2026 Election Post Mortem, Part 2. The Sargasso Sea for Wyoming.

On the same day that I posted the first edition of this post election thread, I posted this:

Tuesday, November 5, 1946. 1946 Midterm Election.

So, you might say?

Well, it's interesting in how history rhymes.  

In 1946 the United States overwhelmingly turned towards the GOP after years of Democratic governance.  The Depression was over, the Second World War was over, and the country was heading in a new direction politically. . . except Wyoming wasn't.

Dyed in the wool Republicans who like to scream that somebody they don't like is "a Democrat!" would be surprised to know that in 1945/46/47 Wyoming's Congressional representation was 2/3s Democratic and the Governor was a Democrat.

Oh my.

But it was.  

In the 46 election, when the nation rejected the Democrats and brought the GOP back into power, Wyomingites did nothing of the same.  They re elected all the major Democrats on the ballot.

It is, apparently, a Wyoming thing.

Chuck Gray gets his wish from the voters.

And so, in 2026, when we had two lousy candidates for Congress, one trying to move from the House to the Senate, and one trying to be a real boy, even if he has a nasty public disposition, is a liar, and a carpetbagger.

Why did we do that?

Well, they were both Republicans and one, Harriet Hageman, was a sort of kind of incumbent.  Indeed, they both were.

Hageman is an enemy of public lands who basically told Wyomingites who weren't in favor of disposing of public lands on some scale were stupid.  Wyomingites hate this.  And yet we elected her anyhow.  She's a far right wing anti public lands lawyer who claims to have had a career taking on what she now is, the Federal Government.

We know very little about Gray.  He's a Californian child who had a job in his daddy's radio station after university in Pennsylvania and then became a legislator, by appointment, as at the time local committee people liked his right wing screeds against the government.  He built on that and advanced with a carpet of lies to Secretary of STate, where he was campaigning for his next move ever since.  That's all public.

Most people don't know anything else about him.  He isn't married, and the only time he's ever been seen with women of his same approximate age is when he started showing up at US football games. Does he have friends, other than his campaign manager? There don't seem to be a lot of testimonials for him, unlike people who will say "I know Barlow", etc. There's no big family to be photographed with like Bextel. 

His campaign manager is the exception.  He claims Gray is one of his best friends, and that's probably true.  He even claims that Gray is one of the few friends he's managed to keep since entering college, and having met him, I'd believe that too.  In my experience, which is limited, he's arrogant. He's also  a Charlie Kirk fan, also unmarried (he's quite young), and is known to have frequented Francoist websites, which caused him to get canned by Harriet Hageman.  

He's no doubt angling for a political career himself, and now that he's successfully shepherded Gray around nearly universal dislike of Gray, he's well on his way to that. . . or a life of complete and utter irrlevancy.

In the primaries a major movement existed against Chuck, and while it carried on into the general, most people dutifully lined up and voted for him as the opponent was a Democrat.

Now, having said that, the opponent, Lisa Kinney, virtually signifies what's happened to the Democratic Party in Wyoming.  She was a pathetic candidate, and old.  Not a good choice.  Byrd, who ran against Hageman, was no spring chicken, but was a pretty good candidate.

So, we're packing them off to D.C., from which they'll ultimately never return, having dusted off their sandals or Lucchese's.  

Both will be entering a Democratic controlled Congress.  Hageman is already talking tough, but going into Congress she'll get committee assignments from Democrats. And she'll be a freshman Senator.  Chuck will be brand new, and also be getting assignments from Democrats.

So, both will end up being assigned to something like cleaning the men's room. That's about it.

At least they won't be harmful to the state, anyhow.

Be that as it may, voting the way it did, Wyoming no longer has any voice in D.C. whatsoever.  Hageman will be free to talk tough, like she likes to do.  Chuck will be free to sound like a pig at the Boucherie. John Barrasso will wonder around with his now patented dumb looking stare, perhaps being the Senate minority whip, although I doubt it.  The incoming GOP is going to look at Thune and Barrasso and blame them for what occurred, in part.  And they'll deserve it.

