Tag: GOPE

Lessons Have Been Learned

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

Indiana’s Republican establishment legislators voted against a redistricting plan (seven of them).  Well Donald Trump backed primary candidates against them.  Read what happened.

President Donald Trump exacted revenge on Indiana Republican legislators who foiled his redistricting push last year in the state, backing challengers who unseated five incumbents in Tuesday’s primaries, NBC News projects.  One other GOP state senator who faced a Trump-endorsed opponent was locked in a tight race, while another survived.  The double-digit defeats of the five incumbents, some of whom are veterans of the Indiana Legislature, underscore the influence Trump continues to wield over the Republican Party, even as his approval rating among Americans broadly sags amid rising gas prices and the Iran war.

Regardless of mid-term elections and all the various Democrat howlings going on, this one instance shows that something fundamental has changed.  Fake conservatives are being exposed and targeted for replacement all over the red states and beyond.  And make no mistake, Trump legitimized this.  He was the one highlighting who was fake.  He called them out.  And now there are the beginnings of accountability.  Just as with Cornyn in Texas, fake conservatives are being challenged in Indiana and they will be targeted elsewhere.

Now this won’t be a clean sweep anywhere.  Even red states have pockets of progressivism, mostly around the cities like Austin in Texas and Salt Lake City in Utah.  There will always be exceptions.  But it’s encouraging to see leadership in Washington that calls out the fakes.

And with just a little luck, the recent Supreme Court ruling that condemns race-based gerrymandering will net enough seats in 2026 to hold onto the House of Representatives.  But if the Dems get the House back in 2026, we’ll survive it and more.  Trump is a powerhouse of annoying policies that will keep Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer screaming and crying for the next two and a half years.  And that is a long time.

And with just a little luck we can hope for a Republican president in 2028 and good things going forward.  And even if the worst occurs and the Dems control Congress and the White House, I feel that we have learned enough about what is going on to protect ourselves from the fallout.  We no longer have to pretend that we have anything in common with the Left and we will run our lives based on what will allow us to preserve the things that are important to us.  There won’t be any nonsense about meeting anyone in the middle.  Because there no longer is a middle.  There’s us and there’s them.  The things they say amongst themselves is poisonous and evil and shows you their true intentions and they have nothing to do with coexistence.  They intend to destroy us and all we can do is protect ourselves by every available means.

And we will.  We’re getting better at running our own states and excluding them from our communities and their policies from our lives.  There will be setbacks but we’ve learned a lot and we will move forward.  This I believe.

JEB Haley Rides Again

photog Current Events , , ,

I have to wonder how many more elections will the Republican establishment; both politicians and rich donors, attempt to foist the hopeless anti-populist candidates that they always put forward.  It was one thing back in 2000 when we bought into George W Bush. Sure, he was the son of a former president and the governor of Texas.  And he claimed he was a born-again Christian.  How could we go wrong?  But then we got Iraq and compassionate conservatism with all that entailed.

And then we got John McCain and Mitt Romney.  That one-two punch was enough to awaken even the most complacent conservative to the reality of the Uni-Party.  These were hopeless losers who would rather let the Democrats have all the social justice victories they dreamed of as long as their favorite military equipment manufacturer received enough contracts to keep the checks rolling into their election funds.

But finally, we got to 2016 and the spectacle of JEB! Bush telling Donald Trump that illegal aliens crashing our border was an act of love that we must honor by providing them with citizenship.  This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Donald Trump buried Jeb Bush in 2016 and with him he buried the chances of lame, rollover and play dead, establishment Republicans getting a free pass to be our mostly unsuccessful presidential candidates.

However, hope springs eternal in the hearts and wallets of the Koch Brothers and other super-wealthy Republican backers and in the idiot sons of the Mayflower descendants.  But now they’ve discovered a new ploy; diversity idiots.  And so was born the horror that is Nikki Haley.  She sounds like Jeb Bush but she’s noticeably manlier.  And because of this stiffer spine she’s even more forceful in her embrace of increasing immigration and fighting wars in whatever third world countries have yet to be invaded.  She likes the Ukraine and Gaza wars.  A lot.  And given a little time I’m sure she could warm up to a Belarussian adventure and maybe one day Kazakhstan.  She truly is a wonder to behold.

