The GOP’s Biden Dilemma

Granted it’s early yet, but you can’t just feel the difference, you can almost smell the difference between today and March of 2009. In 2009, GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to make then President Barack Obama a one term president was simple. Obstruct everything. And now, in 2021, McConnell’s battle plan to derail the Biden presidency, and soften up the ground for the grand return of El Pendejo Presidente in 2024 is exactly the same. Because, hell, it worked out so well the first time, right?

*Bummer Alert* It isn’t working. And we know it isn’t working because of the numbers. Right now, President Biden’s approval rating is a very healthy 60%. Hos approval rating on his handling of the coronavirus is 70%. And here’s the kicker. Among Republican voters, Biden’s approval rating is 44%! Think about it for a moment. As we speak, President Biden’s popularity among Republicans, his mortal enemy, is on a par with Trump’s  high water mark popularity with the American people for four freakin’ years! If you’re a Republican, it’s Apollo 13 time, Houston, we have a problem.

And the problem for the GOP is Joe Biden. Since the GOP has no actual morals, plans, agenda, or governing principles, the only way they can gin up their base is through hysterical hatred for the other side. In the 1990’s, they used ginned up scandal after ginned up scandal to turn the Clintons into The Anti Christ and his handmaiden. From 2008-2016, it was blind racist hatred for America’s first black President. And in 2016, the GOP got a free second bite of the Hillary apple. Their method for energizing their base was demonization.

But that shit. just. doesn’t. work. with Biden. He has been a public figure for his entire adult life, and comes across as a normal, moral, compassionate, caring person. He’s the living every family’s goofy uncle who tells every kid at the BBQ to pull on his finger. No matter your political stripe, everybody knows Joe, and nobody ever really has a bad word to say about him. Even Trombies who swear on a stack of bibles that Biden stole the election! don’t personally vilify him for it. Ask the average Trump supporter about the outcome of the election, and their response is likely to be, We coulda done worse.

And Biden is playing it perfectly. Trump literally incited hatred and revulsion by being so 24/7 in-your-face prominent, that it made you just want to slap him silly! When Biden has something to say, he comes out, says it straight-from-the-heart, no bullshit, spins positively, and goes back to work in the Oval Office. Even non Trombie GOP voters know where they stand with Biden. And according to polling, as much as they hate to admit it, they kinda like it.

Stick a pin in this, just put in your hip pocket for down the road. In order to jazz up their base going into 2022, the GOP requires victimization, and demonization. And you just can’t demonize Biden! A souvenir hawker at last week’s CPAC summed it up perfectly, when he told a reporter, I can’t even give the Biden shit away!

The only possible remedy for the GOP is Trump himself. The GOP needs Trump to be almost omnipresent on social media, and in the mainstream media, to drum up support. But Trump is neutered by social media, and even FUX News is leery about putting him on, for fear of ending up embroiled in another lawsuit. The more success Biden has, and the more popular things he enacts that even Republican voters like, the harder it becomes for the GOP to fin up the kind of primal fear they require to get people out to the polls. Don’t touch that dial.

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