The End of the GOP?

By all indications, it appears that the GOP is reverting its role as the Stupid Party.  The trouble is, there is only so much stupidity any situation can handle.  Eventually, Darwinism kicks in.  And this time, even the Evil Party will not be able to save it, no matter how hard it tries.  Oh sure, they’ll give it the old college try; after all, it’s politically expedient to have a crazy uncle you can always blame things on, but this time, the Republicans are dead-set on committing political suicide. 

The extinction of the Republican Party is a matter of when, not if. 

I guess Mitch McConnell, a man whom I have praised in the past because of his calculating strategery, missed playing the role of being the Chief Stupido of the Stupid Party.   Think of their throwing Trump overboard as a body rejecting a transplanted organ.  The organ I’m speaking of is a spine and there was only so much backbone that the GOP could stomach. 

The Democrats for their part didn’t actually ask McConnell to take on the traditional Republican role, not in so many words anyway.  They instead whispered in his ear that it would be a good idea for him to audition for the role of Brutus in this year’s production of Julius Caesar (at Ford’s Theatre no doubt).  The trouble is, he has not imbibed the lesson of the history which inspired Shakespeare’s play.  Which is that in the end, Brutus and his conspirators got what was coming to them.   Good and hard. 

The staggering, suicidal stupidity of McConnell’s (and others’) turning on the President will not be forgotten.  Indeed, it will hasten the end of the Republican Party as a viable institution, of this I’m absolutely convinced.  McConnell, according to one report feels that the GOP can absorb the short-term pain of impeaching and convicting Trump.  If so, he’s clearly deluded.  The default position, that rank-and-file Trump supporters –who are the backbone of his party–will likewise forget current unpleasantness and meekly come back into the fold is no longer operable.  After all, where else will they go?

Here’s where:  anywhere.  What good is it to be a Republican if the grand poo-bahs of that party roll over and play dead every time a Democrat calls them a nasty name?  There is only so much cuckoldry that a man can take.  Under Trump, the GOP was assertive, audacious, and bold.  Because he was the alpha male with bold, Reaganesque visions, we had The Golden Don’s back and as a result he had the most productive first term of any president since Teddy Roosevelt.  Under this President, we ate red meat for once.  Now it’s back to Ovaltine, the traditional thin gruel that we were forced to eat on the presidential level. 

As I said, if Cocaine Mitch believes that we will come back because we have no other options, then he’s a fool.  I’ll go further:  he’s a damn fool.  I’ll be perfectly blunt:  the Republican Party has no future without Trump.  If nothing else, Trump reversed decades of wage stagnation and economic decline.  Manufacturing was brought back and our borders were far more secure.  The list of his accomplishments is a long one.  And if you don’t believe me, how else would you explain the fact that he increased his vote share by eleven million?  No incumbent President has ever won more votes the second time around.  (Even the Establishment media concedes as much.) 

How desperate were we for a real choice?  I remember seeing a political cartoon back in the early part of the 2016, when it looked like Jeb! was going to win the nomination:  there was a TV on with the logo saying “Bush-Clinton Debate, 2016”.  Off to the side, a man’s feet were dangling in the air, two feet above the floor with a chair kicked aside.  It was kind of amusing in a sick, twisted way.  (You really had to see it in its chronological context to catch its sad hilarity.)  Anyway, more than one wag stated that at the very least, he gave us a choice between a Bush and a Clinton and for that alone, we should sing his hosannahs. 

To be sure, Cocaine Mitch is not the only Republican who thinks that the GOP will come springing back to form in no time at all.  The entire, inbred pundit class thinks so as well.  Truth be told, in the ordinary run of things, there is historical precedent for thinking so.  Consider the fact that the President’s party almost always loses seats in the House of Representatives in the first mid-terms.  Even the astoundingly popular Reagan (who won a forty-four state landslide in 1980 —he carried both California and New York for heaven’s sake!) lost 26 House seats to the Democrats in 1982.  There’s also the fact that the Democrats will screw things up horrendously.  Biden –seriously?  With Susan Rice and other assorted neocons back in power, there will be so many American boots on the ground overseas that you’d be wise to invest in shoe leather and body bags.

So yeah, it’s going to be chaos on stilts.  Never forget what Obama said about his Vice-President:  “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*&k things up”.  Ouch!  That’s not even a back-handed compliment.

Then there’s the fact that the Democrats will have their own fissures to deal with.  With Bernie Sanders safely out of the way, the corporatist, Wall Street faction of the Democrat Party is now firmly in control.  Let’s just say that the hard Left is spitting mad.  But that’s a story for another day.  In any event, it’s not a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will actually lose seats in the House in 2022 as many confidently predict.  The GOP actually gained seats in 2002, the first mid-term of the George W Bush administration.  And after Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, the Democrats gained seats as well in the following mid-terms.  What I’m saying is this:  McConnell and the party elders are counting their eggs way before their hatched.  

So how to explain this group-think, this herd of independent minds?  I chalk it up to the intellectual inbreeding that is endemic of all lumbering empires.  It’s not just the elected class mind you, but the tens of thousands of bureaucrats whose idea of a productive day is shuffling papers on desks.  Things like reading memos about the new protocols regarding pronouns.  And standing reverently when some ignorant “clergyman” ends a prayer by saying “Amen and A-women“.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph! as a nation, are we that insane?

Now don’t get me wrong, the great empires of the past knew that bureaucrats  were necessary for the proper functioning of government; but they at least had the good sense to castrate them.  If you wanted a cushy job essentially doing nothing but being a flunky that bad then you had to sacrifice your testicles, which they’d then put in a nice box.  Then when you died, they’d put that box in your coffin so you could enjoy your manhood in the afterlife.  I guess.  Whatever.