Good job Wyoming.

Well, Wyomingites like to complain about the Federal Government.  Now we'll have reason to do so. Changes will becoming in the 120th, and if not htat, in 2028.

On Gray and Hageman, one final thing, maybe, to note.

Democratic Congressman from Montana, Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper.  By Conorhogan16 - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=194696290

Our neighbor to the North, Montana, is sending a Democratic smoke jumper to Congress, whereas we're sending a man who couldn't even muster up the traditional photo on a horse propaganda.  Alaska is sending a woman who was a commercial fisherman to the Senate whereas we're sending a woman who just likes to sound like an old harpie.  The darling of the far right in the election, Becky Bextel, spent he first part of her campaign bragging about the size of her presumably imaginary testicals.

Alaska Senator, Mary Peltola.

Geez louise, we've become a bunch of candy ass wimps.

Probably not in the 120th in 2027, but rather starting in 2029, Federal leasing for oil and gas will really start to be curtailed in a major way. That had started in the Biden Administration, but it's going to really take off in in 2029.  2027 and 2028 are going to be the Twilight of the Oil and Gas Industry.  It was coming sooner or later. Coal will be as done as dinner. That was inevitable as well.  Neither will go away immediately, but the carpetbaggers dream of Wyoming, where the young are all truck drivers and oil and gas workers is coming to an end, rapidly.

The shift will be monumental for Wyoming.

It'll be good for public lands in a major way.  The GOP was starting to become land rapine.  It still is.  We have two years of that to endure, but that will start to reverse in 2029.

An open question is whether Gray wills survive a Republican challenge in 2028.  He's widely detested already. Had the Democrats gotten their act together and not nominated somebody a bit flakey who came out on the Oregon Trail, he may have lost (it's a shame that Lynette Gray Bull chose not to run).  Gray will not have achieved anything but spouting lies for two years by 2028.

There's also major news, of an odd sort, from the Governor's race.

Local races in Wyoming went much better than the Congressional one did.  In the primaries the decamped armies of Nathan Bedford Forrest were sent packing in a major Wyoming Freedom Caucus defeat.  Only Bill Allemand inexplicably remains.  That actually fits into the national pattern with a return to rationality.

Eric Barlow won the Governor's office, but in doing so one of the Confederate acolytes crossed into the Constitution Party, Becky Bextel.  Loud in claims that everyone who isn't with her is a Democrat, and with plans that amount to no plan at all other than to be obstructionist, she went down in inevitable defeat, but took enough ignoramuses with her to get the Constitution Party on the ballot in 2028 as a major party

Now they're nervous:

Constitution Party Happy Bextel Made It A Major Party, But Says It's Not Freedom Caucus

Oh, contraire, mon frère.  

If the Republicans' learned anything locally this election, and their committees probably didn't, parties are made up of the people who register to vote in the polls.  Wyoming Republicans turned out not to be a bunch of Confederate saps.  The saps, mad, moved over to the Constitution Party.  Some of the saps in county organizations, outright bolted to Bextel, while not surrendering their places.  Like it or not, the Constitution Party, which was already right wing, is now the United Confederate Veterans.  

They'll take the Constitution Party down, just as they did the WFC members of the legislature.  All of that is a good thing.  It removes the Partisan Ranger stain from the GOP.

The Libertarians, like the Democrats, really underperformed this election.  If they couldn't make it to 10% in a major election in 2026, they have no hope of doing os in any election. They ought to just disband.

The 2027 Legislature, a full session, is going to be a mess. The WFC perpetually loaded up sessions with scary bills and will try to do so again, as the new legislature does not come into existence until January. By the time the legislature convenes we'll be seeing bills like "a bill to change Wyoming's name to Trumpistan", and "a bill to make school children bathe in crude oil".  Lots of stuff will fail off the bat, but there really won't be much time to take on anything substantive. 

