This has been one hell of a weekend in political news. Saturday night was yet another milestone in the drama of Donald Trump and the downhill slide of politics in this country and the ongoing disintegration of the GOP. As soon as Trump was on the podium calling for massive protests, calls went out from media outlets, as they always do, to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. Republican leadership needed to weigh in. And what have we had? Crickets.
Do you know why that is? It’s as plain as the nose on your face and it’s a message which both men named above keep telegraphing to us over and over again. There IS NO Republican leadership. That’s why you haven’t heard from anybody. The last time a constitutional crisis and political scandal of this magnitude arose it was Watergate. There was Republican leadership at that time. Barry Goldwater famously walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed the White House lawn to tell Richard Nixon that by bipartisan agreement, he was finished. Resign or be impeached. Your call.
Those days only exist in history books. There is no Republican leadership in 2022. Mitt Romney has been diminished. He’s a cipher on the big scoreboard of current events. Dubya may come out and say something. Good for him if he does. But don’t hold your breath. Mitch McConnell is the Senate minority leader, yes, but he is a leader who has gotten where he’s gotten and stayed there exclusively because he understands how the levers of power work, not because the man actually stands for any principles or policies. You can look at Senate leadership from the past, Harry Reid comes immediately to mind, who are actually known for accomplishments in government which they made possible both through their legislative skills and to their dedication to the bills at hand.
McConnell has no accomplishments beyond obstruction. That’s it. That’s his legacy.
That said, McConnell cuts a far more impressive figure in the GOP and in the public eye than Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy is wildly out of his league as House minority leader in this era. He is just as far out of place as a goldfish would be in a barracuda tank. In the GOP as it stands today, an endorsement from Marjorie Taylor Greene carries more weight than an endorsement from Kevin McCarthy. Run your mental tongue around that a few times and let the taste sink in.
The only two people who were reached for comment this weekend and who would actually go on record were Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham, the concern troll, famous for her equivocation and the lapdog/golfing partner of Trump.
But since they’re the only ones we have to analyze, let’s look at who they are, shall we? They’re both terrified of Trump. They are both very safe politically, coming up again for reelection in 2026. Yet they can’t move a muscle for fear of exciting Trump’s wrath and in Collins’ case, the fear is well justified. Trump went ballistics over the weekend and called Collins “whacky” and a “RINO” because she told ABC News on Sunday she is working with Joe Manchin on a bipartisan reform of the 1887 Electoral Count Act. That sparked Trump’s outburst wherein he admitted that he had wanted Mike Pence to overturn the election.
Collins won’t stand up to Trump. As to Lindsey Graham, he’s the one who they talk about in terms of alien mind conversion for the way he has fallen under Trump’s thrall and stayed there, fluffing Trump on the golf links, being terrified to say anything against him. Graham showed his true colors when he momentarily came to his senses on January 6 and said, “That’s it. I’m out,” and then forgot all about it and went back to being a purse poodle the next day.
Be all that as it may, say what you will about Collins and Graham, they are the face of GOP leadership and probably McConnell has asked them to act in that capacity. That would be the logical conclusion to reach. They owe Mitch, they’re safe politically and somebody has to get up in front of the cameras and say something about this madness.
It won’t be McConnell, although he can only hide out for so long and he knows it. He’s just hoping and praying that the fallout from this particular nuclear blast settles a bit and Trump doesn’t drop any more bombs, at least for a while. Same thing goes for McCarthy, who has long since superseded Paul Ryan in the spineless competition. McCarthy is in the thankless place that only those with zero convictions find themselves, he cannot say anything for fear of offending somebody and since everybody is mad at him now, conservatives, MAGAs, extremists, nothing he can do from a PR standpoint is going to amount to a hill of beans. And he knows it.
So if you wonder again how Republican leadership can be so silent, the answer is simple. It doesn’t exist. Unless John McCain speaks from the void soon, forget about it. Get used to the crickets.
