Tag: RINOs

Graham Platner: The New Democrat

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In search of a populist communist, the Democrats have embraced Graham Platner the former combat Marine, oyster farmer, misogynist and philosopher king.  Platner is embroiled in a scandal that just keeps getting weirder with every passing day but his poll numbers have been so strong up till now that the powers that be in the party have everyone from Sunny Hostin of the View to Chris Hayes of MS NOW playing along with Platner being what the party needs in Maine.  Now all of this is very interesting because Platner has a history of making disparaging statements about women and gays.  He also has a Nazi SS death’s head tattoo on his chest (although he has now tattooed over it).  Several of his girlfriends have described violent and controlling behavior toward them.  His wife has reported that he also has a history of “sexting” women on a service called Kik that is much frequented by Gen Z users.

But my all-time favorite detail about Mr. Platner is a remark he made to one of his girlfriends when describing what he would do if a man broke into his house.  He said he would the rape the man (but not in a “gay” way) to show his dominance.

Well, what can we say.  Graham Platner sounds like a certifiable mental case.  He has serious anger management problems and by his own admissions he’s a heavy drinker and drug user.  Sounds like the perfect Democrat Senate candidate for Maine.  As I mentioned above, Platner has been ahead of his Democrat rivals from the start so that the establishment candidate, the current Governor, Janet Mills, suspended her campaign.  And Platner is still higher in the polls than the Republican incumbent Susan Collins though that lead has lessened significantly.  But all of this negative publicity has rattled a lot of the Democrat establishment and Mills has reminded voters that she still appears on the primary ballot so if Platner is further damaged by scandal they can vote for her.  Also, even if Platner wins the primary on June 9th he can drop out of the race and the Democrats can pick another candidate for the regular election in November.  So right now, there is an enormous unsettled cloud over Platner’s status.  The Democrats are convinced that they must win in Maine in order to retake the Senate from the Republicans.

Well, this is wonderful.  Listening to feminists bending over backwards to explain how they can vote for a caveman misogynist against a woman is just too delicious to ignore.  And the best part is that the Democrats are frightened to death that there is still more dirty laundry waiting for after the drop-dead date on July 13th after which Platner’s name must stay on the ballot.

Now let me be clear.  I think of Susan Collins as a Democrat.  There is absolutely nothing conservative about her.  So, if Platner were to win in November I wouldn’t be too upset.  New England does not have a conservative constituency.  It should have the lousy communist politicians it deserves.  But it would be nice if we could squeak by without losing the House or the Senate in this midterm election.

Anyway, watching Chris Hayes making nice with a guy who claims he would rape a male home intruder in a non-gay way has to be an important milestone.  We’ve reached terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) fallout.  At this point, I believe the Democrats would vote for Hitler himself if he promised to unseat Trump.  So good luck Mr. Platner.  And good luck to any burglars who may be working up there in Sullivan, Maine.  It sounds like a tricky proposition.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 02JUN2026 – Adios John Cornyn

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I’m a Texan.
I was unhappy about John Cornyn’s love for amnesty but let it slide because “he was the one who could win in the general”.
Then Cornyn stabbed us in the back on gun control. That was a bridge too far. I swore then that I would vote for a democrat for US senate before I would vote for Cornyn again. My reasoning was that we would have to put up with the dem for 6 years and then we could replace him with a real conservative but that Cornyn was there until he died.
Apparently, I was not alone in this and John picked up on it announcing that this would be his last term in the senate.
Didn’t care. Didn’t trust John to keep his word anyway.
(BTW, John was warned. He was warned by constituents such as myself and by organizations like GOA and NRA that if he supported Biden’s gun control he would face an expensive and grueling primary. He did not care.)
Then along came Ken Paxton. Fresh off 4 years of suing the Biden administration to a standstill, Ken was the guy who could beat John.
I sent Ken money in the primary and in the runoff and I will again for the general.
We are sick to death of RINOs pissing on us and telling us it is raining.
I am very happy to see John Cornyn in the rear view mirror.
Don’t go away mad, John. Just go away.

