Payback’s A Mitch. MAGAs Vow To Dethrone McConnell, Boy Have They Got A Surprise Coming

It’s turning out to be another extra heavy duty soil week in the Congressional wash and it’s only Tuesday. The revelatory texts that Liz Cheney read last night and Adam Schiff analyzed were just a glimpse of the dirty laundry that the J6 Committee is unloading. Forget hampers, there are boxcars full of this stuff.

Mitch McConnell was asked his opinion of last night’s festivities. Listen to what he says, because it’s the lead in to something that’s been an undercurrent in Washington and is now coming to a head.

I absolutely believe that all the vicious personal attacks, name-calling, and venom directed against Mitch and other establishment Republicans by Trump and his MAGA sycophants in Congress has had an impact on him. Just the opposite of what they intended. Keep an eye on Mitch. https://t.co/cXyoYAWlQe

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 14, 2021

I agree with Ron Filipkowski’s lead in to that clip. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. Mitch McConnell has borne the slings and arrows of insult comic Trump and his MAGAs for quite some time now. He’s good and sick of it and this is going to come to a head soon, because the anti-McConnell comments are escalating.

The game that is being played here, as we move into 2022, is McConnell v. Trump. Trump is endorsing MAGAs who believe that turning on McConnell is the right, proper, Trumpian thing to do. These people know nothing of politics and they’re following Trump’s lead and I think he’s going to lead them off a cliff like a bunch of lemmings.

Mitch McConnell is a cunning old buzzard — or bastard, he’s been called both — and he’s not going to go gently into some dark night that Trump and his moronic minions have set aside for him. At least if I had to bet money on it, I would not bet against McConnell.

Here’s how this latest Trumpian farce is shaping up. Axios:

Between the lines: Kelly Tshibaka, a primary challenger to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said Monday that “when I defeat Murkowski and become Alaska’s next U.S. senator, I will not support Mitch McConnell as leader.

• “It’s time for new, America First leadership in the Senate,” she said, echoing a Trump theme.
• Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, running to fill Sen. Roy Blunt’s (R-Mo.) upcoming vacant seat, made a similar pledge in September.

Steven Cheung, a Greitens adviser and former Trump administration official, told Axios opposing McConnell could become a “litmus test” for campaigns eager to show their loyalty to Trump.

• Cheung said research from GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio’s team indicated that “in the primary, if you’re anti-Mitch, your numbers go up.”

• “It’s a test for how Trumpian you are.”

• McConnell gave Trump political cover for much of his presidency, with his wife, Elaine Chao, serving in the Cabinet as Transportation secretary.

• The two had a falling out after McConnell criticized Trump for challenging the 2020 election results.

Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential conservatives in the country, castigated McConnell during his Fox News show last week — and promised to make the minority leader a consistent object of scorn in future segments.

• “In Washington, he’s known as the nastiest old woman in town,” Carlson said on his show last week during a segment about Bob Dole’s funeral.

• “This is hardly the first time McConnell has done something vicious like this, but we thought going forward we would start telling you about it, because why wouldn’t we?”

• A national Republican consultant working on House and Senate races told Axios: “I don’t think there is anyone, with the possible exception of Trump, who can do more damage to your credibility with GOP voters than Tucker.”

GOP donors also are furious with McConnell and other Republicans who voted for President Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

• As Axios reported last month, donors have complained it was foolish to help deliver a win to a Democratic president.

In addition, several Senate Republicans have privately and publicly criticized McConnell for cutting a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to raise the debt ceiling.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” said: “I don’t like that a lot. … What we did is promised one thing and delivered another.”

• Graham then fired a warning shot: “If we’re going to be successful in 2022, we’re going to have to work together as a team. And here’s what I would say to every Republican: If you want to be … a Republican leader in the House or the Senate, and you don’t have a working relationship with Donald Trump, you cannot be effective. So, I hope we’ll get on the same page here.”

Graham is saying here, in effect, that the GOP is now the party of Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene has made it clear that she believes that she represents the base and the base is “70% of the GOP.”

Roll this around in your head and you’ll see that the conflict that is shaping up is whether the GOP is the party of Trump now and will be hereinafter or if there’s enough of the old school establishment Republicans around.

McConnell is the leader of the establishment Republicans. So is Liz Cheney. A lot of dirt is going to come out in the January 6 wash, as we know. McConnell most likely already knows who most of the participants were, just as Kevin McCarthy most likely does as well. I say “most likely” because it’s hard to know who in the GOP is following Trump’s lead because they actually want to and who does it for strictly survival purposes. If Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham thought that they could actually get away with opposing Trump and sticking to their 2016 comments about him, they would. They’re both too cowardly to stick to their guns.

Josh Hawley goes along with Trump because he thinks between that and a heavy evangelical identification, he can swing enough votes to become who Mike Pence wanted to be and wasn’t and now never can be.

My money is on McConnell. When the dust clears and one man is standing, it won’t be Trump. Not in this contest. Trump doesn’t care about the Republican party except as a vehicle to get him from point A to point B. McConnell has spent his lifetime in the institution of the GOP. Trump is a freak show and while he’s been an incredibly destructive freak show, the GOP can’t make a platform out of performative assholery and do it decade after decade. They’ve got to get a grip on themselves, get a platform and be about something again. Either that, or get gerrymandering, voter suppression and now the Big Lie down to such an artform that they can literally steal enough elections to stay in power.

I don’t have the slightest idea what McConnell might be up to, but if there’s one man in Washington, D.C. who knows where all the bodies are buried, it’s him. I don’t think Trump is going to take him out. Plus, I’m not even sure Trump is going to try and really get on the 2024 ticket, either.

I think that the newcomers vying for a seat in the Trump klown car are going to be in for a surprise.

I’ve seen McConnell perform Machiavellian machinations for many years. Keep your eyes peeled, because I think he’s about to perform one on Trump. Just think about it for a moment: 1) the dirt is coming out from January 6; 2) McConnell knows where all the bodies are buried; 3) McConnell got the nickname “turtle” because nobody knows the long game better than him or has more patience.

McConnell is not going to take this level of abuse lying down, especially since it’s coming from Trump, with whom he had a strictly transactional relationship and from a lot of MAGA dummies who want to play government. He’s going to do something. You can take that to the bank.

This will be just like Aesop’s fable. McConnell is going to be the turtle to Trump’s hare-brained, half assed schemer, and he’s going to win.