The next two years are going to be rough for Wyoming.  The 2027 Legislature is going to have to overcome the Cornfederate bittereinder remnant that's in office until January, which means the 2027 session may be a bit of a wreck.  They have a lot to do, as the far right was wrecking things to start with.  In Congress, we're now completely decapitated, which was perhaps predictable but now that we've sent to people who like to scream and another whose perfected the blank stare, we might as well have them stay home.  Barrasso can stare at people here, and the budding crop of new charter schools with far right leanings would give Gray an audience to yell at.  Hageman can rediscover her agricultural roots.

Another view:

Rod Miller: Autopsy Report — The Wyoming Republican Party

A final note.  Just as Wyomingites can be really pleased with their legislative picks, and their picks for the top state offices, all contrary pretty much to the wishes of the Francoist controlling the GOP locally, we can also be very glad that Proposition 1 failed.  It would have wrecked the funding for local governments and have been a disaster.

Related Threads:

The 2026 Election. 28th Edition. The Count (before the coup).

Labels: 120th Congress, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, 2026 Trump Coup, Chuck Gray, Constitution Party, Democratic Party, Eric Barlow, Harriet Hageman, James Byrd, Libertarian, Lisa Kinney, Republican Party, Shaun Johnson

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, American Solidarity Party, Amy Klobuchar, Cathy Holscher, Commentary, Donald Trump, Georgia, Guam, J. D. Vance, John Barrasso, mehr Mensch sein, Mental Health, The Madness of King Donald, Wyoming

Last edition:

2026 Election Post Mortem, Part I. What happened and what happens next.

Labels: 119th Congress, 120th Congress, 2020s, 2026 Election, 2026 Election Post Mortem, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Fascism, Politics, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, The Second Trump Administration

Labels:

2026 Election Post Mortem, Part 2. The Sargasso Sea for Wyoming, more labels.

 

THE CASE FOR IMPEACHMENT: A series of essays illuminating how Donald Trump — an out-of-control president focused on his own profiteering while ignoring and trampling the rule of law — is a clear and present danger to the republic.

 

THE CASE FOR IMPEACHMENT

A series of essays illuminating how Donald Trump — an out-of-control president focused on his own profiteering while ignoring and trampling the rule of law — is a clear and present danger to the republic.

On starting a 37th Year I will not finish.

I was admitted to practice 36 years ago today.

Back when the Rocky Mountain News was still a thing, they used to run columns by Charley Reese.  I didn't always agree with them by any means, Reese was a dyed in wool Confederate Gray Southerner, but they were often quite interesting.  I can recall his final column when he noted he was going to retire.  On the timing he said something like "when you know, you know".

I'm at that point.

My wife, however, definitely isn't at that point for me, an ongoing source of conflict.

In Wyoming, and maybe in most places, lawyers are admitted to the bar in August for the most part. A second, smaller crops, is admitted in March or so.  I was admitted in August, 36 years ago.

Back in September 2025 I started a thread about having passed the 35 year mark but never published it.  I was angry about something at the time, pretty clearly, and it was a very bitter posts.  I thought better of it and didn't post it, but I didn't wipe it out until recently.  I reread it and then did so, even though much of what I wrote in it is still true.

All careers are individual, of course which is what makes career advice so dangerous.  I've known people, for instance, who served in the military and absolutely hated it.  The entire film M*A*S*H and the television series is, in no small part, based on a hatred of military service, although the book's author, a conservative, ironically did not hate his. The same is true, for what it's worth, of Catch 22.  Heller actually admired the military he lampooned.  Both books were hugely successful, however, as they not only tapped into the oddities of military life, but also into a hatred of it in some quarters.

In contrast, I've known people who loved it, and I myself liked it.

I note that as I suppose that the law is the same way, maybe all careers are.

That aside, the law is unique and is well known for being so.

The law has an alcoholism and alcohol abuse rate that's far higher than other professions.  That isn't the only abusive trait in it, however.  It's estimated that something like 60% of lawyers have had in the office sexual infidelities and while I haven't tried to add up percentages, and that percentage seems high, there are indeed a lot of them.  The law also has some really screwball personalities in it, although I'm at the point where I now wonder if those personalities became that way due to the law, or entered the law because of it.  In my current Gen. Jones stage of life, I'm amazed by the number of burnt out husks of people who won't retire from the law as that's all they have.

