The Post Insurrection. Unfit for any office. Part V.

Trump and Mark Meadows.

December 20, 1922

Lex Anteinternet: The Post Insurrection. Falling chips. Part IV.: December 19, 2022

The January 6 committee has referred Donald Trump to the U.S. Attorney General on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting, assisting or providing aid and comfort to an insurrection.  It has also referred Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs to the ethics committee for failure to honor a subpoena to the committee.

The committee has completed its work and issues its report.

The U.S. Attorney General is unlikely to specifically act on the committee's referral, as it is conducting its own investigation.

The committee's report declared Donald Trump "unfit for any office".  Truly, he is unfit for any office and was unfit to occupy his last office, at least after the November election.

In addition to those noted above, Trump lawyer John Eastman was included in the referral on two of the charges.

As noted, I feel it's unlikely that the Attorney General will act on the referred charges, which does not mean that it will not independently charge Trump. Given the current pace of US justice, that risks being so slow as to being meaningless.  It'll happen, but my guess is that it will actually occur in late 2023 or in 2024.

For that reason, the Committee's findings and referral are significant.

The committee's work was significant, even though it has been generally discounted by Republicans and wholly discounted by Trump loyalist.  Wyoming's GOP, which has some figures who were at the insurrection, has actually bellied up to the bar and had repeated shots of the Kool-Aid.  Wyoming has set itself on the path of conservatives who are destroying conservatism through their obstinate insistence on being tied to Trump, who ironically may not really be a conservative at all.

Nonetheless, nationally, it appears the bloom may finally be off the rose.  After Trump's third (or fourth, depending upon how you read it) election defeat for the GOP, Republicans have been pulling away.  It'll be interesting to see if they manage the break.  Kevin McCarthy, who briefly broke away from Trump immediately after the election before running back into his embrace, is in real trouble in his bid for Speaker of the House and might not make it.  He's been referred for charges, and he just received a Trump endorsement for the position, something aimed at Trumpites in the House who may no longer really listen all that much to Trump either, the Führerprinzip having now exceeded even Trump.

The message there is that even as Trump has crashed into the GOP and caused it to burn down in a recent election, the House, for two terms threatens to lurch to the right, thereby pouring gasoline on the fire the Trump flame out has caused.

Mirroring that, Rona McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee, is facing opposition from Trumpites and may lose her seat to even more hardcore populist Republicans, thereby virtually guaranteeing a 2024 electoral disaster for the party.

On an illuminating personal note, as I am generally usually (if not wholly relably) conservative myself, I was recently included in an email chain of a set of highly educated conservatives regarding an article by a conservative columnist who was writing that Trump, while in the author's view having been a really good President, was destroying his legacy.  He clearly is doing that, which is no surprise in these quarters. What was a surprise was the reaction of some of "why are the Democrats so fixated on Trump?"

That was an illumination. 

May on the Republican right truly believe that the reason that Trump remains in the news is that the Democrats and a Democratic press are focused on him as they have nothing to offer themselves. They are flat out wrong.

Like it or not, the GOP is a minority party and, through its current adherence to Trump, is likely to make itself a very tiny one.  Elections right now are decided by independents who disdain Trump and who lean towards the Democrats for the most part.  Trump remains in the news as Trump insists on being the leader of the party, and he makes himself rather difficult to ignore.

Witness, he's running for the Oval Office again, as somebody who tried to steal the election, and he resorts to such drivel as this:

WY Rep. Landon Brown

@lbrownhd9

Who the actual hell is going to buy this? Please let me know if you are. One cannot simply laugh hard enough at this showcase of lunacy.

1:31 PM · Dec 15, 2022

Why are Democrats fixated on Trump?  Because large numbers of Republicans won't recognize that the man threatened to end American democracy and failed to do so only because a few stood in his way.  He's lied about the result of the election and, moreover, while President, we now know, was so internally unstable that no matter what a person thinks of his implemented policies, to a significant degree it was only the restraint that his employees showed that kept some truly scary things from potentially happening.

Democrats are fixated on Trump because the Republicans are.  He commands a significantly loyal based that worships him in the mold of men on horseback.