A Very Important Start

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Isn’t this a crazy world.  Our politics are suicidal.  Our culture is demented.  The captains of industry and the oligarchy are made up of sociopaths.  What passes for “artists” are debauched narcissists who don’t even know what they’re supposedly rebelling against.  And yet, in some strange sense we’re starting to shake loose from the system that seems hellbent on tearing all of society down to the ground.

Despite the havoc that surrounds us and the confusion that even “our” side seems to be strewing in all directions I feel like the mass of people have shaken off the stupor that enveloped us for decades and are now willing to say openly that the narrative is a bunch of lies and search out like minded people and in what ever ways they can, move their lives in the direction that benefits them.

One of the signs of this is the recent spate of Republican senators and congressmen being primaried out of their offices.  It used to be we’d be told that if we didn’t support a John Cornyn or a Mitch McConnell then we would weaken the party and the Democrats would “win.”  So, we’d hold our noses and vote for the RINO and watch as he voted with the Democrats on a whole host of issues that hurt us.  Well, no more.  I tell you the truth.  Even if the Democrats pick up a few seats I’d rather see that than have another traitor stabbing us in the back at the last minute when we need him most.

It’s like Susan Collins in Maine or Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.  Neither is a conservative and they’re just as likely to vote with the Democrats as against them.  If we lost both those seats it would hardly matter at all.  The main thing is that voters are voting their convictions and attempting to eject the fakes from the party.

Another sign that people are starting to wake up is the situation in Hollywood.  For the last few years it’s become painfully obvious that movie-goers are staying away from movies that push “the narrative.”  The biggest victims are the Star Wars franchise and the superhero movies.  These two formerly unstoppable money-printing engines abused their fans by tearing down the storylines and characters that the fans loved and replacing them with “woke” versions of them.  And the result is these franchises have stopped making money.  Where before some of these properties might gross over a billion dollars and make hundreds of millions in profits, now they can’t even break even against the production and advertising budgets.  And in opposition to this model, lately you have a few studios trying to court these fans with more traditional fare like Amazon producing the science fiction movie “Project Hail Mary” where a positive message and a minimum of preaching “the message” were rewarded with a handsome profit and the lesson that a fresh storyline and traditional values can make the studios lots of money.  In addition, some independent internet content creators have of late begun to make movies on a shoestring budget and been rewarded with the profits that such an endeavor can reap.  Horror movies costing $1-5 million are making ten or twenty times that much money at the box office.  Now, not all of these movies are any good.  But they’re no worse than some of the schlock that comes out of Hollywood and they have audiences that will pay to see them.  They’re giving an audience what they expect.  We will see changes in Hollywood and those who don’t change will lose a lot of cash.  That is progress.

Let me be clear.  We have not won the culture war.  What we have done is awakened to the fact that the war was rigged against us by our “friends.”  And waking up to that fact is a very important start.

Lessons Have Been Learned

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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.

Republican Convention Fun

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One of the interesting observations that has been mentioned by people both on the Left and Right is that the mood at the Republican Convention is not the usual atmosphere of nervous tension and fear.  It has been replaced by one that has been described variously as excitement, confidence and almost giddy jubilation.  For once Republicans haven’t been gaslighted into despair by the national media.

And that’s great.  Even if eventually the Democrats manage to steal the election, at least for the time being, Republicans are openly talking about their agenda and why it will be a boon for the American people.  And why is all this happening?  I’d say it’s no coincidence that George and Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and all the rest of the establishment Republicans have stayed away.  I’m guessing they weren’t disinvited.  They just knew that this wasn’t their party anymore.  And I guess it would be degrading for them to be ignored and disparaged by the new owners of the GOP; Donald Trump and his rowdy friends.

