylvania. Trump had already made an endorsement, but that creep had to drop out after a personal scandal. Who does McConnell back? Remember, Trump lost Pennsylvania. Many people, myself included, believe that Trump personally cost the GOP at least one seat, if not both in Georgia. Who does McConnell run against Trump’s hand picked patsy? Richard Burr is stepping down in North Carolina, which has tended to be a swing state in recent years. With a booming tech sector, there are more liberals, and less Trombies. Who does McConnell go with?

But what’s even more fascinating and tantalizing for me is 3 states that nobody is talking about, because they all have incumbents up for reelection, but all 3 of them are either already on the ropes, or one staggering step away from the ropes. All three of them have been a pain in McConnell’s ass. If he wants a more malleable, easier to control Senate, does he mount a moderate primary challenge to these 3 incumbents? Especially if he’s already shut off the funski funding valve?

In Wisconsin, the Democrats are salivating at the thought of running a quality candidate against Ron Johnson. Johnson has become a political joke. Remember, Trump narrowly lost Wisconsin in 2020. Does McConnell run a moderate primary challenger against Johnson, hoping to take him out, and remove some of the Democrats campaign fodder, increasing his odds of winning in November?

In Missouri, Josh Hawley is already in deep doo-doo. He is an admitted pro insurrectionist, having been caught on video power saluting from the steps of the Capitol before they decided to come on in and join him and the guys and gals. Hawley’s earliest endorser, and biggest financial backer has already announced that he will spend every penny he has to deny Hawley another term. McConnell flatly demanded that every GOP Senator vote NO on any House challenges to state electoral results. Hawley became one of the first to defy him. Does McConnell try to clean house, and get a little payback in the process?

And finally we come to Florida. Marco Rubio may as well give up politics and go to work for the traveling circus as The Incredible Human Pretzel! He has contorted himself into every geometric form possible trying to remain somehow independent without offending Trump. Does McConnell pose a moderate challenge, try to get rid of a Trump toady, and get an incumbent more personally loyal? He better, because from where I’m sitting, Val Demmings is capable of giving Rubio more than he wants, and then dishing out seconds.

This is critical because it not only puts the control of the Senate in jeopardy, it puts the House seriously back in play too. Because everybody has known all along that Trump was going to be fielding and endorsing his own slate of candidates, House and Senate. And primaries being what they are, if Trombies are motivated, the Traitor Tot slate goes on to November, and probable election. At least half of the GOP is sick to death of Trump. In a recent poll, only 50% wanted him to be the candidate in 2024. If McConnell can field an acceptable field of Senate candidates, and fund them, all bets are off. Because if McConnell is able to give moderate GOP voters a good, optimistic reason to show up and vote in the primaries to take their party back, it won’t just be Trump Senate acolytes and incumbents who get ousted, Trombie challengers and incumbents in House races will get swept away too. Because these people want their party back! And the ones who survive will find themselves facing a prospect similar to 2018. Moderate GOP voters will either stay home in protest, or hold their noses and vote for Democrats in order to purge their ranks of Trombies.

My advice is to start husbanding your sick and vacation time to take primary Tuesday nights off this year. Mitch McConnell is a master tactician, and as Machiavellian as hell. If NBC News is reporting this, they’re reporting it for two reasons. One, McConnell wants them to report it, he wants to throw that gauntlet at Hair Twitler’s feet, he’s sick of his shit. Two, McConnell wants the GOP base to keep their eyes and ears open. Help is on the way, and they can take their party back. McConnell has absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

And now to close this on a high note. From here on out, no matter what happens, it’s good news for Democrats. If McConnell did his job, and slowed the big money donations to the RNC to support his slate, then the RNC is going to be cash strapped. Not just for the primaries, but for the general election, because you fundraise through the primaries to build a war chest. If McConnell fields a Senate slate, those are going to be brutal, bloody battles, and whomever survives will be weakened and cash depleted. But House races need money too. And if McConnell gets deep pocket donors to donate directly to candidates rather than the RNC, then Trombie candidates will suffer the most. Strap in, it’s gonna be a helluva ride.

 

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7 COMMENTS

  1. I dislike both of them, they’re both wicked. But in the end, Trump is more so. He wants to rule our country, not govern it, and that’s beyond scary. His vindictiveness knows no bounds. So looks like my money is on the Turtle. Let the games begin!!

  2. Hawley is not up this cycle. The race in MO is to fill an open seat due to Roy Blount’s retirement. The rethug primary there is already a shit show. You have sex blackmailer ex-gov Eric Greitens, the current AG Schmitt and Mark McCloskey, who gained fame waving a gun at BLM protestors walking down his street, running. They all claim to be Trumpists. There are others running as well, that no one has ever heard of.