From the Republicans who wonder, "why can't we move on?", well look.  Kevin McCarthy, who first acknowledged the insurrection, went immediately down to Mar-a-Lago to cut some sort of deal with the disgraced would be caudillo and is threatened not from the center of the GOP, for the most part, but from the right.  If he doesn't become speaker, it'll be because he didn't have triple shots of the Kook-Aide.  Rona McDaniel, who should be a disgraced failure, faces a threat from her right, not the center.

Want to restore conservative election hopes, and move past Trump? Republicans can do that by openly moving past Trump themselves.

March 19, 2023

Donald Trump, the subject of a New York state grand jury, has announced he expects to be arrested Tuesday.  He additionally posted:

PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

 IT'S TIME!!!

WE JUST CAN'T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE, THEY'RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!

Given what occurred last time he called for action, it's reasonable to regard this as an incitement to insurrection.

March 20, 2023

Secretary of State Buchanan, in order to counter claims that the election was tainted, published a set of facts on the Secretary of State's website demonstrating that it wasn't.  When he abandoned his post for the judiciary, the Interim Secretary of State left it up.

The new Secretary of State, Chuck Gray, who campaigned on "election integrity", is now in office and its gone.  Of course, by "election integrity" he meant the fable he campaigned on, that there was something amiss with the 2020 election.

March 30, 2023

Frank Eathorne, head of the state GOP and an individual who has taken the party deep into populist GOP territory, is running for an unprecedented third term as head of the party.

Repeatedly failed far right GOP candidate Rex Rammell is suing the Sublette County Sheriff's Office for its actions searching his horses for brand inspection. That inspection resulted in his being cited and convicted in a jury trial.

An early prediction on this is that Rammell is going to lose this suit.

March 31, 2023

A New York Grand jury has indicted Donald Trump in connection with the hush money he paid to pornographic actress Stephanie Clifford, "stage" name Stormy Daniels, which as an aside might be noted as the least effective hush money of all time.

That apparently isn't the actual crime, and while asking for hush money probably is, paying it very well might not be.  This is apparently connected with something else in the nature of being a campaign violation due to the way the money was handled.

There is, it might be noted, a second film femme fatale, in the form of a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who also received hush money which might be part of this or which might end up in a separate charge.

My prediction is that this is only the first of what will be several indictments, and this may prove to be an unfortunate one.  Prosecutions for campaign violations are rare, and New York's legal system can be accused of having taken on prosecutions for political reasons in recent years.

Wyoming Congressman Hageman decried the prosecution as a "witch hunt", which brings about the embarrassing flip side of this.   Trump is personally icky, and his payoffs in this area expressed a fear that Americans still had some sense of shame, which proved to be an inaccurate fear. They should.  The party that generally associates itself with "family" and values is now really cosied up with a guy who had at least two affairs with women who had prostituted their image for cash, something that in any prior era would have been the end of his political fortunes. Granted, he apparently denies the affairs.

April 4, 2023

Donald Trump was indicted by the State of New York.  He plead "not guilty"

Indictment.

And so we conclude this installment.

Last edition of thread:

The Post Insurrection. Falling chips. Part IV.

Stafanik and the moral of the story.

Elise Stefanik is apparently the subject of a major Washington Post expose, which I can't read as I can't get past the paywall.

It's well-known that Sefanik started off as a middle of the road Republican and then became a dedicated Trumper. Apparently this is about the costs she paid on the route, and it isn't flattering.  The oddest detail is that she apparently thought about trying to approach Pete Buttigieg for a position if he won his 2020 election bid.

Because I can't read it, I can't accurately represent it, but what it seems to suggest is that Stefanik is an example of the age-old political tale of a politician selling her soul for power, and losing more than she gains in the process.

I wonder how my of the Wyoming politicians just elected ought to get the WP article and consider the moral of that story.

Remembered by Irrelevance.

 

WyoFile's Kerry Drake wrote an editorial worth reading, entitled:

History will judge Cheney, Hageman by their Trump choices

Wyoming’s U.S. Rep. elect hasn’t been sworn in yet, but it’s already clear that she hitched her wagon to the wrong jackass.