I'm not the only one who's noticed that, and a recent conversation is part of what brought me back to this thread.  In speaking to an opposing lawyer I've known a long time by phone, on a holiday, he brought up the very things I've noted, this included.  Indeed, he noted that for a lot of people, they'd become lawyers, that's what they now were as part of their personality. That's all that's left.

That should never happen, but the law is an all consuming job.

He was actually a bit angry about it.  I'm not angry, but I don't want to become one of those people.  My friend noted that what he "is", is a hunter and mountain climber.  What he "does" is be a lawyer.  That's pretty much true for me as well, although I'd substitute outdoorsmen for climber.

He also had the observation that after working years at the law, late nights, early days, weekends, that he and his wife did things together rarely.  The pressure of work brought that about.  That's pretty much the same story in my own life.  Another lawyer I know just had his wife of about 30 years just up and leave him, leaving him wondering why.  It seems a "therapist" suggested that, and frankly I have a dim view of most therapist or counsellors, but what I suspect is that the same thing was at work.  That fellow had told me not all that long, before the disaster came, that he was never going to retire, because he enjoyed the fellowship of the lawyers.

Well, nothing that we do at work is something "enjoyed" by our spouses, except for perhaps the money.  If the lawyer is really one of those ones who enjoys the courtroom combat, or the intellectual challenge, the spouses don't participate in that at all.

Money can matter, however.  Yet another lawyer I know, about my same age, is trying to retire but is upset as his wife just can't grasp that the funding burn rate has to stop.  I think a lot of lawyers who keep on keeping on face that with a family member or perhaps themselves. From the outside, you know they'd be fine.  But to them, or a loved one, the fear of no further income will just drive them into the grave, working.  Fears of that type, and not my own, have kept me working for the past four years.

The law is not only an all consuming occupation, it's one that's soul destroying.  Many "plaintiffs' lawyers" have really lost their humanity.  Not all by any means, but quite a few. They really don't care about the people they represent in many instances.  It's one of the thing that makes practicing law so dispiriting and damaging to your own soul.  Most of the propaganda that lawyers and law firms of a certain type being there to help people is pure crap.  They don't mean it, and everyone inside the law knows that.  Simply practicing law, at some point, or perhaps more accurately being in litigation, is participating on a fraud on the public.

I'm told I'm really good at the law.  If that's true it's proof you can be good at something that you really don't love.  I'm beyond the point of not loving it anymore.

I entered the profession for the same reasons a lot of people do.  My earlier career had not worked out and I didn't seem to have any other place to go.  I had started off obtaining a very difficult science degree only to graduate into an economy where I was unemployable.  This is, I'd note, more common than a person might suppose.  There was no family business to step into.  What I really wanted to do, and still do, wasn't open to me.  Even at that, I hesitated and I chose not to enter the law school class I was admitted into.  I waited a year hoping to find work, and didn't.  Soldiering was the work that year.  I guess I could have chosen to make that a career, and in some ways I"m surprised I didn't.

The last year of my undergraduate degree I tried switch to a different field:

The road not taken.

Sigh. . . 

I'd be offered a summer position with them, but not until years later, at which point I was already practicing law and engaged.  I've posted on that before.

If 'd had my druthers, which hardly anyone does, I would have have been a rancher.  I have been around agriculture which is to say that I would have ranched full time.  I came close it without really realizing it after law school right as my father was looking at retiring.  We came close to the two of us starting a place, and then he died.  I abandoned that particular effort in order to help my mother, who had no such interest.  Laster I found she was baffled why I hadn't let her know.

My wife and I have always had cattle, but it's never been a full time thing.  Sometimes it's promised to almost be that, but it never has.  Now I'm 63 and time has moved on.  It's something I'll never recover from.  It was one of the goals that kept me at my desk job, and now the goal can't be met.  

Time and effort wasted.