I’ll confess that I’m pretty excited about this snub.  I am a very vindictive guy and knowing that Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney are getting the cold shoulder is a rare pleasure.  Schadenfreude is a guilty pleasure for most but I revel in it.  These are people who despise the great unwashed.  The fact that they look down on normal people is why I hate these elitist swine.  Ordinary people run the gamut from devils to saints.  And they deserve to be considered on an individual basis just as the rich should be.

And this is the lesson of Trump.  He is this fabulously wealthy, crazy man who rubs elbows with the captains and the kings of industry and society.  He could be one with the rest of the aristocrats.  But he still feels a connection to hoi polloi; the many.  Maybe it’s because he was born and raised in New York City back when it was still a place where rich and poor had some things in common.  We still celebrated the same holidays and watched the same ball clubs and movies and maybe still felt a feeling of community when the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001.

For whatever reason he’s decided to be our champion.  He’s even faced a bullet now.  For better or worse, he’s our guy.  And most of the Republican Party has finally reconciled to that reality.  And whether we see him triumph in November and take his second shot at fixing this terribly broken country or see him go down in flames and report to prison to serve out the rest of his life behind bars, we’re going to follow this parade either up to the shining city on the hill or off the cliff.

And since the die is cast, we might as well enjoy it a little.  Joe and Mika and Crazy Joy Reid have been almost apoplectic since the hilarious Trump-Biden debate where Dementia Joe revealed to the world that he’s down to just a handful of brain cells and can no longer pretend to be sentient.  Watching the various components of the “independent” press beclown themselves trying to reconcile the claim that Joe Biden is both a president of enormous accomplishments and a human turnip is endlessly entertaining.  After the assassination attempt MSNBC pulled Morning Joe off the air for a day to avoid one of the psychotic denizens of that show saying something so disgusting that the last three people in their audience finally give up.  Watching Joe, the next day complaining bitterly about this “betrayal” was very amusing.

 

I’m guessing the next act will involve all the people who begged Joe Biden to drop out of the race because he’s a jabbering moron switching gears and swearing on a stack of bibles that he’s actually a super genius of Wiley Coyote caliber.  That should be rich.  Well, I’m thankful that my enemies are in disarray and acting crazier than usual.

Now, on with the show.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 19JUN2024 – Primarily Cornyn

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I get it.
On a smaller scale in Texas we have the RINO John Cornyn to deal with.
John gave Biden his one and only gun control win and, in so doing, gave the Biden administration the legal standing to decide that anyone who sold a firearm was now a gun dealer and ad to register with the feds or face prison.
Yeah. John did that.

So in another 2 years John Cornyn is up for re-election.
He will be primaried.
If he wins his primary, We will not vote for him in the general.
Better a real democrat we can get rid of in another 6 years than 6 more years of a traitor.

 

I Envy the Brits

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Nigel Farage is about to gut the Tories.  His Reform UK party is currently stealing away so many votes from the Conservative Party that with just a little luck he may finish it off as the opposition to the Labor Party in Parliament.

And this is huge.  That would be as if Donald Trump started his own party; the Big Beautiful Trump Party, and it reduced the Republicans to less than half of the seats they currently hold in the House and Senate.  It would be explosive.  It would throw Washington into a panic.  Business as usual would cease to exist.  All those Republican power brokers would in one stroke become powerless.  Of course the Democrats would run roughshod over everything.  The country would overnight become like a continent sized version of California.  Fossil fuels would be banned and the only religion would be some kind of LGBTQ cult.  It would become a hell on Earth but we’d never have to hear Mitch McConnell lie to us about why he allowed some Democrat initiative to pass in the Senate.  And we’d never have to listen to what a noble democracy Ukraine is.  And within four years the Republicans would be extinct.  Now wouldn’t that be splendiferous?

So, yeah, I’m envious of the Brits.  The Tories screwed the pooch so hard that no one on the Right will believe them ever again and that provided the opportunity to replace them.