It's a great article, with many good observations, but Drake is reading his audience, the Wyoming voter, incorrectly.

And that's a tragedy.

Drake is correct about this:

Hageman, by contrast, has now irrevocably tied her political identity to backing Trump’s lies about the “rigged” election. Even if she wanted to abandon him, Hageman cannot simply walk away. You don’t just shuck off those handcuffs when you get tired of wearing them.

No, Hageman has made the political calculation to double down on her support, even as many incumbent Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump after the GOP’s disastrous midterm election results. Our freshman congresswoman doesn’t have much choice.

And this:

She hitched her wagon to what she thought was the most powerful horse in the field. Now the world is quickly realizing her rotund orange steed was a jackass all along. And Cheney is leading it to the glue factory.

But will "Wyoming's" voters wake up, and will it make a difference to Hageman?

Not a chance.

Nor will it matter to her supporters.

Hageman will go on to be reliably right of the right for the rest of her political career.  In her early 60s, she'll be there for at least 16 years, and have little influence on anything.  

In the meantime, something occurred to me.

I have a friend who is a fanatic Hageman supporter.  I have another who was a real Chuck Gray supporter.

What do they have in common?

Not from here, and not from any of the neighboring states.

They've imported their politics from the Midwest. . . and there's a lot of that going around.  Indeed, we have a Secretary of State that hails from far away and his district has elected a replacement for him, in the legislature, that hails from Chicago.

Wyoming has always been a very odd state in this way.  It has a highly transient population and a core of locals. But the locals themselves are divided between various regions.  And generally, for some reason, people have tended to politically look to outsiders in the state, although our current era is a real exception.  The Governor is actually a Wyomingite, as is Hageman (from the farm belt).  Lummis is as well.

Indeed, Lummis may be the best political barometer of what that local core may be thinking. She dissed Trump when most did, made up to him in spades when things were clearly going the other way, and has dumped him like a hot rock now that he's sinking fast.

Drake is right, Hageman can't do that.

But Drake is wrong to think most Wyoming voters will. The real Hageman supporters, who include an interesting group who brought their political views from somewhere else, would rather ride the Trump jackass into oblivion than admit they've been grifted.

It's sort of self satisfying, really.

But it doesn't help address anything, however.

History will judge Hageman and Cheney by their choices, and Wyoming in general. Hageman and Wyoming are going to look pretty much the same way America Firsters did by 1945.  But there were still a few America Firsters, even those who backed fascists, around in 1945.  History judged them by forgetting them, and they did in fact become pretty irrelevant politically.

As we are about to.

After the Election. The Wyoming 2022 Election Post Mortem. Part 1.

 

November 11, 2022

Governor Gordon announces Inauguration Committee General Chairmen

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –  Governor Gordon and First Lady Jennie announced today that Annemarie and Dave Picard will co-chair the Wyoming Inauguration Committee for 2023.  

“Jennie and I appreciate Dave and Annmarie’s willingness to once again step up to organize the Inaugural activities,” Governor Gordon said. “Jennie and I are so grateful for the support of Wyoming’s people, both at the polls and during the past four years. We look forward to thanking our friends, family and supporters as we continue our work and move Wyoming forward.”

The public is invited to participate in numerous activities on January 2, 2023 including a prayer service, swearing in ceremony of the five statewide elected officials, a public reception and the Inaugural Gala.  For more information and a complete schedule, please visit www.wyo2023.com or contact the Inauguration Office at 307-369-2725.

About the Inauguration of Wyoming’s Statewide Elected Officials

Every four years the citizens of the great state of Wyoming, through their votes, elect five people to lead the state for the next four years.  We congratulate all who  participated in the democratic process, and celebrate the transition from candidate to elected official beginning with a day of public events at Wyoming’s State Capitol and throughout the city of Cheyenne.

Wyoming State Statute sets the date that those elected in November assume office, and prior to the entering of office they must take and subscribe to the oath of office prescribed by the Wyoming Constitution.  

