I wonder if anybody at the RNC is a long range thinker. Just one person. Because it seems to me that if there was even one person, he or she might be thinking, “What if Trump loses in the fall?” and then the next question will be, “What happens to the party after that, if not only he loses, but takes a lot of people down with him?” Do you suppose that there’s even one person considering those odds?
Mike Johnson was asked just the other day, “how wide are Donald Trump’s coattails?” and Johnson replied that they were quite capacious indeed. Yessir, a lot of people are going to be riding the Trump victory wave — this, despite the evidence of last election when Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker, just to name two of Trump’s handpicked acolytes, went down in flames. And Kari Lake didn’t fare so well, as you recall. So how wide were/are those coattails, exactly?
Just last week Lara Trump and an election denier crony of Trump’s, Michael Whatley, took over as co-chairs of the RNC and now they’re remaking it into a Trump world image. And what does that look like? If you said, “A scene out of Goodfellas,” you’d be spot on, according to Rick Wilson.
The “bust-out” is a trope in mob movies, novels, and television series you’ve seen before. A hapless business owner gets in bed with the mob due to borrowing money from a loan shark or owing gambling debts to men with vowelly names and certain ethnolinguistic fillips. They use the patsy’s credit, assets, and properties to roll up massive new debts to more traditional lenders and vendors, then burn the place down for the insurance money. Only the stooge gets screwed in the end.
In Goodfellas, Henry Hill describes what happens when normies get in bed with the mob, either through choice or fate:
“Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with a bill, he can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.”
That’s the set up. Wilson goes on to describe, “Lara Trump is there as the eyes and ears of the Family. Chris LaCivita is there to bleed every last drop of revenue and resources to a) the Trump effort and b) his friends and allies. Everyone who gets the jobs and contracts canceled en masse this week will be a LaCivita ally or crony. Lara isn’t sophisticated enough to understand what happens when all this rolls forward, but it won’t matter much.”
This goes back to my original question, what happens after November? Yes, I suppose by some miracle that Trump could regain the White House. The chances of the GOP holding the House are nil and the Senate is iffy. It’s also been held by a razor thin majority in recent years, whichever party has had it, so that’s not likely to stop. Point being, if Trump has any truly wild ideas that involve a supermajority in the Senate or a unified government, he can retire those pipe dreams right now.
As Wilson has pointed out, staffers have been purged from the RNC and contracts have been canceled and they’re all going to go to LaCivita’s buddies. You see, political strategists are a lot like lawyers. You remember the famous cartoon called The Lawsuit, where two farmers are struggling over a cow. One is pulling its head, another pulling its tail, while the lawyer is on a stool and milking the cow. Insert the job title “political strategist” into this cartoon where “lawyer” is and rename the cartoon The Campaign, and you have the picture down to a tee. Wilson continues.
Party-building is hard work, and once a party’s operational core collapses, it’s hard to revive it. (Democrats in Florida and Republicans in California, for example.) This wholesale slaughter in the RNC is one more sign that the MAGA GOP isn’t simply post-partisan; it’s post-organizational, post-rational, and just another opportunity to monetize Trumpism.
This case of institutional ETTD means the end of the line for the old GOP. The state committeemen and committeewomen, the state organizations themselves, the major donors, the people who work their way up to get convention seats and tickets are all in for a crashing disappointment. The RNC’s work in voter registration, research, digital, communications, and turnout will wither and die before summer. All that will remain is the RNC’s ability to sluice money (minus a little handling fee and the vig) into Trump’s gaping maw.
All that will matter is moving the money.
And move the money they will, right into Trump’s grubby little mitts. Point being, the RNC is using Trump as its sepukku pillow and his cronies as the death blade. They’re kneeling on the pillow while his cronies bleed the party dry and deliver the coup de grace, which is, as Wilson points out, destroying the institutional core. It took a while to build that core. And never, ever forget the basic axiom, it’s easier to destroy than build, because that’s exactly what you’re going to see by the end of this year. The destruction of the Republican National Committee and the Republican party, by extension.
Go back to Wilson’s first paragraph. The only difference between the RNC and the mob is this: So far, they haven’t burned down 310 First Street for the insurance money. It is, however, only March.
That’s it, folks. 310 First Street is still standing. For now. But everything else that a mobster does to a patsy is being done by Trump to the RNC as we speak. They haven’t been in power even one full work week, yet the party is already being dismantled and new posts created. My favorite is Senior Counsel In Charge Of Election Integrity, helmed by Christina Bobb.
And Alina Habba was seen strolling around Mar-a-Lago the other day carrying a $70,000 Birkin-Hermes handbag. Nice move up in the world for a lawyer that was obscure and owing taxes a few years ago. She’s got accessories to rival anything that Princess Kate is sporting at Buckingham Palace.
Trump is doing to the RNC what the goths and vandals did to Rome. And still, I wonder, does anybody in the GOP think about the future? Or, are they just going to close their eyes and hope for a miracle on Election Day and if there’s no miracle, then what? Then what?
I think of regular GOPers and even those with power as characters in some horror/slasher movie. As they see their killer advancing the guys standing there paralyzed in fear, and the women stuck in place just screaming as if that will scare off a bloodthirsty killer. We all know how well that lame trope works. Or rather fails to work. They always die and horribly.
GOPers are terrified to stand up to Trump, or even try to band together for safety in numbers to do so. For fear Trump will write mean things about them and MAGA Nation will ruin their careers. Funny thing is, their careers are already over for lack of a long enough resume of continuous Trump ass kissing! So they do nothing but stand there and hope and of course will “die” horribly for their lack of courage. Or even willingness to run away and hide!
Trump has stolen something else too.
The phrase “The buck stops here”.
Though, of course Trump has perverted the original meaning.
Now it means the money ends up in his pocket.
if the rnc can install enough people counting votes to throw out democratic votes then they won’t need to spend money on down ballot races.
The only measure of the trumps’ self worth is $. They don’t care who or what they harm to get it. They don’t care about government or the greater good except for pretending as a means to get more $.
The takeover of the RNC is an example, not a symptom. The flotsam and jetsam of ruined broke maga lives don’t touch them. It’s part of the plan and they just don’t care.
This article is a good read.