You all know me, I’ve been a political junkie for 50 years now. And as an  acolyte, And as such, I cut my teeth, grew up with, and operated under certain basic political principles. They may seem arcane now to my younger readers, but they were the gold standard for almost a half a century. Here are a few of them;

  • Presidential elections are a debate over two differing political agendas and platforms
  • Midterm elections are always a referendum on the new administration
  • Always look out for the inevitable October Surprise
  • Message discipline is the secret sauce

So much for the wisdom of a half a century of time honored tradition and wisdom. The long vaunted October Surprise, normally considered to be a late October revelation that swung voter sentiment in the last week before the election is as dead as Paddy’s pig now, a victim of weeks of early and mail in voting, where masses of votes are already locked away before the surprise can take effect.

The rest of them fell before the terror of the reign of King Donald I. From the day that Traitor Tot farted his way down that rattletrap gilt elevator to announce his candidacy for President, Trump changed the paradigm for how the GOP would conduct elections from now on. He ran on racism. He ran on xenophobia. He ran on sexism. He ran on bigotry. He ran on a white nationalist populism. He ran on minority white grievance. And in steamrolling his way through the primaries, he turned the entire GOP into a slavish reflection of himself.

And the GOP stopped being a functional national party. Because Trump’s campaign had no platform, no ideas, no agenda, and no vision. Under Trump the party ran strictly and purely to satisfy the ravenous Trump base of racists and far right evangelicals, ans no programs or ideas! That one-trick-pony worked in a shock and awe campaign in 2016, and has never worked again since.

One of the adages I listed was that a national election was decided on platforms and agendas. And in 2020, that fell flat on its face. In 2020, Biden and the Democrats offered a positive agenda for the future, programs and legislation they wanted to pass to move the American public forward. And the Trump agenda for another 4 years was simple, More of the same! And the voters revolted in record numbers to reject Trump.

But nowhere is the dichotomy more clear than in my other political dictum, The midterms are a referendum on the party in power. And in 2018, that sure as shit was true. His Lowness did everything in his power to interject himself into the race, even though he personally wasn’t on the ballot, and the results were terrible for the GOP. They largely failed to increase their Senate lead with a favorable map, and lost 40 seats in the House, which led to investigations and 2 impeachments.

But the 2022 midterms were striking simply because they were the polar opposite of 2018. The Democrats were widely believed to be, although I never subscribed to it to take a bloodbath in 2022. The GOP was almost assured to flip the House by a massive margin, and likely to flip the House on a largely neutral map. Instead the Democrats actually picked up a seat in the Senate, and lost so few seats in the House as to leave the GOP with an ungovernable majority. What the hell happened?

Simple, Mon Cheri. What did I say at the top? The midterms are a referendum on the current administration. But the 2022 MAGA party didn’t run a campaign against the shortcomings of the Biden administration! Instead Trump’s anointed handmaidens ran a campaign relitigating the 2020 election, a subject that the vast majority of sane Americans was already sick to death of hearing about.

But they committed an even greater act of political malpractice. Thanks to the Trumpster Fire, they allowed the Democrats to brush aside the referendum issue, and instead make the election a matter of choice. And in their stupidity they made it possible for the Democrats to make it the worst possible choice.

In PA, do you want an incumbent Lieutenant Governor for Senate, or a glorified cruise ship doctor pushing hokey diet cures on television? In GA, do you want a fully qualified incumbent Senator, or a challenger who is still trying to figure out whether or not to be a werewolf or a vampire? In AZ, do you want a sane, reliable Democratic vote in the Senate, or do you want a GOP election denier that keeps erasing portions of his own campaign website that no longer agree with his reconstituted beliefs?

This is why the GOP is guaranteed to fail in all future national elections. Under the tutelage of Emperor Numbus Nuttus, the GOP is relegated to throwing out far right candidates that can’t win in general elections. But it’s even worse for them for another simple reason.

All of those old electoral adages died a peaceful death for a reason. Because the electorate has changed! Thanks to the insanity off Hair Twitler, there is still a small truly independent bloc of voters, and a growing bloc of disgruntled mushy middle voters of both parties that are tired of political gridlock, and want results. Also, starting in 2018, there has been an ever increasing youth vote that has turned out to make their feelings known. They’re not driven by ideology, they’re driven by causes and results. And the Democrats are the ones who mirror their causes. And at east at this point, the GOP has nothing to offer to any of them. And until they figure it out, they’re dead in the water.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. I’d make a minor alteration to the suggestion that the GOP *only* became a party of “no platform, no ideas, no agenda, and no vision” after Trump came along. They had largely become the “Party of No” during the Obama years, beginning with McConnell’s pronouncement that Obama would be “a one-term president.” In THAT moment, the GOP functionally quit running on the idea that they’d present a platform or any ideas or an agenda or a vision other than “obstruct the Black man” (which, in itself, was a mere transformation from Black people in general–except for the ones who could be used as needed–and to one specific individual).

    37
  2. Let us not forget the Moscow Mitch Monster, who brought us:

    The Party of No to Obama
    No 2020 GQP platform, and less in 2022.
    The stacked Extreme Court, who brought us the Roe decision
    And Moscow Mitch’s “Wanna know what we stand for? Elect us and find out.” Surely a winning hand, right?

    12
  3. The GOP Party has run on racism, xenophobia, sexism, bigotry, and white nationalist populism since Nixon, although until the Obama election it was less out in the open, more subtle, and they had more of a spectrum of constituents to satisfy from the John Birchers to the moderate left-over Eisenhower Republicans. Beginning with Trumplethinskin it’s been taken over completely by the Tea Party right wing extremist fascist fringe and completely morphed into the GOP-Nazi Party whose only goal is to increase & consolidate its power everywhere and anywhere it can so as to become not leaders of the people but dictators to the people. Agree with everything stated, Murfster 35, except that it’s not a foregone conclusion that the GOP-Nazi Party will continue to lose national elections into the future. Expect that the GOP-NAZIs will correct their low candidate quality issue and run smarter candidates who will have the exact same goals of usurping Democracy, but who will go about it in public in a more self-controlled way, not saying all those things out loud. The other thing that’s still not been shored up is our election laws and processes to prevent against massive election fraud. Just know that until they’re imprisoned the GOP-Nazis will continue to come up with every way imaginable to throw out or prevent votes in heavy D areas, computer back-door hacking, voter suppression, gerrymandering, Jim Crow voter intimidation, all of which was on steroids this past mid-term election – especially in Florida and Texas. So in essence, it’s going to take an all-hands-on-deck battle in the courts, in Congress, and out of the streets and in the voting arena to stop the GOP-NAZI Party from continuing to make more inroads into weakening democracy and stacking all the elections, laws, procedures, and rules in their favor. Expect every single national election from now on over the next 20 years to be knock-down drag-out affairs & the GOTV effort will need to continue to excel at the grass roots level to keep Democracy in the United States from going belly up.

  4. I believe they showed themselves under Bush although they figured it out under Clinton. I seen the fall as we exited Clinton’s presidency. Bush came in and you knew he wanted to fuck someone up. Then he went after Saddam. Tried to square that with the 9/11 attack. Had everybody going for awhile. But like all good republicans of late. Couldn’t tell a lie to save his ass.

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