Traditionally the swearing-in ceremony has been performed in a formal setting befitting the peaceful transition of power.  This coming year will be no different, taking place on January 2, 2023.

Please join as the three branches of government come together in this time-honored celebration of democracy.

 The Wyoming Inauguration Committee, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation formed under WY Statute 17-19-1804

-END-

Governor Gordon’s Chief of Staff Retiring, Replacement Named

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –  Governor Mark Gordon is announcing a change to his leadership team. Current Chief of Staff, Buck McVeigh, is announcing that he will retire at the end of the year. To take his place, the Governor has named Drew Perkins his new Chief of Staff.

“I will never be able to thank Buck adequately for his extraordinary service to the state and her citizens,” Governor Gordon said. “Long before he joined my office or served as Chief of Staff, Buck had a distinguished career with Wyoming, which gave him invaluable insight into and knowledge of our state. It has been an honor to serve with Buck, and a treasure to enjoy his friendship.”

McVeigh served as the Governor’s Policy Director before becoming Chief of Staff in June 2019. His 36-year career with the State of Wyoming began in 1980 with the Department of Agriculture, and included positions in the Department of Administration & Information, the State Auditor’s Office and the Public Service Commission along with the Governor’s Office. McVeigh was a longtime-member and 14-year executive branch co-chairman of the state’s Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (CREG). He also served as Executive Director of the Wyoming Taxpayers Association for five years. 

“Having been given the opportunity to serve as Governor Gordon’s Chief was truly the honor of a lifetime for me. It is with a heavy heart that I leave this fine man’s side,” McVeigh said. 

McVeigh noted that of all the positions he held during his career, the Chief of Staff’s position was inarguably the most difficult.

“There are truly no words to describe it. A 24-7-365 job with endless days. We made it through some awfully difficult times over these last four years. And, I say with all honesty, I couldn’t have done it without the incredible staff and cabinet that we have. What an awesome team!” McVeigh commented.

McVeigh will finish the year as Chief of Staff and then be replaced by Drew Perkins who was a State Senator from Natrona County until announcing his resignation earlier today. 

“I am honored and humbled to be asked to try and fill Buck McVeigh’s shoes as the Governor’s Chief of Staff. That will be a tall order,” Perkins said. “I have enjoyed working with Governor Gordon since he served as Treasurer. I respect him immensely and consider him a good friend. I am excited to assist the Governor and his team as he starts his second term, and to have the opportunity to work full-time in continuing to serve Wyoming and her people.”

Perkins has represented  District 29 in the Wyoming Senate since 2007, serving as Senate President, Vice President and Chair of the Joint Appropriations Committee. He comes to the Governor’s office after working as an attorney in private practice for more than 30 years. He is a graduate of the University of Wyoming School of Law, and earned an M.S. in Taxation from Southeastern University (Washington, D.C.) and a B.S. in Accounting from Brigham Young University. 

“Drew and I have enjoyed a longstanding respect and friendship going back to my time as Treasurer,” the Governor said. “Throughout that time, I have found his advice to be correct and valuable. From the passage of Amendment A to more recent budgets, Drew has been a trusted source of wisdom and perspective. I eagerly look forward to working with him.”

 -END-

Drew is a good guy, he'll go a good job.  It's a shame he was not reelected.

Andi LeBeau of Fremont County lost her seat by ten votes, thereby depriving the Reservation of an enrolled members in the legislature.

November 13, 2022

Its now clear that the incoming legislature is going to be much more far right than the last one, which likely will end up shocking Wyomingites who thought the existing legislature was pretty right wing.  Not so, in comparison to this one.

The irony is that Trump's candidates largely failed most places, so Wyoming is going to be unique this way, and will probably spending a lot of time giving Washington the middle finger salute, and getting ignored in return.

In spite of having pretty much single-handedly wiped out Republican chances this midterm election, with of course a lot of help from 1) people like Kevin McCarthy who wouldn't confront Trump's lies, and 2) people like Harriet Hageman, Kari Lake and Chuck Gray who promoted his lost election myth, Trump appears almost certain to announce his bid for the Oval Office this Wednesday, an act which will pretty much flush GOP hopes down the tubes in 2024.  While there are press rumblings that the GOP will, at long last, confront Trump and dump him, that seems pretty unlikely.

