Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. My ass. Only if that line is a circle for the firing squad to stand around. This is starting to remind me of a championship caliber sports team that ended the season under .500. The players played like shit, and the coach coached like shit with a shit game plan, so what happens? The team fires the trainer and equipment manager.
As a lifelong Democrat, I’m eating this up like leftover Halloween candy. We’re used to seeing this kind of internal bloodletting. In 2016, The Democrats blamed everybody from the progressives for being too progressive, to the Bernie Bros for sitting out, to the progressives blaming the moderates for running an unelectable candidate. It’s manna from heaven to see the GOP looking like the zombies from Night of the Living Dead.
But here’s the rub. The Democratic food fight following 2016 was a natural part of the grief process. Being a big tent party means that the Democrats have always had a messy relationship between the factions. But when game time came around, they suited up and played as a team.
That isn’t the case for the GOP, not anymore. They used to be a monolithic party that blindly lined up behind the party dogma. But that was before the reign of Emperor Numbus Nuttus. Trump fractured the party, not down the middle, he only has a minority base, but that minority base is enough to screw the GOP if they’re not ready to move past Traitor Tot.
And they’re not, not by a long shot. On election eight, AZ gubernatorial L-O-S-E-R Kari Lake proudly proclaimed that the Trump GOP had driven a stake through the heart of the John McCain machine! In fact Lake castigated McCain voters, and said she didn’t want their votes. Wonder how she feels tonight after losing by a lousy 20,000 votes.
Trump loving traitorous mental midget Josh Hawley finally crawled out from under his rock, after last being seen on video running across the Senate rotunda like a scalded cat, from the people he fist pumped only hours before. He proclaimed on Twitter that The election results show that the old party is dead! It’s time to bury it and move in a new direction. It somehow passed every one of the Trump anointed candidates that represented that new direction all got their asses kicked in every battleground state they ran in. You might want to get a new compass there, Josh.
On the other side, the sane portion of the GOP apparently got the memo. The Big Lie is as dead as Paddy’s pig. While His Lowness, the original one-trick-pony may continue to drag The Big Lie out at every rally like Air Supply singing I’m all out of Love at every stop on their senility reunion tour, voters nationwide, including crossover GOP voters gave it a thorough pounding. And that’s why so many sane moderate Republicans are willing to put their names and faces forward, and tell The Mango Messiah to take a hike.
And this is why the GOP civil war won’t end in this cycle, and why the GOP will lose in 2024. Cast your mind back as far as you like to any election cycle prior to 2-18. If there was one thing that brought knots to the stomachs of Democrats, it was the quality of the GOP attack ads. They were smooth, slick, well produced, ands absolutely vicious. And I can’t even count without a TI calculator how many raves they altered by ginning up the fear, and driving the GOP base turnout.
Now cast your mind to the GOP attack ads we saw in 2018, 2020, and 2022. For the most part, they were pathetic. They looked like something that came out of a community college freshman advertising class. A perfect example is the truly pathetic crime ads that Trump acolyte Stephen Miller put out. They were unwatchable. Roving bands of black and brown people kicking the shit out of white people and AAPI folks. In one scene, a guy slams another guys head into the wall, and when he collapses, pummels his head. Small problem. The idiot is swinging his fists a full foot over the head of his victim.
What caused this advertising sea change so suddenly? Simple, mon Cheri. Starting in 2017, some of the most senior advisors, strategists, and operatives broke with the GOP and formed The Lincoln Project. These are the very people who used to make those vicious attack ads for the GOP, and now they turned them against them. And they didn’t just target Trumpenstein, they targeted anybody in the GOP who aligned with Trump. Talk about being hoist on your own petard.
Strap in my dears, because you’re about to see The Lincoln Project is about to be writ large across the GOP. Because the Gates of the Bastille GOP mob that is now getting unfettered access on FUX News to call for Hair Twitler’s head are the one thing that MAGA morons running for office in 2024 need the most. These are the traditional GOP strategists, analysts, campaign managers, and senior campaign staff that can make or break a campaign. And now, they’re all voting with their feet when it comes to MAGA candidates going into 2024.
You’ve already seen what happens to the attack ads when the A-Team takes a hike. And thanks to the midterms, we already have empirical evidence as to what happens when top flight staffs take a powder. Hillbilly JD Vance was basically a no-show candidate in OH, it was only $20 million in McConnell Super PAC cash saved his bacon. In GA, Herschel Walker’s campaign is too damn stupid to keep him from getting in front of a microphone any time it’s not a rally, because he’s a bigger gaffe machine than Biden is reputed to be.