But this is all tangential to the main point.  Which is this:  whenever a bureaucracy grows so great in numbers that it starts existing for its own sake, then the nation which it serves is not only incompetent, it’s caught in a death-spiral which will eventually consume itself and everyone else within its orbit. 

You don’t have to take my word for it:  just open up any history book and read those sections on the French and Russian revolutions.  Or the Qing dynasty of China.  One of the reasons we were able to beat Great Britain during our War of Independence, was because rather than have them screw up their sceptered isle with flaming incompetents, the Mother Country sent their worst and dullest to rule over us.  Oh sure, it saved them from their stupidity but it aggravated the hell out of us Colonials.  Another example a little closer to home was the Byzantine Empire, which in its last days was hardly a glittering jewel of meritocracy.  In the days leading up to the fall of Byzantium, the Senate was actually debating what color the Blessed Virgin’s eyes were.  (They decided that they were violet in case you were wondering.) 

Still, they knew what to do with their bureaucrats.   Gotta give ’em credit for that.

And it’s not just the political class, but the intellectual classes as well which suffer from this malady.  The Soviet Empire could have sustained its existence but for the fact that it could not reform itself.  One reason for this was because its intellectual classes accepted Marxism as scientific orthodoxy.  It was so beholden to its socio-economic theory that it couldn’t compete with the revitalized Western economies set in motion by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.  It couldn’t revisit Marxism because Marx himself said that Marxism was inevitable.  (How’s that for a tautology?)  And what made matters worse for them was that most Western academics and bureaucrats agreed with them as well.

And so here we are with the present situation.  McConnell, because of his personal animus towards the President, has decided to shank him.  And because the rest of The Swamp hates Trump, he is praised for it.  He, like they, feel that there ill be no repercussions for this grievous act of treachery.  That’s how out of touch they are.

Truth be told, there probably won’t be repercussions for them, at least not from the Beltway Class –for the short term anyway.  The reason of course is because McConnell is  reverting to Beltway form.  The problem however is that his role in the Beltway is to be the Chief Stupido of the Stupid Party.  Unfortunately, he’s so inbred that he doesn’t see that.  Instead, he thinks he’s going to be the most powerful Republican in post-Trump America.  And he will be.  But that won’t mean anything.  Why?  Because being  Senate Minority Leader and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee.   Someday soon, the Republican Party will go the way of the Whigs.   It’s inevitable at this point. 

And don’t think for a minute that the Corporate Media/Academe together with assorted RINOs can reconfigure the Trump narrative to their advantage.  They’ll try to turn him into a Nixonian figure but now things are different.  Nixon was demonized because we had only a half-dozen sources of information in the print media and only three in the broadcast media.  They all had some credibility back then.  But that went away during the 2004 election when a couple of pajamahadeen on the internet destroyed Dan Rather’s career in less than 48 hours. 

In addition, in post-Nixon America, there was still enough residual goodwill among the majority of the population that the GOP could spring back from Gerald Ford’s defeat in 1976 to embrace a Reagan four years later.  That is exhausted.  One reason of course is because the financial resources of  America are depleted:  there is simply no way to pacify aggrieved minorities anymore from the Federal fisc.   Instead, the government is now forcing private companies (Wal-Mart, Citibank, AT&T et al) to empower chosen minorities and conversely punish white men, just as it is forcing other private companies (Facebook, Twitter) to suppress dissent.   

This new, soft-totalitarian regime will eventually burn itself out.  But that is another story for another day; for now we can say that in allying themselves with these new protocols, no amount of anti-Trump propaganda can reverse the demise of the GOP.  

The Democrats of course have their own fissures to deal with (as noted earlier), but for now, they will gladly give McConnell as many banana peels as he needs to trip up his party.   And to make sure he sticks to the script, they will sing his praises and flatter him every step of the way.  He will be hailed as the Savior of the GOP at all the very best Georgetown salons.  

Not that he would take it, but the only advice I would give him likewise comes from Classical history.  In ancient Rome, the victor of a great battle was given a magnificent triumph that was a sight to behold.  His family would ride in chariots behind him and the captives would march in chains before him.  Legions of slaves would bear treasures from the captured nation.  The adulation of the gathered thousands was stupendous in every way. 

Yet the Romans in their wisdom, knew that all fame was fleeting.  And so, they would place a slave in the victor’s chariot to ride with him.  And his job would be to hold the laurel crown of victory over the hero’s head all the while whispering in his ear:  “memento mori!” (remember, thou art mortal!)

We live in interesting times.  As to the question in the title, I stick to it.  In my own personal opinion, I think it’s more like the beginning of the end.  I give it another decade as things like institutional death doesn’t happen overnight.  Oh sure, it may sputter along at the House level (but not the Senate), but as presidential party it’s over.  Even at the Red-State level I foresee some semblance of Patriot Parties rising up and offering themselves up as alternatives to Republican office-holders, thereby ensuring their defeat in general elections. 

The road to its extinction will be more like the Bataan Death March, a long, hard slog.  In any event, it will have to lumber on without me as I have no truck with traitors. 

Good riddance to McConnell and his ilk.  Still, in the interest of Christian charity, I will offer a parting gift to The Murder Turtle and his merry band of conspirators:  I suggest that they study history, especially Roman history ca 42 BC.

   The business model of the most powerful Republican in the post-Trump era.  No thanks, I’ll pass.