November 16, 2022

Mitch McConnell was reelected GOP Senate leader in spite of a challenge from the Trumpite right.

The challenge was not well-founded.  McConnell, who is not the most personable of political figures, has done a really good job in this position.

November 17, 2022

So we will have a split Congress, with the Democrats controlling the Senate and the Republicans barely controlling the House.

Indeed, both houses are nearly evenly split.

What this probably means is that American government isn't going to function at the legislative level for the next two years, probably.  How dysfunctional it is, however, depends somewhat on who becomes Speaker.  Amazingly, McCarthy's only real contenders right now are from his right, when you'd think they'd be from the center.  This doesn't bode well, as it likely means that in the House, the next two years will be devoted to doing nothing whatsoever but criticizing.

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, role Wyoming's new far right, so far, Congressman does in the next two years.  Our junior Senator is suddenly pulling towards the center, perhaps having detected a changing wind.  

November 17, cont:

Keven McCarthy received a visit today from a well known Trump strategist.

For those who may have any doubt, myself included, this probably signals how things this session will go and to whom the House will be working towards.

November 18, 2022

Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will not seek a leadership role in the Democratic caucus in the upcoming Congress.

Pelosi entered Congress at age 47 and has been a real power for some time. She's the only woman to have ever been Speaker of the House.

While some pundits, for example me, thought she should not run for speaker this last go around, she turned out to be remarkably effective.  Perhaps for that reason, she's been gigantically vilified by the political right and even the source of the most absurd hatred and calumny.  Such organizations as the National Rifle Association, combined with politicians such as Harriet Hageman, have practically demonized her.

Pelosi, more realistically, is a symbol of what is right and wrong with politics. A remarkably effective, long serving politician, she generally made her views well known and stuck by them. At the same time, she compromised her moral positions, placing loyalty to her party above the moral dictates of her Faith.

Who will be the incoming Republican Speaker isn't really yet know, but it's assumed to be Kevin McCarthy, a co-religious of Pelosi's who has compromised his own morals by quietly supporting rebellion against the electoral process and who is now faced with a revived hard right Trumpist base and a GOP middle that's wandering off.

December 8, 2022

Casting a wider net again, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has announced she's leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent.  She will apparently caucus with the Democrats, as the other two independents in the Senate do.

The 2022 Election Part XIV. The Results.

November 8, 2022

And now the results are coming in.

Chuck Gray, ascending to Secretary of State, mounted on the Myth of Stolen Election.

The votes are cast, the counting is underway.  Here are the results as they come in.

16:42.

Governor.

Mark Gordon has won, as everyone knew that he had well before today.

November 9, 2022

The proverbial morning after.

U.S. House of Representatives

Harriet Hageman wins with 132,172 votes. 47,241 were cast for her Democratic opponent, Lynette Gray Bull, who frankly underperformed in my view. Towards the end of her campaign, Gray Bull began to raise her ethnicity in a fairly aggressive manner, which likely didn't help her in a state where such things generally do not win votes.

Governor.

Mark Gordon has won, as noted last night.

This race was emblematic of the current political sickness in the state. Gordon isn't a bad Governor, and is no doubt better than some we've had in the now somewhat distant past.  But the Democrats couldn't even find a real contender.  Yes, they ran somebody, but that's about all you can say. 

His real opponents, therefore, were from his own party in the primary.

Gordon took the office in the general election with over 143,000 votes, with his Democratic opponent taking about 30,000.   The Libertarian took around 8,000 votes, less than the 11,000 write ins that were cast.

Secretary of State.

Chuck Gray, as noted above, ascends to this office, with 147,368.  He had no opponent, but 13,574 votes were for write ins.

State Auditor

Kristi Racines won with over 161,000 votes against no opponent.

State Treasurer

Curt Meier won with 159,000 votes against no opponent.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Megan Degenfelder took the office against Serge Maldonado, who barely campaigned.  The vote counts were 142,511 to 43,251, which means that Maldonado did nearly as well as Gray Bull in this race.