Don’t expect anything from George W. Bush. He and the family overall have no weight in the GOP and haven’t for a long time. Think back to Presidential campaigns and conventions once his time in the Oval Office was done. The attitude starting back during the heat of the 2008 campaign was “Who is this George W. Bush of whom you speak?” And it’s been even more so since. After his time in office was done Dick Cheney had more weight in the GOP than he did!
He’s enjoying a not at all deserved fairly quiet retirement. Oh, he pops up here and there but if he tried to exert any actual leadership in the GOP even before Trump ran he’d have been shunned like a steaming pile of foul smelling dinosaur shit. He might WANT to try and get the GOP back to the form it was in ten or fifteen years ago but he hasn’t got the stomach for that kind of fight. No, he can sit mostly on the sidelines and get his grand state funeral when he finally kicks the bucket.
The ONLY Bush with any cache in the Trump GOP is “P” – Prescot Bush who is the only member of the family to sign on to the Trump train. I think the rest of the family regards him like the Kennedy’s feel about Bobby’s crazy-assed son. But even he, due to his family doesn’t seem to carry an influence in the GOP. Not even in Texas where one would think he might make a push for Governor or run for Cronyn’s seat.
There simply isn’t anyone with the clout to do anything, or at least anyone willing to use it. The surviving Koch brother could organize GOP mega donors to call everyone to heel but that ain’t happening. Those people love the idea of being full-fledged Putin style oligarchs and would happily (more so than Putin’s pals) pay up to be part of the group that gets to make up whatever rules that benefit them whenever they want. As long as Trump gets his cut of the action he’d give them free reign.
If Trump were to suddenly die perhaps we’d start finding a way out of this mess. I don’t hold much hope for us being that lucky. The next best thing would be for him to wind up in prison. Again, that’s a tall order for lots of reasons but not as unthinkable as it was even six months ago. The problem is even if that happens he can continue to do incalculable damage in the meantime.
All we can do is organize get out the vote efforts for November and hope we outwork the GOP so much that we retain control of Congress – and increase our margin in the Senate enough to make Manchin and Sinema irrelevant. That too is a tall order but doable.
Actually w/his diet and lifestyle, death may come for him long before Garland has dotted all his i’s and crossed all his t’s. If the doctors at Walter Reed were a little less conscientious, we could have avoided all this.
The docs had no choice once he was there – ethically they were bound to do all they could, and since reports are he was a LOT sicker than was reported he’s damned lucky they had a whole kitchen sink of treatments to throw at him. What pisses me off most is that someone got through to him at the WH by saying the magic words that activated his narcissism regarding his image. He was going downhill fast but refusing to go to the hospital out of fear of the optics of being hospitalized with a disease he’d downplayed. However, as I said his condition was worsening and doing so rapidly. Someone got through to him that heading to Walter Reed was going to happen or he’d likely die right there in the WH. He still wanted to wait, and then those “magic words” I referred to. It was pointed out that within a couple of hours he’d have no chance of walking out to the helicopter. He was already at a point where it would be difficult to do so. So, if he didn’t go soon he’d have to be wheeled out on a stretcher complete with an IV or two dripping into him. NOT an image he could stomach. Twisting the knife a little he was likely also told that waiting until dark might wind up being the difference between living and dying. So he let them call the helicopter and alert Walter Reed to be ready for him. Those extra few hours might well have made the difference, and it was due to his fucking vanity! But I can easily imagine him pitching a fit and TRYING to stomp around the room to prove he was “tough” and collapsing into the arms of an aide or Secret Service agent. So rather than risk falling on his ugly face walking across the WH lawn or worse having to have someone (a strong person) holding his arm like FDR’s son often did for him Trump relented. And as I said those extra few hours to allow docs to start hitting him with heavy duty treatments might well (and probably are) the reason he’s still here instead of hell already.
Ursula, I cracked up over your comment about Kevin McCarthy going back to being “a purse poodle!” A hysterical image of unconscious incompetence (i.e., McCarthy doesn’t know (and cannot fathom) what he doesn’t know (which is just about everything). I was reminded of Jimmy Kimmel’s nickname for Mike Pense: “the vice poodle.” ???????
I was thinking ‘hand puppet’.