In PA, John Fetterman had a first class stagg, including a social media savant who gutted Cruise Ship Doctor Mehmet Oz every time he opened his mouth. In AZ, GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters And in MI, 3 Trump Big Lie acolytes lot statewide by an average of 9.5%, with the Democrats retaking the MI legislatures tried scrubbing his website on the abortion issue, and waffled in public statements, making him look like a shift little loser.
Never forget one thing. In politics, it is the staff that makes the candidate. They control the scheduling, the messaging, the sites and dates of rallies, coordinate with grassroots groups, and control media access to the candidate. Groups like Matthew Dowd’s Country Before Party, Olivia Troye’s Republicans for Accountability, and Miles Taylor’s grassroots group to bring out primary voters to oppose Trombies are going to ensure that there are plenty of non Trump alternatives in the 2024 primaries. And the Trump minority of candidates are going to be sucking hind tit when it comes to campaign staff talent.
This is why I say that the GOP civil war will not be settled in the 2024 cycle. Today’s GOP is like a girl who just can’t quit her cheating boyfriend, no matter how many times he steps out on her. Trump lost in 2018, he lost bigly in 2020, he lost again in 2022, and he is almost certain to lose again in 2024. All we can do for the GOP at this point is to sit back and wait for the other shoe to drop. On top of their pointy heads.
One of the big weaknesses of the Lincoln Project until recently was the lack of a leader to rally behind. Some of them (Rick Wilson comes to mind) thought they could get by without or even become a behind the scenes player on the order of Cardinal Richileu. But that was never going to happen, as they lacked the skillset.
But now, with Liz Cheney’s anti-MAGA cred fully established, they’ll have something to work with.
The Cheney family might not have quite the multi-generational dynasty qualities of the Bush family (and with the Bush’s, Prescott or “P’ as he was once anointed has pissed away his and the family’s legacy throwing in with Trump/Trumpism – they are DONE) but they are every bit as relevant and respected in the old guard GOP. Ole Dick might not have had the charisma to win national elections but he was a helluva political operator and prolific fundraiser with even more behind the scenes money/big dollar donor connections than even Bush. Hell, when Bush 43 pissed away a then record (by a lot) amount of money in the 2000 primary even though he’d dispatched McCain early on (in what you might recall was a despicably racist way) donors were pissed. It was well known they were wondering whether Bush was competent & therefore hesitant to dig deep again. It was Cheney who got the money flowing that put Bush, and himself into the WH that year. That is the legacy and network bequeathed to Liz Cheney. She knows where damned near every body is buried and has receipts. And I think when push really starts coming to shove she will be playing kingmaker for the GOP when it comes to money for the GOP primaries and general election in 2024. Trump is pretty much the only GOP candidate that can generate huge sums of small donor money like Democrats now regularly do. And that might start to dry up some as the magnitude of last week’s midterms set in.
Don’t get me wrong. Liz Cheney is not our friend. She’s an ally of convenience and only for as long as it takes to flush Trump and Trumpism down the toilet. She has a cold, shriveled heart. BUT, she stood up when it really counted to try and preserve our Democracy. I doubt she believed it would wind up costing her her seat but I truly think she knew it might, even in Wyoming. But what’s important at least for the time being is that she’s decided throwing in her lot with Democrats is the lesser of evils. Her goal is either to as I said destroy Trump and his influence in the GOP so it can rebuild into the pre-Trump version or generate enough of a critical mass of “sane” conservatives to split off and form a new Party. That’s the least attractive option because it would take multiple election cycles to accomplish. At least two and maybe three. But if that’s what it take I think she’ll do it. And I suspect that her P.O.S. dad will be at work behind the scenes reminding a LOT of people that he’s got the goods on them, and that now Liz does too!
Whenever I think of Liz Cheney, I have a quote from Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray pop in my head: “A man can never be too careful in his choice of enemies.” In Liz Cheney, MAGA has made a terrible enemy who will in time annihilate them…with our help. But no, she’s not our friend but a future threat. Still, that’s later. Right now, we’ve got a political cult to exterminate, possibly an international one if the Russian ties go deep enough.