Constitutional Amendment A

This amendment received 101,000 votes, and therefore passed, but not by a comfortable margin.  In order to pass, an amendment must receive a yes vote based on the total number of cast ballots, which was 198,000. So this based, but barely.

Constitutional Amendment B

This bad idea failed, making it the only bright spot in the election.  115,000 people voted no.  I thought this likely to fail, but only for not getting enough yes votes based on total ballots cast, not on an outright "no" vote.

Other Races

Locally, two of the "Mom's For Liberty" were elected to the school board.  One was not.

The 1 Cent and Lodging Taxes passed easily.

Nationwide

Donald Trump, who isn't running for anything, actually gave a victory speech last night.

A "red wave" (no, not a Communist wave, which would make more sense as a "red" analogy) was expected to take place, but it doesn't really appear to be happening in my view. The Senate will likely remain Democratic. The House is likely to go over to the GOP as expected.

So we'll get split government from a government again.   The Democrats have themselves mostly to blame for this as they have, as per usual, been singularly inept at getting their message across or acting quickly on anything.

United States Senate

While it's still too early to tell, it appears that the Democrats have retained control of the Senate.

John Fetterman beat out Dr. Oz in a particularly odd race in Pennsylvania. Fetterman goes on to the Senate.

The much followed Georgia race was too close to call and appears to be certain to go into a runoff between two candidates, which is silly, but there you have it.

JD Vance won his bid for the Senate in Ohio. The author of Hillbilly Elegy had turned Trumpist during the campaign, which for a while appeared likely to sink him.

House of Representatives

Also, too early to tell, but it looks as if the Republicans will take the House of Representatives.

While it's too early to tell, it appears that Lauren Boebert may lose her race in Colorado, and is losing at this time.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was reelected.

Cont:

A Reuters headline:

Race for U.S. Congress is tight, no Republican 'red wave'

At this point, given the last several elections, it ought to be abundantly clear that polls are no longer accurate.

Cont:

It appears that Trump endorsed Kelly Tshibaka will narrowly defeat incumbent Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski in a state that uses ranked choice voting, so both of them are competing against the Democratic candidate as well.  They're pretty much neck and neck, which shows that in this instance this operated in favor of the Trumpite challenger.

Where it didn't was with the Congressional race in which newly elected Democrat Mary Peltola easily defeated two Republican challengers, including Sarah Palin.

Cont:

Reuters take:

Control of both the House and Senate is up in the air. There’s still a lot we don’t know, but one thing we do know is that Republicans did not have the night they were hoping for. 

Here are six takeaways:

 

1️⃣ The Senate is undecided and will take a while to know. Democrats flipped Pennsylvania and Republicans now need a net gain of two pickups to take the Senate. 

2️⃣ Republicans underperformed in the House, and there’s going to be a lot of finger-pointing. They're looking at a possible net gain of only about eight seats, which is on the low end of forecasters’ projections. This could threaten Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy’s plans to be speaker of the House.

3️⃣ There’s also going to be blame directed at Trump. The former president weighed in heavily on these elections, but a lot of his candidates underperformed, raising questions about how effective his brand is in purple states.

4️⃣ Florida might be the new Ohio. The state that decided the 2000 election and has been a swing state since is looking like it’s firmly in GOP hands now with wins by Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio.

5️⃣ Democrats appear to slip again with Latino voters. Despite a decent night overall, exit polls showed Democrats won about 60% of Latinos overall, down from 65% in 2020, which was already considered a decline.

6️⃣ The cross-currents of this election between abortion rights and inflation were real. Abortion rights clearly fired up voters who cast ballots for Democrats and helped stem a Republican wave. Abortion rights appear to have succeeded in the four states where they were on the ballot, including in Michigan and Kentucky.

Cont:

Well, it's the end of the day, and we still don't know if we'll have a Republican Congress, a Democratic Congress, or a split.

One thing we do know. Donald J. Trump's association with the Republican Party caused it to underperform at an epic level. While some Trump backed candidates such as J. D. Vance or Harriet Hageman owe their positions to Trumpism, others went down in defeat due to their association with him.  By and large, Trump was a liability to the party.