I know, I know.  Allowing the Left a supermajority in the government is suicide.  They’ll do things so horrible that life as we know it will cease to exist.  But that’s already happening.  All that differs is they currently do it one drop at a time instead of just pouring out the whole bucket at once.  As far as I’m concerned, the accelerationist strategy is the way to go.  Let them do their worst and then let the country react to that.  Sure, they’ll approve slavery reparations, aircraft carriers with 6,000 mile extension cords, transgender surgeries in the womb and any number of other horrible policies.  But at least we’ll kill the Uniparty.  That game will end once and for all.  And then we can finally have representatives that actually want to represent us.

Bottom line is I’m ready for the next step.  And that is what the Brits seem to be doing.  In the words of Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

I’m thoroughly sick of the make believe government that the Republicans represent.  With respect to being betrayed it’s never if but always when.  And that when will always be when they could do the most good or the most harm.  So hail to you Nigel Farage.  Perform the end of the beginning and lay the Tories in their well-deserved grave.  And may we follow your example and do the same to the Stupid Party.  They wildly deserve it and it will warm my soul to see them out on their butts.

MSNBC Journalistic Integrity

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In the midst of the marathon pummeling that I currently am engulfed in I have Easter completely free from work.  It stands out as an oasis of joy within a desert of unpleasantness.  Truly this is like the eye of the hurricane providing a short window of peace inside a maelstrom of aggravation and weariness.  Death by a thousand paper cuts awaits me next week and I refuse to think ahead to it on Sunday.  I will bask in the glow of family solidarity and face the music afterwards.  So let it be written, so shall it be done.

I watched the unfolding of the farce that was the Ronna Romney McDaniel NBC hiring and firing.  I’ve read the hilarious reactions of the MSNBC parrots squawking and shrieking about an “election denier” sharing their sacred “airspace.”  And I can’t decide who is more ridiculous, the people who pretend that anyone can be phonier than the MSNBC freakshow or the suits at NBC who thought that McDaniel could be paraded around as a legitimate spokesperson of the new right.

Words fail me.  I tend to believe that the whole episode was a set-up to allow MSNBC to virtue signal at full power and that there was never an intent to employ McDaniel.  I guess the only question is whether she was in on the gag from the start.  Either way it fun to watch these people wind themselves up to whirling dervish speed.

Probably my favorite bit was this:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/03/30/david_brooks_on_ronna_mcdaniel_to_be_on_our_air_you_have_to_have_some_commitment_to_the_truth_above_partisanship.html

Now I was trying to remember what this show reminded me of and then it came to me,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELXX6hZjCeY

Basically, it is the same vibe but without the honesty and intelligence that Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather bring to public television.

Now look at the other side of this farce.  How exactly does McDaniel represent the Right?  The only answer is that she’s the latest avatar of the John McCain, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney school of Republican misrepresentation.  Hell, she’s even Mitt Romney’s niece!  So, I guess Uni-Party still feels that the old playbook never gets old and never stops working.  Well, they’re wrong.  No one with a single living brain cell believes that anymore.  Now that still leaves millions of Republican voters as fans of Ronna but effectively, they’re Democrat voters and we have to stop worrying about what they do.

But this is a good starting point.  As RINOs get bounced out of positions of power in the Republican hierarchy they will end up with jobs in media, academia and anywhere else where whores can settle down and whore.  The appropriate response from our side is to mock and insult these people as much as is humanly possible.  And that is what I will try to do whenever I have the time and inclination.

But right now, I have to say, that since I don’t watch PBS, I wasn’t aware that they had shifted over to a 100% gay men news team.  It’s a bold decision.  I always thought that PBS tried to maintain a 1:1 gay to lesbian ratio with respect to their pundits but apparently that has been superseded.  But I hope they eventually add a lesbian.  Capehart is obviously radiating an enormous field of gayness at such a high potential that it threatens to tear the very fabric of space-time.  In order to re-establish a balance between the feminine and masculine mojo they should hire Rachel Maddow or some other sufficiently macho woman to bring stability to the Force.

