The Republican Party suffered such a major defeat on Tuesday that Ron Desantis, Governor of Florida and former GOP candidate for the Oval Office, characterized it as an "extinction level event".
He's not wrong.
Trump's reaction? He appeared at the construction site of the giant despised ballroom to sign a beam. A pathetic desperate effort to secure a legacy. Surely the nation won't rip down the "beautiful" overblown symbol of King Donald, would it?
A nation that rejected Trumpism at such epic levels will. This will come down, it will be destroyed, and the signatures, including Trump's will be melted into scrap.
When Donald Trump was nominated in 2016 I predicted here that he'd destroy the GOP. I wasn't the only one. Lindsey Graham, before he became a pathetic lackey who will always be remembered for his betrayal of the nation and his party, also did. The one thing I didn't anticipate is that it would take so long.
What happened this week was an historic rejection of fascism in the United States. The Republican Party on a nationwide level was a fascist party It's now dead. It deserved to die. Nothing of the old GOP, the conservative party of the second half of the 20th Century, remained. The party that had given the US Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft and Eisenhower, was murdered by a demented, octogenarian, profligate degenerate while self serving wimps like John Barrasso stood by and watched. The revived Democratic Party, shaking off its own Baby Boomer remnants, reemerged and has taken back over at historic levels.
There's a straight line from the now pathetic old demented man in the White House babbling about a large structure that will be destroyed and Ronald Reagan. When Reagan came up in the wake of the failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Democrats were still so strong that the thought was the only way that the GOP could resume a position in government was to court the white trash of the South, and they did so. What had been the hard right of the Democratic Party, remaining there for historic reasons, started to move to the Republican Party Dixiecrats whose primary characteristic was complete ignorance. Following them were the Rust Belt Democrats, less ignorant but upset as they couldn't, and still can't, understand how a temporary post World War Two economy based on the rest of the world's industry having been destroyed couldn't last forever. Trump, with a lifetime as a salesman and used to courting the ignorant, courted them, and they made him President, twice. In the meantime, real conservatives were driven out of office, or like Liz Cheney, driven out of public life. There was no place for them in the GOP. They left office, like Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Chris Christie remain, but on the outside, exhiles, like escaped members of the CDP during 1930s and 1940s Germany. Others, like John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, just sold their souls, with in the case of Barrasso only a dumb look on his face left to show for it.
Democrats, however, learned from their failures. Nancy Pelosi is gone. A new force has emerged.
Perhaps its best symbolized by a race in Colorado. Lauren Boebert, white trash, lost to Eileen Laubacher, a retired two-star United States Navy rear admiral. I.e., white trash lost to education.
It was about time.
That, perhaps, best symbolizes it.
Trump won in 2016 as Rust Belt Democrats, Southern Dixiecrats, and the general middle class, were sick of being ignored on issues that impacted their daily lives. Out of control immigration was a big part of that. But so was the exportation of industry overseas and diminishing opportunity here at home. Justice Anthony Kennedy's skipping through the law tossing rose petals in Obergefell contributed to the realization that American culture had become distressingly weird and immoral. They were looking for somebody to pay attention to their worries. They were looking for El Cid.
Thy got Donald Trump.
Trump was and is a huckster. Without one single personal redeeming trait, the man who was to fix the economy and bring back a mythical 1950s that never existed, and restore Protestant Morality Lite to the country was himself a rich silver spoon salesman who had failed in business multiple times and had the personal morals of an alley cat. So desperate for attention were they, that American voters chose a man who gave off every sign that he was nothing that people thought he was.
That was 2016. He was widely unpopular then and was voted out in 2020. The 2020 Democratic Party, however, suffered from the same senility the GOP still does. Joe Biden was supposed to be a caretaker and the party did nothing to see to it that a succession plan for power was created. Joe Biden's decision to run in 2024 shot the Democrats in the knees. Trump came back, but this time, he was backed by the delusional, National Conservatives, Christian Nationalist, the Evangelical far right, and flat out fascists, all of whom had their own agenda and realized they could advance it through an increasingly feeble Trump.
The first two years of Trump's administration has been flat out insane. So insane that it's been impossible for people, including members of the GOP, to ignore. The GOP rank and file began to split between real conservatives and outright fascists. Wyoming gives a good example. In the Governor's race a Republican, Eric Barlow, faced off against a Dixiecrat who claims to be a Republican, but in the Constitution Party, Becky Bextel.
But that was in Wyoming, the most Republican state in the union. Elsewhere, everyone, including Republicans, just revolved. Texas, which has been a national embarrassment for years, returned to the Democrats. Maine tossed out Susan "I'm concerned" Collins. Alaska, a heavily Republican state, appears to be going for Peltola. A conservative region of Colorado kicked out Bobo.
As DeSantis said, the GOP is extinct.
So what will the Democrats do?
They'll sure do something. They have to.
It won't do what Trump and his MAGA sycophants claim. It's not going to transgender everyone up and its not going socialize the entire economy.* It is going to be much more left leaning than the GOP, however, while not being as left leaning as some seem to fear.
For immediate tasks, the Democratic Party is going to have to take on the war and the corruption of the Trumps. It has no choice. The out of control budget and the absurd illegal expenditures on complete crap like Trump vanity projects is going to be attacked. The question now is whether the GOP remaining in Congress attempts to save itself, or engage in a Bitterender struggle.
If the wounded members of the GOP in the 119th Congress realize what's good for them, they'll abandon Trump right now. Smart Republicans still in office will take the path of Jan Smuts. They'll abandon Trump right now and start to cooperate with the Democrats wherever they can, which won't be everywhere. Those GOP members in Congress who survived to go into the 120th Congress should blaze a new path towards the Democrats right now. And plenty of them have taken this path before. Deseret Mike Lee was once an adamant opponent of Trump's for example. John Barrasso was once a moderate Republican and he can affect a dumb stare as John Thune moves to the middle just as easily as he can at John Thune as he lingers on the right.
The thing they really need to realize is that the GOP is completely dead. Conservatives need to form a new party. They can call it the Republican Party if they wish, but it'll be a new party. Frankly, the GOP's brand is now so trashed that they'd be better off forming a completely new party.
The thing they cannot do is to try a series of one last charges in the name of Dixie and Donald Trump. Some are set to try that. Democrats need to resist that at all costs and let Republicans know they do that, they'll pay for it in the 120th.
Democrats in the 120th need to get up and get moving. I've noted some of the things they need to do already. They also need to investigate certain things. They need to fully release the Epstein Files, name of the perpetrators and the victims included. The whole thing needs to come to light. They need to investigate the decision to bring the US into a war with Iran. They need to investigate the decision to invade Venezuela.
They need to do whatever they can to to end the war against Iran. We need to end the murder of people in cigarette boats off of South and Central America. People responsible for these illegal acts need to be exposed.
Funding for Trump vanity projects needs to end. The Democrats need to use the power of the purse like a sword. Don't fund what people don't want funded, wars most of all.
Pete Hegseth needs to be impeached. Marco Rubio needs to be impeached. Todd Blanche needs to be impeached.
Not one Trump appointment going forward should be approved. Not one cabinet officer. Not one janitor. Approval of military commissions should simply cease.
In the next two years, one or more Supreme Court justice will die. Those spots should be left open.
If the votes are there, and they may be as Republicans move to save themselves, Donald Trump needs to be impeached.
And none of this can move at the speed of Baby Boomers.
Footnotes
*To my utter amazement, a well educated far right individual I know, who unfortunately is deep in the Trump Kool Aid, is now convinced the Democrats are going to do just that.
That's just stupid.
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