There are some things that are quite scary about time moving on, I'll note.  Fear of death is not one of them.  I constantly hear that people are supposed to be afraid of death, but I've lived pretty close to death my entire life and I'm not.  If death arrives before my plans play out, well, so be it.  Nobody knows the day nor the hour.  Momento mori.

But what has moved on is the opportunity to complete a bunch of things I used to do and be engaged in before I started practicing law.  That must show something about my own character, as other lawyers take long vacations and the like, but I don't really seem capable of devoting time to vocations and avocations.  I'll leave it to the reader to decide which is which.  The interest in those pursuits remains, however.

Gone is interest in the law itself.  I'm not interested nor fascinated in it.  I never loved it in the first place, but I have had over the years a reputation as being a legal scholar.  I still get calls from various lawyers about legal situations which are rare or difficult. The difference is that I no longer find them interesting at all.

At one time, seeing as I was a lawyer, I really wanted to be a judge, which is a position for legal scholars, and I've applied within our system a bunch of times, and been encouraged to do so by judges.  Now I'm too old, as mandatory retirement is at age 70 and the committee isn't going to appoint somebody at age 63 for a single term.  Or I suppose not. To my surprise, they recently almost in fact did that in a district in which very few people were applying for the position. The past two Governors and the Judicial Nominating Committee have pretty much wrecked the process for successful lawyers, so applications are way down.

Indeed, one of my frustrations with the practice of law has been watching the decline of the judicial nominating system, which has grown much more political over the last few decades. When I started out you could really see why various judges got appointed to their positions.  When Matt Mead became Governor, however, he had an agenda of appointing women and that's what he was going to do.  That was a politically motivated bias and it meant if there was a man up for the same position, he wasn't getting it.

Governor Gordon has had a very strong bias towards prosecutors, although there are some exceptions. 

The oncoming Governor, Barlow, will be interesting to watch in this regard.  He's a professional himself (veterinarian) and perhaps he'll take a more informed and balanced view.

Anyhow, after 36 years of this, it's time to move on, so I'm moving on.  I'll complete this year, but I'm not starting another one.

Indeed, on the topic, I'm capable of reading the signs.  The American dream is that you live to age 100 and die in your sleep.  You probably aren't going to.  

Over the last couple of years I've watched some of the lawyers who are older than me decline pretty seriously in some ways.  And I'm declining too.  I had colon surgery out of the blue, something that probably could have been averted if I'd had regular colon checkups like you are supposed to.  Going through that process I ended up having an odd thing on my thyroid discovered.  Half my thyroid ended up coming out, although I probably could have avoided that if I was willing to risk it being nothing, which didn't seem to be a solid risk at the time.  Now I have to take pills every day for the first time in my life.

A year ago the eye doctor noted something peculiar in my eye.  Last week, on my follow up exam, it was clear it was a tiny cataract  It's not a problem yet, but it probably will be in "ten years".  I'm young for a cataract, but it's due to an injury.  

I've endured a lot of injuries over the years.

I'm considerably more tired than I used to be, and my physical stamina, still pretty good, has declined.  I could probably address this as people ought to at my age by exercise, but my schedule is incredibly burdened.  

I don't handle stress anywhere near as good as I used to, however, and stress is a killer.

So, in four months, I'm done.

The big challenge now is letting everyone know, and getting my wife to accept it.  That part isn't going to be easy at all.  

It's not going to be easy as at least my long suffering spouse doesn't want to believe I'm at this point.  I've been mentioning it, but when retirement comes up, it's always "you can't".  Retirement is, she suggests, a year further in the future than I imagine it.

A year isn't much, but it's a year.  I hear all the time that somebody retired and then died, as if retirement killed them.  Really, they just hang on too long.

And again, that hanging on is a funny thing.  I've watched one lawyer who has no family (divorced) and who has no faith keep on going to work.  I guess it's his identify . I mentioned retiring to him once and he scoffed, saying "good luck".  Of course, I don't have to pay alimony and I don't take expensive trips.