So, my question is, will there ever be a point when the donors to the Republican party will stop providing hundreds of millions of dollars to Potemkin conservative candidates in the hope of covering both bets in the presidential elections?  Many people would say no, that the necessity of forcing an establishment candidate on Republican voters is critical.  After all, they’ve been doing this since Gerald Ford in 1976 and it’s worked for the most part.  Election after election we convinced ourselves that whatever empty suit they hauled up on the stage was better than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.  Why should things change now?

But I don’t think that’s the case.  I listen to the media talking heads talking about how exciting Nikki Haley is and what a breath of fresh air she brings to the Republican race.  And it sounds so absurd that I think, “Nah, only the hopeless morons would fall for that.”  And based on her numbers it all seems about right.  At best she’s polling high single digits.  Basically, she’s got the anti-Trumpers and the truly mentally challenged (although there is a large overlap in the Venn diagram of those two subsets).  To me it seems that the establishment Republican candidates have been exposed once and for all.

What seems like the next step is the formal acknowledgement by the donors that they will either have to come to terms with the direction of the Republican party or go over to the Democrats.  I guess they could start their own party but I think they’re too lazy for that.

Now alternatively, if the powers that be in the party rig the 2024 primaries so that Donald Trump doesn’t end up as the candidate, that will change things significantly.  I think it will end the Republican party as a legitimate political home for the conservative half of the country.  And I would guess that a new party would begin to form to replace it.  Because it would be a pretty absurd situation where something like 30% of the electorate just stayed home during the election of the United States president.

But anyway, I will say I am a little disappointed that Donald Trump won’t be participating in the Republican debates.  I would love to see Trump get to knock JEB! off just one more time.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 07JAN2023 – Republican House

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

It’s over now but I think the whole circus has actually been a net positive. The worst thing that could have happened yet another round of Democratic Lite policies from the House. We’ve seen a number of those and just look at where they got us.

Maybe, just maybe this will lead not just to a veto of the egregious Dim policies but also a showcase of policies desperately needed by the country even if not enacted for now.

Also, someone has to look hard at Biden to determine if he is, as I suspect, wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party. And the Dims simply won’t do it.

The Dims have long concluded that the Constitution, freedom, financial sanity, rational policies, the betterment of the nation all be damned, that the true brass ring is raw power achieved by any means. Anything that hinders their ultimate achievement of that goal is a plus.

The Power of No

photog Current Events , , ,

It never occurred to me that maybe the anti-McCarthy coup might actually have a chance to succeed but what if they did dig their heels in for a few weeks?  Maybe the rest of the House Republicans might start wondering if maybe there were a few more candidates that almost everyone could easily agree on.

It’s so pleasant to dream about what might happen if our elected “leaders” somehow developed backbone and started acting like leaders.  Of course, in reality most of them are either completely useless or worse.  They vary from hacks and grifters to actual sociopaths.  But maybe there are a few that want to do the right thing.  And if they show some resolve and take advantage of a rare situation where the actions of a few can impact a whole institution like the present situation in the House, then maybe something unexpected and positive might result.

Just for the sake of argument, suppose after a couple of weeks of yelling at each other behind closed doors, it occurs to some of the more moderate representatives that a more productive way of solving this problem would be asking each member to provide a list of names that they absolutely would refuse to vote for.  Taking everybody’s lists, they could then add up the negatives and disqualify anyone who had more than four no-votes against it.  Whoever is left would constitute a pool of names that had the potential to be approved.  Then after a couple of test ballots using that pool of names as the source, they could pretty quickly come up with the four or five names with the largest support and begin to do some horse trading to see who could become the Speaker.

Obviously, my idea would require that most of the Republican House members were reasonable human beings.  And we already know that’s not true.  I suspect at least half of them are nitwits.  But I’m sure that the more intelligent members of the group could persuade their more cognitively challenged brothers and sisters to follow some simple instructions.  Surely there are three or four Republican representatives who are both competent and haven’t sold their souls to Mephistopheles yet.  Jim Jordan is one name that has come up often.  Maybe there are some others.

The point is the MAGA wing of the party has found a silver lining to the 2022 mid-term meltdown.  Their 20-member coalition can wreck the Uniparty’s party.  Short of the GOP establishment letting a Democrat become Speaker, their backs are to the wall.  And if they did elect a Dem then the whole charade would be exposed and the Uniparty would be truly unmasked for all to see.  And from my point of view that would be almost as good as Jordan getting the Speaker’s gavel.