Well, enough of this.  Everyone, enjoy Easter.  I know I will.

Waiting For the Barbarians

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There is a somewhat famous poem by a somewhat famous poet that went like this:

 

Waiting For the Barbarians

-What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

-Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?

Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.

What’s the point of senators making laws now?

Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

-Why did our emperor get up so early,

and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,

in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.

He’s even got a scroll to give him,

loaded with titles, with imposing names.

-Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today

wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?

Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,

rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?

Why are they carrying elegant canes

beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

-Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual

to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

-Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?

(How serious people’s faces have become.)

Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,

everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.

And some of our men who have just returned from the border say

there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

 

Constantine P. Cavafy

 

Cavafy was a Greek living in late 19th and early 20th century Egypt, who was fascinated with the Byzantine past.  The history of that worn down vestige of the Roman Empire helped him define his place in the world.  After all Egypt where he lived had been an important part of the empire until the Muslim conquests sheard it away.  And so, he imagined what it was like to be in Constantinople after all those centuries of Goths, Bulgars, Turks, Arabs and other hordes washing over the lands of their realm and crashing against the impenetrable walls of the city but inexorably wearing away the “empire” until all that was left was the city itself.

And so, you reach the mindset of the poem.  The life of the Byzantines was defined by the idea of just resisting the passage of time, of the changing of epochs of even the disappearance of whole civilizations by shutting the gates and withdrawing inwardly.  Eventually you can justify almost any decadence or depravity by shrugging your shoulders and pointing at the chaos outside your walls.

This familiar end of empire mentality is appropriate for any number of decaying systems.  It applies almost equally well for western civilization as a whole, the British Empire, the American Global Empire, American “democracy” and in particular the Republican Party.  Waiting for the barbarians could be the description of how the “conservatives” have handled their campaign to resist the progressives.  It’s a crouching posture of weakness where resistance is merely a reluctant acquiescence to whatever new outrage has broken out under the eyes of the faithful standing on the walls of the city, above the wreckage of the empire.  As the last of their possessions are appropriated and converted by the enemy, the nobles and their lackeys look down from their protected heights and wonder how this all came to be.  The fact that they long ago gave up leading their followers into battle isn’t even a memory.  All they remember is the ancient glories of the “Gipper” and how wonderful it was back then to be real men.

But now a real problem emerges.  What if there are no more barbarians.  “Those people were a kind of solution.”  They could blame their uselessness on their enemy’s strength.  What if, heaven forbid, Donald Trump wins the election and they have to rule?  How could they pretend to be beautiful losers?  Well, they’ve come up with the answer.  Now Donald Trump and the MAGA conservatives becomes the barbarians and they’ll cooperate with the Democrats to destroy them so that things can go back to normal.

And that’s the situation we may be faced with.  Joe Biden is so incompetent and despicable that even Democrats have begun to mock him.  The Democrat party is beginning to sound desperate to find a convenient way to ditch him and Kamala Harris together.  And, of course, the bait and switch at or after the convention seems like the obvious ploy.  But what if they bungle this whole election and Trump wins so convincingly that even these master cheats can’t make it happen?  What then?

My belief is that the Republicans will sabotage the Trump administration just as they did during his first term.  They will cooperate with the Deep State and throw away the chance at reform.  They will see the Democrats as their natural masters and cripple all attempts at reform.

That’s what my instincts tell me.  But there is always the chance that Trump will find a way to get things done.  It’s not likely or even explicable.  How would he get things done without the Congress?  How would he break the power of the Justice Department?  To carry this already overtaxed metaphor to its utter absurd conclusion Trump would have to be the founder of a new empire and re-order the old world into something new and dynamic.

Of course, that’s a different era.  Ends of empires only go in one direction.  So, we won’t be on the walls but we’ll get a ringside seat to the next act in this drama.  “Those people were a kind of solution.”

JEB Haley Rides Again

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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.