I've also watched a couple of very ill lawyers hang on after their illness set in. It provided a distraction I guess.  Indeed, on the very odd occasion I mention this to anyone people always suggest a law job I could take in retirement, which isn't what I have in mind at all.

In contrast, one lawyer who experienced a health care scare recently, one year younger than me told me that next year was definitely the date.  When I expressed doubt, the reply was "watch me".

What you are supposed to say, like Edith Piaf, is that you have no regrets about your career as a lawyer.

I can't say that.

I probably should feel that way.  Just yesterday, once again, thinking over the past 36 years I came to the conclusion that with the box I was in, I did the only thing I could do.  True or not, and it's probably true, hindsight being 20/20, I'd have avoided the law like the plague if I'd known what it was like.  As noted above, I'm sure there are people who look back and say they loved every second of it.

I'm not one of them.

To compound  things, I've been in litigation the entire time.  That was a mistake, as I'm not well suited for it internally.  I'm an introvert and I don't like being in extroverted situations.  I just couldn't find a way out of it.

Well, anyhow, page one of the concluding chapter.

So now, I have to start informing people.  This isn't going to be fun at all, but knowing myself, if I don't, it won't become real.

I've never liked doing trials.  Some lawyers claim to love them, and I suppose they do. There's something in their personalities, a defect really, which requires them to test their wits against other people.  Most lawyers don't like doing them, and most of the lawyers who say they do, are lying.

Like baseball players before a game, most lawyers have some sort of ritual before they try a case.  At one time, as late as the early 90s, that ritual for quite a few involved heavy drinking.  I don't think that's the case so much anymore.  Frankly, while conservatives are all worked up about it in some quarters, I think that's one of the things that the massive introduction of women into the law changed, and for the better.

When I get close to trials, I usually rewatch The Wild Bunch.  I know that's odd, but I love that movie and I find it very engaging.  Part of the reason that I watch it in this context is that the protagonists in the move are basically all mercenaries of a sort.  Yes, I know that they're criminals, but still.  And there's not one redeeming person in their whole contest.

Everyone who likes movies is familiar with the famous concluding gunbattle of the movie.  But that's not the last scene.  Former gang member turned bounty hunter Deke Thornton is waiting outside the town gate as evening arrives, having sent the dead bodies of the gang back with the other bounty hunters.  Elderly gang member Skyes rides up with Mexican Indians and  the following exchange occurs.

Sykes: I didn't expect to find you here.

Deke Thornton: Why not? I sent them back. That's all I said I'd do.

Sykes: They didn't get very far.

Deke Thornton: I figured.

Sykes: What are your plans, now?

Deke Thornton: Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.

Sykes: Well, me and the boys got some work to do. You want to come with us? It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.

That's how I feel about things.  I intend to hunt, fish, work cattle, write and put in a garden.

But even if I only do a faction of that stuff, it'll be okay.

It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.

The 2026 Election, 15th Edition. Trump will attempt to steal the election.

Trump fired the last three members of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials.

Donald Trump does not want to go to jail.

When the Democrats resume Congressional power in January, 2027, Trump's effectiveness as a President will be over. Frankly, he's not terribly effective right now.  He is terribly disruptive.

But the chances of his going to prison will climb enormously.  He stands a serious risk of being impeached and tossed out, to be followed by being sent to prison.

Bare minimum, his endless vanity projects will be done for, as will most of his power.

Trump will do whatever is necessary to avoid the outcome of the 2027 election.  It's going to be severely bad.

And I'll give him about a 60% chances of pulling it off, aided by people like John Barrasso, Harriet Hageman, and Chuck Gray.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 14th Edition. The “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" edition.

Labels: 120th Congress, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Alaska, Chuck Gray, Colorado, Distributism, Enemies of Public Lands, Graham Platner, Lisa Engebretsen, The 2021 Insurrection, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, You heard it here first

Republicans. You have reached July 20, 1944. You can either act with the insurgents and save your party (maybe) or go down in the bunker and destroy it for a generation, or more.

And your ongoing support of Donald Trump may have guaranteed that result already.

