Many a true word is spoken in jest, as you soon will see. CPAC met this week, or more accurately, what’s left of CPAC met this week. CPAC used to be a yearly enclave for the intelligentsia of the conservative movement and many thinkers and writers spoke on panels with various Republican political figures. Policies were discussed, frequently policies were formulated, right there at CPAC.
Gone are the days of William F. Buckley and now are the days of QAnon. And if you want to know how that transition was effected, that’s simple. Two words, in fact. Donald Trump. And in all fairness, he didn’t do it alone. The GOP was in the process of disintegrating for decades and Trump merely pushed the process the last few miles. Now the crazies are in charge — of both the GOP and CPAC.
Everyone better band together and vote BLUE because it may be the last time we vote.
This isn’t a drill. pic.twitter.com/bi4315W209
— TPBlue🟧 (@TPBlue4) February 24, 2024
Vote like democracy depends on it, because that is in fact the case.
The Dictator Apprentice is Jim Jones in a cheap, baggy suit. Instead of Kool-Aid, he sells snake oil to his cult.
— Medusa Minx (@MinxMedusa) February 24, 2024
That’s what we’re looking at, The Apprentice: Dictator Edition.
Hitler's dictatorship was based on a law, which gave him absolute power and which was meant to be an exception with a very limited duration.
The exception became permanent, the validity was forever (or at least until 1945).
— Rosso (@evel_kneivel_) February 24, 2024
I don’t find comedy in the dictator-for-one-day schtick. There’s no humor in dictatorship. The other Republicans, the likes of J.D. Vance and Elise Stefanik, are ready to jump on board this bandwagon because they take Trump’s ability to sell sedition as a sign that people actually want a dictatorship. No. They do not. This is political circus and MAGA loves to hear Trump insult people and say outrageous things. That does not mean that they want to hear the same thing from Stefanik or Vance. That’s why they keep catching hell for it. My belief is that MAGAfied politicians like Vance and Stefanik are going to be on the way out once Trump finally crashes and burns and MAGA gets disillusioned and bored.
That’s what they fail to realize. Cruz, Graham, the lot of them that mimic Trump, thinking that that’s what people want to hear, are wrong. MAGA wants their cult leader to perform. It’s not entertaining enough when somebody not named Trump tries to imitate his act. But let’s see them all come to this realization themselves, when it’s too late and they’ve cut their own throats. They’ve already cut their own throats as conservatives. Next they’ll find out that it was for naught.
A lot of Republican office holders are going to come to regret their pro-Trump stance in the years to come and will attempt to walk it back and pretend that something else happened. I don’t think you need to be Nostradamus to figure that out.
Meanwhile, we’ll see if America is so jaded and stupid that they vote a criminally accused, adjudicated rapist with delusions of dictatorship to return to power and destroy our way of life, not to mention our standing in the world.
Even when tRump goes away this movement won’t. What they’ve learned is to tell lies and shout grievances to those that will listen. I know I won’t live long enough but I would enjoy reading about the history of these present decades. I would hope that all of this mellows out sooner than later but they have a big megaphone now and it’s going to last for a while.
“This is political circus and MAGA loves to hear Trump insult people and say outrageous things. That does not mean that they want to hear the same thing from Stefanik or Vance. That’s why they keep catching hell for it. My belief is that MAGAfied politicians like Vance and Stefanik are going to be on the way out once Trump finally crashes and burns and MAGA gets disillusioned and bored.
“That’s what they fail to realize. Cruz, Graham, the lot of them that mimic Trump, thinking that that’s what people want to hear, are wrong. MAGA wants their cult leader to perform. It’s not entertaining enough when somebody not named Trump tries to imitate his act.”
I can’t understand why all these little Trump wannabes don’t look at what happened to DeSantis and learn their lesson. Now, maybe they’re thinking that DeSantis’s problem was in directly challenging Trump but that means they deliberately ignored all of DeSantis’s efforts to “out-Trump Trump”–and bombed spectacularly in the attempt. (Who knows? If DeSantis had displayed even the slightest bit of genuine personality or charisma–rather than what he showed during his campaign–he might have actually pulled it off but, instead, he made Robbie the Robot look like Mary Poppins.)
“intelligentsia of the conservative movement”
That is as sure the definition of an oxymoron as “old news,” “deafening silence,” or “organized chaos.”
Because, as we all know,
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
John Kenneth Galbraith.
and where’s the intellectual activity, let alone intelligence, in that?
Also, while we’re quoting people, here’s one on the importance of political engagement, brought to light by what happened with Dimwit Donny and his sycophants,
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
Plato.