    I agree that Yertle is trying to recruit “normal” rethugs, but so far isn’t having much luck. Sununu in NH and Hogan in MD both declined. He said publicly a few months ago that he had talked to Walker and found him acceptable.

    I don’t think he is going to try and primary Rubio or Johnson. For one thing, it’s hard to oust an incumbent. Second, a contested primary sometimes results in the winner being damaged, either financially or by having to take hard stands in the primary that won’t fly in the general.

    While I believe Yertle’s main goal is to be majority leader again, he’ll settle for defeating any and all Trumpists. What the Orange One fails to realize is the Turtle is an effective practitioner of the dirty political game. How else can one explain his approval rating in KY in the 20s, yet easily reelected.

    If he succeeds in turning off the money spigot to MAGAts, he wins this battle.

  3. The true irony is that McConnell brought a good portion of this fiasco on himself back in 2010 when he pushed the RNC to allow all those moronic Teabaggers to co-opt the Party instea of taking a longer view and letting the GOP stay in the minority a couple more cycles.

    McConnell was so scared that the GOP would be split by a separate Tea Party Party that the GOP would wind up in the minority for 2010 and possibly 2012 (and beyond). BUT, if he’d taken the hit and let the Teabaggers go their own way, they would’ve come back with their tails between their legs (not necessarily just a metaphor considering some of the teabaggers). With the Teabaggers wielding such power over the GOP, the Party couldn’t really do anything but play the role of Obstructionist for the rest of Obama’s term and, while that was successful, it showed the GOP didn’t have any real idea or message to sell; in the process of playing the game of “If Obama’s for it, we’re against it,” they never developed any REAL alternatives .

    And by letting the Teabaggers play such a major role in 2010 (and through the rest of Obama’s term), McConnell and the RNC set the stage for Trump’s rise to power over the GOP.

  4. McConnel is not as brilliant as everyone thinks. As stated above, he let the teabaggers in and then the orange idiot. Turtle had more than one opportunity to oust the mango monster and to shut down his “stolen election” crap but he didn’t. Big failures and a distorted “long view” in my opinion.

  5. McConnell wants to let the ‘pube base that help’s on the way? Just who does he thing makes up the ‘pube base? The republican party did not become the G.Q.P. overnight. All those years McConnell was busy getting shitty court picks seated and such, the ‘pubes were digging deeper and deeper to the bottom of the barrel for candidates. It is the silly person who asks how or why former guy got elected in 2016 because he spoke what the ‘pube base wanted to hear. The republican party became the party of racists, bigots, misogynists, homophobes, anti-science/logic/rationality when? In the seventies/eighties? That tent has only gotten bigger. Hillary perhaps should not have said anything about baskets of deplorables but that has been the ‘pube base for almost as long as I’ve been voting.

  6. WE “ REAL AMERICANS “ CAN ONLY HOPE AND PRAY THE TURTLE HAS A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK AND KICKS OFF SOON !!! AND THE SAME THING FOR DON THE CON !!!! WHEN DONNIE DOES DIE , THEY`LL HAVE TO PLACE HIM IN A MAUSOLEUM , ABOVE GROUND , BECAUSE MOTHER-EARTH WILL SPIT HIM BACK OUT !!!!! I WISH HIM AND HIS TRAITOROUS FAMILY NOTHING BUT PAIN AND SUFFERING TILL THE DAY THEY ALL DIE !!!!! THEY HAVE TURNED AMERICA INTO A GREAT BIG STINKING PILE OF SHIT , AND IT JUST GETS STINKIER AND STINKIER EVERY DAY !!!!! I AM UTTERLY ASHAMED OF MY COUNTRY , AND THERE ISN`T ANYONE WHO IS MORE PATRIOTIC THAN I AM !!!! MY 2 TOURS OF DUTY IN THE JUNGLES OF VIETNAM SHOULD QUALIFY ME FOR THAT !!!!! NO BONE SPURS HERE !!!!! AND 5 DECENT AMERICAN MEN DIDN`T HAVE TO GO IN MY PLACE EITHER !!!!!

    (Moerator’s Note) Please knock off the all caps/shouting. For future reference an all caps word or phrase is one thing but an entire comment is over the line. Also, while you might not have crossed the line in the first part of your comment be careful. Don’t go making specific threats. (I go over what I write when I’m worked up and more than once have had to go back and edit stuff out)

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