Now, this is all nonsense.  None of this will happen.  McCarthy will whine and hector the dissidents and they will be threatened by the donors who paid for their campaigns and eventually they’ll vote for good old Kevin.  But for just a day or two they did give me something to cheer about.  Listening to all of those politicians screeching apoplectically about irresponsibility and the storied history of the “People’s House” gave me a good laugh.

And who knows?  Miracles do happen.  Very rarely.  But not never.

03JAN2023 – Observations on Happenings in Washington

photog Current Events , ,

The House Republicans are busy beclowning themselves but I’m happy at least there’s something of a pretense being made of demanding accountability from the leadership.  Making McCarthy sweat a little before he’s coronated Speaker of the House is healthy.  I don’t believe he’ll enact that rule change to allow the Speaker to be voted out based on a single rep motioning for it.  After all, after he’s Speaker he’s untouchable.  Why would he honor a promise he made while he was still just a mere mortal?  I guess the only reason would be because it would be such a clear proof to the electorate of his dishonesty.  But then again, they’ve already embarrassed him.  Maybe all bets are already off.  We’ll see.

My view is that the Republican House should use their majority to hold the line on everything.  They should produce a budget.  If the Senate doesn’t want to bargain then say too bad.  No continuing resolution, no nothing.  Shut down the government and let the Democrats sweat.  It’s their Senate and President.  Let them vilify the House but it’ll be two years before there will be any way to change the power structure.  Even if the American public sweeps them out of office for turning off the endless flow of entitlements the Republican House majority will have done what they were supposed to do, legislate and create a budget for this runaway bureaucracy.  What happens in 2024 is just another page in this fake script we’re trapped in.  At least they will have shown some honesty, which is in very, very short supply.  Let the Democrats have the whole federal government and let them bring this whole charade crashing down around their ears.

Without a brake on the actions of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries we’ll be looking at hyperinflation and double-digit unemployment very soon.  And that’s what the American people voted for last year.  Or at least that’s what the poll results that we saw indicated.  It’s important that they get every last drop of the result they chose.  It should be clear as day what was selected; sky high energy and transportation costs, unreliable infrastructure and dead-end jobs for most of the population.  If that truly is what people want, it’s better for those of us who don’t share that vision to get it through our thick skulls that that is the future.  That way we can look for something better.

And as we head down that road, we’ll be able to at least enjoy the comedy that’s on full display from our elected officials.  An hilarious cavalcade of grifters, congenital idiots and just plain criminals who are busy selling off chunks of their country to the highest bidder.  And it just goes to show that individual honest men are completely defenseless against a government that has transformed itself into an organized crime syndicate.  It’s our version of the Baath Party with a revolving door full of Saddam Husseins switching out every four or eight years.  And who knows maybe even that charade will be dispensed with soon.

But while it holds out, I intend to savor every bit of the bathos and buffoonery.  Let’s hope Dementia Joe gets to finish out his term in January 2029.  By then both he and the country should be about the same; a gelatinous puddle of goo.  How could I ask for more than that?

Guest Contributor – TomD – 13AUG2022 – MCCarthy and McConnell

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

If the Republicans prevail in the house and senate in the midterms but McCarthy and McConnell remain as the leaders, just look for more of the same. But if we could somehow get Rand Paul and Jim Jordan, it would be happy dance in the streets time.

Both these guys are fighters, the opposite of the current “leadership”. Have you ever seen more inept “leadership” than offered to us by Paul Ryan and McConnell in 2016-2018? They did nothing at all despite having the House, Senate and Presidency by substantial margins.

The current Dims hold all three branches but the two legislative branches by razor thin margins. Despite which, they are ramming incredibly destructive legislation down our collective throats. And all we have to counter them is the ineffective duo of McCarthy and McConnell?

The Silver Lining to the Hell We’re Going Through

photog Current Events ,

Compared to the horrors of World War II something like the COVID-19 pandemic is trivial.  And compared to the dislocations of the Great Depressions some might think the slow-motion erosion of wealth in the United States over the last fifty years is easier to escape.  I won’t dispute these judgements.  But nothing this country has endured previously has ever destroyed the morale of its people the way the ascendant cultural Marxist attacks on the identity of traditional Americans has.  The combined power and reach of the educational, cultural, commercial, legal, financial and informational institutions have combined to demean and harm anyone who doesn’t grovel before the perverse and dishonest narrative that the Left compels everyone to acknowledge as truth.

