See-saw, Marjorie Daw. And Jackie shall have a new master English nursery rhyme
Oh boy, this is just going to keep getting worse. It just goes to show that it doesn’t pay to let a delusional megalomaniac run your messaging campaign.
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. And depending on which one you’re watching at what moment, it is crystal clear that GOP leadership doesn’t know whether to shit, go blind, or wind their watch when it comes to messaging on the riot. What they do know is that they pretty much boned the bow-wow on the messaging from day one.
It’s the age old problem, Too many cooks in the kitchen. In the hours during and immediately following the riot, the GOP, and even FUX News got it right. There were loud, impassioned pleas for the Trumpster Fire to call off his thugs. Everybody knew who was in charge. That night, in the wells of the House and Senate, Trump loyalists like McCarthy, McConnell, and even sniveling toady Lindsey Graham excoriated Trump for inciting the violence, and then failing to stop it. They should have stuck with that, Trump was on the way out the door, cut the umbilical cord.
But Trump wasn’t about to take shit from a bunch of congressional wusses, and fired back. His supporters were as gentle as spring lambs, with swastikas and stars-and-bars flags, it was Antifa and BLM goons that caused all of the carnage and damage. And as Trump’s base rallied to his side, the GOP caucus had no choice but to relent and back the play. One small problem though. If it had actually been Antifa and BLM protesters, they would have been brawling with Trump’s fascists, not the cops! Watch the Charlottesville footage. So that crashed and burned.
Which led to the lamest dumb ass excuse of all. There literally was no Capitol Riot! The whole thing is a Democratic witch hunt! After all, Traitor Tot used it as his old standby for 5 years, so it has a kind of a soothing GOP ring to it. And it led to the amusing spectacle of moron House incumbents making statements about tour groups through the Rotunda.
So the GOP fucked this up from the word go. But you know what? It doesn’t really matter. Because the GOP doesn’t have a messaging problem, they have two different messaging problems, and they are totally irreconcilable.
A recent poll from ABC News showed that 68% of Americans saw the Capitol riot as a sign of increasing violence in American politics, not a one off deal. And that’s bad news for the GOP, because when people sit down to watch the news, and see a bunch of neo Nazi’s in Boy Scout knock off uniforms marching up and down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with their Styrofoam shields and banners, the first thing that comes to their mind is not Democrats! That’s Trump’s shtick. And control of the House will still be decided by suburban swing districts, not safely gerrymandered red ones.
On the other hand, another recent poll showed that 31% of GOP voters didn’t think that political violence is necessarily a bad thing, as long as it serves it’s purpose. Which led to a surge of GOP fascists like Mo Brooks, Laborious MTG, and Sugar Daddy Matt Gaetz screaming about another revolution, and 2nd Amendment solutions. And there is no ambiguity there, all of these two-legged-stools have R’s after their names. See those pesky suburban swing districts again.
The GOP had one chance to get this right, and they blew it. Trump announced that he was cancelling his sham press conference scheduled for tomorrow. My personal feelings are that he couldn’t get anybody to carry it. But he and the GOP are ceding 1/6 to the Democrats for messaging purposes. And they’ll do it again when the televised hearings start. And none of it will reflect well on the GOP. What’s that old saying? Oh yeah, No man can serve two masters.
Time for me to bang a drum I’ve been pounding since at least 2009: the GOP effectively no longer has any centralized leadership. And what passed for its middle management–McConnell, McCarthy, etc–has Peter Principled their way into self-immolation. Trump was the last thing holding them together. With his deterioration and mounting legal troubles, even that’s going away.
We Dems? We’re used to this kind of organized chaos. Not so this crowd…and boy, are things about to get unpleasant.
The democrats need to ask themselves one question: what would Trump & the Republicans do to them were the situation reversed, & the gop were actually on the right side???? Then proceed accordingly.
This is a slippery slope of hope I’m seeing here. In the immortal words of George Carlin, “I don’t know whether to shit or wind my watch. Guess I’ll shit on my watch”. That seems to be what a large number of Democrats are doing. Just going along, pretending everything’s OK. It’s not. The 1/6 committee has had a whole frickin’ year to do something and where are we? The midterms are upon us, yes NOW, and GOP Secretaries of State are being placed, along with other election officials who are NOT on our side. I am tired of banging on the table that all politics is local. There was a recent piece in The Guardian about this that was referred to on this very site. If you’re not the least bit scared to death, you’re not paying attention. Scott, I agree with your comment, but I don’t see it happening, do you?
Thanks for your response!!! I write what I see…And after almost 6 years of paddling in Trump’s toxic waste slough, I have seen over and over again that Trump can’t help other GOP candidates…Trump’s base is maniacally loyal…If Trump tells them to stay home, they’ll stay home…We shall see, my friend…
EFF that Guardian article, whose sole purpose for existing was to cater to the fear and loathing addicts who got their supply cut off when Trump got kicked out on schedule. I would think someone as old you claim to be would figure out why it’s taken this long…and why all the juicy tidbits, rather than being buried and forgotten by now, would come JUST BEFORE A MAJOR ELECTION CYCLE. Comey’s ill-timed letter alone should have taught you that much.
Again and again, I think of the examples of Ulysses S Grant and Phil Sheridan. In the former’s case, he gets “heartily tired” of hearing his generals do the same sort of fretting I’m hearing here and tells them to worry about what THEY’RE going to do. In the latter’s case, his routed men start chanting his name, making him yell “God damn you, don’t cheer me, FIGHT!”
So…who’s got any fight left in them?