It'll make no difference in the GOP. While this wake-up call should finally be one, it won't be.  What may finally be is a 2024 Presidential Election defeat, something that is now all but certain if Trump runs in 2024.

Ironically, perhaps, Wyoming has gone full bore personality worship into Trump at the exact same time that the Trump brand promises irrelevance.  If the House is Democratic, Hageman will be a nullity.  If it's Republican, she'll be a near nullity.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram posed this question:

Republicans, you can follow Donald Trump into the abyss or win elections. Choose wisely

The Star Telegram is right.  A sane GOP, or rather one that had a modicum of courage, would now purge the Trumpites.  Keven McCarthy would be sent to do nothing. Hageman would be ignored.  Ted Cruz would have his batteries removed and become a depowered robot.

But it doesn't seem to be exhibiting courage in regard to Trump.  Rather, it continues to fear him, even though now the last illusion of Trumpism has been stripped away.  He has no influence with the real voters, outside of Wyoming.

Speaking of a candidate associated with Trumpism, Lauren Boebert, at the time of this posting, trails her opponent by 62 votes, showing that in fact, every vote does count.

Oregon has passed a very strict firearms purchasing bill requiring a state permit that also includes the requirement that a person pass an approved class before obtaining a permit.  While I'd be unable to say this with certainty, this would appear to be the strictest purchase statute in the US.  It will undoubtedly be tested in court, and my guess is that it will fail to past Constitutional muster.

The statute barely passed.

November 10, 2022

Wyoming's turnout in the election was the lowest since 2014.

I wondered if this might occur, due to so many races being determined in the Primary.

It looks as if control of the Senate is going to end up with the Georgia runoff, again.

The truly amazing thing is we don't know who won the House yet.  That shows how massively in error the "Republican Wave" predictions were.

Kevin McCarthy, anticipating that the GOP will get enough seats in the House to be the majority party there, has announced his bid to be Speaker of the House.  Given the massive underperformance of Republicans in the election, combined with McCarthy's hostility to some Republicans who didn't tow the "ignore what happened on January 6" line, and his cozying up post disaster to Trump, its likely he'll receive competition.

November 13, 2022

In no small part thanks to Donald Trump, the Senate will remain in Democratic hands.

And in no small part due to Donald Trump, who will control the House remains up in the air.  Trump managed to potentially buck a decades long trend and it's possible, at this point, that the Democrats may remain in control of the House after the midterm election.

The Great Wave. . . what didn't happen.

Kari Lake, MAGA candidate for Arizona Governor, appears to have lost in a tight race and is now attacking the vote counting and even asserting that people did not vote for her opponent.

November 15, 2022

Katie Hobbs beat extreme election denier Kari Lake for the position of Arizona's Governor, giving Arizona its first Democratic governor in 14 years.

Lake stated regarding the results, "Arizonans know BS when they see it" and, in spite of what she apparently meant, it would appear at least over half of them do.

November 16, 2022

And the GOP, as of tonight, has 218 seats in the House, with the Democrats at 211.  There still remains races which are not decided, but this means the GOP controls, barely, the House.

And this thread now closes.

November 24, 2022

Well, maybe not quite closes.

Lisa Murkowski retained her Senate seat in Alaska, beating a Trump backed opponent.  This seat remains in GOP hands, as it was known it would, but it followed the general tone of the election in rejecting Trumpism, contrary to the direction in Wyoming.

Mary Peltola retained her seat in the House for Alaska. Peltola is a Democrat.

Alaska, readers will recall, went to a new, more democratic, system of choosing candidates this year which operates to lessen the impact of party affiliation. Wyoming has considered adopting such a system.

Right now, with some races still not decided, the balance in the House is 213 Democrats to 220 Republicans.

December 6, 2022

The election is now over.  Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, in a special runoff election in Georgia, defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

With this, the Democrats actually gained in the Senate in an off year.

Last Prior Editions:

The 2022 Election Part XIII. Some pre election predictions.

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 2.

After the Election. The Wyoming 2022 Election Post Mortem. Part 1.