And even though we are starting to fight back, the battle is so lopsidedly in their favor that we will continue to lose the majority of battles for the foreseeable future.  They own all of the high ground.  We barely have some bunkers in no-man’s land.  They will continue to punish with impunity anyone who defies them in any meaningful way.

But what they’ve lost is credibility.  No one sane believes what they are saying anymore.

I never really thought deeply about the biblical quote “The truth shall set you free.”  As a child I thought it was a trap to get me to ‘fess up when I had done something wrong.  Well, that had more to say about my questionable morals than about scripture.

But now I understand.  The truth shall set you free is another way of saying “I was blind but now I see.”  When we base our actions on inaccurate information, we may fail to escape from the problems that those lies are propagating.  Knowing the truth sets you free from the circle of failure that lies perpetuate.  An example from my life was finally realizing that the Republican establishment wasn’t trying to defend conservative life.  Once I saw that truth everything that had been puzzling about the political situation in the United States made perfect sense.  Suddenly I saw that some whom I had assumed were friends were really enemies and some whom I assumed were crazy turned out to be sane and actually wise.

Now, in the last five or six years the Trump revolution has turbo-charged the Left into a manic assault on all things normal.  All the masks have dropped off and all on the Left have shown their true colors.  And there is the silver lining.  Even the dense and even the stupid can now see clearly that the Left is openly attacking normalcy with the intention of replacing it completely with perversion, dysfunction and madness.

This clarity finally makes it possible to stop losing ground and slowly make progress.  Even starting from bunkers in no-man’s land we can begin to improve our positions and reclaim territory.  And most importantly we can organize friends and shun our enemies.  Both are important.  Helping friends is critical when we are so weak and disorganized.  But as we get better organized and bigger, we can start to do damage to our enemies.  Losing our business will begin to hurt our enemies more and more as time goes on.

So, there’s the silver lining.  The truth shall set us free.  And from my point of view, it already has.

My Thoughts on Afghanistan

photog Current Events , ,

Approximately the last third of my life has been lived out in the shadow of September 11th 2001.  What I thought I knew and what I believed about this country seems like a different world from today.  And the biggest change is how I feel about George W. Bush and the people he led.  I thought he was one of us or at least I thought he was on our side.  Looking back, I see that believing that was the biggest mistake of my life as an American citizen.  Bush was the one we trusted and he used that trust to destroy us.  He handed us over to our enemies and they cut our throats.  Bush then Obama.

Afghanistan is the exemplar to point out the betrayal.  America was reeling from the 9-11 attacks and Bush said he would revenge us.  We gave him whatever he asked for and we supported him in everything he did.  And after all the dead and wounded Americans and the waste of trillions of dollars what was the plan that they executed?  Bush was trying to make Afghanistan into a country safe for transgender Muslims.

The bitterness of this pill is hard to exaggerate.  Creating a global progressive nirvana on the corpse of our nation was their plan.  He sent our sons and brothers to die in those hellholes while his policies sent our jobs and industries to China.  And his judicial appointments set the stage for gay marriage and transgender rights and every other betrayal imaginable.  And the cost of the wars hollowed out our economy and set the stage for the financial crash in 2008.  And all of this misery ensured that Obama would happen.  And he finished what was left to do.

What Afghanistan is to me is a reminder and an object lesson.  The lesson is that the establishment Republicans cannot be trusted at all.  They despise us and they only use us to provide them with the privileges that their positions provide.  Labels like conservative and Christian don’t mean anything.  Words don’t mean anything.  The only thing that means anything is results.  We need our country back and that means there is an enormous amount of work to do.

If we find a man who can get things done and plays straight with us, we should follow him.  But no blind faith.  Trust but verify.  Don’t follow the flag.  Don’t listen to the pretty speeches.  No bipartisan nonsense, no reaching across the aisle.  No talk of the conservative case for gay marriage or transgender special forces or gun control.  No excuses, no extenuating circumstances, no nonsense.  Produce results and we’ll let you collect your fee.  Do a good enough job and we’ll name a bridge or a highway after you.  Fail us and we’ll drop you like yesterday’s garbage.

And if your name is Bush and you want someone to fight a war go fight it yourself.  You’ve killed off enough Americans to last your family until the end of time.