Matt Gaetz’ main motivation for the political epic he created in the House of Representatives this week was purportedly to set himself up to run for governor of Florida in 2026. Gaetz was coy when asked about that, saying, “Tallahassee is lovelier than Washington.” Gaetz’s ambitions aside, he not only offed Kevin McCarthy this week, he killed the golden donor goose that My Kevin was. The net effect of that is a lot of damage done to the GOP as a whole. Rick Wilson spells it out in no uncertain terms.
ICYMI: What did you think was going to happen, Kevin? This is what happens when your party is completely untethered from principle, policy, reality, ideology, anything else. pic.twitter.com/Hz9keYz6ER
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 5, 2023
America gets to stare at the crazy in its bleary, twitching eyes. The big private equity donors and Wall Street bros who were so generous to Kevin could tell themselves it was all fine. After all, they weren’t giving directly to Gaetz, Biggs, Gosar, or the other edge-case whackdoodles; they were giving to good ol’ Kev!
Not any longer.
Third, expect candidate recruitment to plummet in both quality and quantity. Who wants to go through the agony of the campaign when Torquemada Gaetz and his minions are there to crush any sign of dissent from the orthodoxy of MAGA?
At this writing, I’m not sure who the patsy in line for the Speakership next is, but with Matt Gaetz and the Chaos Caucus still hunting, they might want to get a food taster and NIJ IV body armor. McCarthy’s departure leaves a massive hole in the political and fundraising efforts of the NRCC.
As an aside, McCarthy richly and fully deserves his fate. He was an enabler of Donald Trump, even after the January 6th attacks.
My Everything Trump Touches Dies rule continues its winning streak; McCarthy sacrificed everything for Trump, who didn’t lift a finger to save him.
Trump’s indifference would be egregious if it wasn’t for the fact that he was fighting for his own identity and survival this week, not to mention staying out of prison. The trial underway in Manhattan is a civil fraud trial, yes, but evidence unearthed there is very likely to dovetail with questions raised in one of the other cases, and in any event, it all spells curtains for Trump, taken as a whole.
In particular, Trump can’t stand the fact that he’s being exposed as not being as rich as he claims to be. That’s Trump’s entire identity in a nutshell, being the major rich guy, not a six-times bankruptcy declarant who just fell off the Forbes 400 list.
And fall off the list he did, to the tune of $300 million shy of making it. That’s a lot of money. Trump may claim that that’s chump change and he’s worth oh so very much more, but he evidently could not prove that to Forbes. Truth Social is the fly in the financial ointment, hemorrhaging cash as it has. Remember, it’s on life support now until September 24, 2024 and if it goes belly up then, it will be right before the election. Not such a great look for a guy who wants you to believe that he’s got it wired to run your government for you but his businesses keep going under.
Gaetz threw one hell of a monkey wrench into the works this week. It’s going to take the GOP a while to recover, if in fact it does.
My ESET antivirus says your site is corrupted. Won’t let me in. Just thought you’d want to know
Matt And his shills will miss the $$$$’s and SENSE.