There were plenty of signs that the Germans were going to lose World War Two well before Hitler put a PPK to his head and blew his diseased brains out.  Conservative Germans knew that.  Some tried to act, with the last major act being the July 20, 1944 plot which nearly ended the Nazi regime.

And no, we aren't advocating that in this thread.  We're advocating the use of the 25th Amendment.

The fact of the matter is that by July 20, 1944, it was too late to save Germany form complete defeat.  It wasn't too late, however, to rescue German conservatism.  Even as it was, the first post war West German governments were conservative.

The Republican Party is not Donald Trump's party.  Just like German conservatives of the 1920s and 1930s, real conservatives made a terrible bargain with radical German populists as they were obsessed with what they thought was German decline, looked back on a mythical German past, and listened to the words of a radical and heard what they wanted to hear.  They then followed along with evil thinking, most likely, that it wouldn't last forever, and at least the Nazis were addressing the Communists.

That's basically what the Republicans did.

Donald Trump spent most of his life registered as a Democrat, but at the end of they day, Trump's political party is Donald Trump.  Unlike Hitler, Trump isn't a very smart man.  He's a semi good salesman who mostly sells what people want to hear, and Donald Trump.  He tapped into Rust Belt, Southern, rural and conservative discontent and sold it all as a movement.  Truth be known, people's interest in that movement was fairly personal.  People were worried about high immigration rates and wanted something done, but they weren't really for violence in the streets.  And in their minds, an illegal immigrant was a guy working a construction job they couldn't get, not Maria who has been doing their shirts at the cleaners, or Jose who takes care of the sprinkler system.  But, just like the German conservatives, once you have blood on your hands its hard not to have a lot more.

Indeed, it's hard not to have a lot more even if you have to endorse outright hypocrisy.  Some were worried about social sexual issues, including gay marriage and transgenderism, both of which are in fact legitimate concerns.  The dear leader is so worried about that such that he has Scott Bessant, a married homosexual who will support any dumb thing Trump says, in his cabinet and who has had his family photographed with Bruce Jenner post "transition".  Some were worried about what they perceived as an irreligious drift in the country to such an extent they've made Trump into a near demigod even though he has no demonstrable attachment to Christianity at all.  Some were worried about endless foreign wars and are now endorsing endless foreign wars.

Most people have absolutely had enough, however.

To add to it, Trump is increasingly erratic.  Signs of dementia were clearly there in his first term, but now he's rocketing into insanity.  He babbles absolute nonsense in the middle of the night with childish tweets that no sane adult would tolerate.  If he was a member of your family you'd be seeking to have him committed.

The end result of this is completely clear.  If Trump is still in office in November, the Republican Party will be destroyed.  Not just defeated, but absolutely destroyed.  The GOP will not regain power nationally in any serious way for a generation, assuming it simply doesn't dissolve.  Local MAGA expressions, even in deeply Republican states will be put in the trash bin.  Politicians who were loyal to Trump, like Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham, J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Chuck Gray, Megan Degenfelder, and a host of others (including John Barrasso) will find their political careers over, even if they are still in office.  Some, such as Graham, Gray and Vance, will be regarded as absolute jokes.

The only way to avoid this, and it might not be avoidable at this point, is for the 25th Amendment, or his obviously bad health, to remove Trump by November.  At this point there's a fairly good reason that Trump's dementia is advancing so rapidly, and his health declining so quickly, that Trump will expire of natural causes any day now.  He's not well.  If death arrives him and takes him to his final reward it would spare people like Vance, Rubio and Barrasso from having to have a spine.  Assuming it does not, only the 25th Amendment stands a chance of saving the Republican Party.

The 25th Amendment option has to be invoked very soon if there's any chance of saving the GOP. And by soon, I mean this month.  Early voting is already starting for primaries.  Voters everywhere are trashing the GOP.  Virginia has been flipped to the GOP in a way that the Republicans cannot recover from for a generation.  Every single day that goes by makes the extinction of the Republican Party that much more inevitable.

Political parties do not last forever.  The GOP is not likely to survive Trump, and if it does, it'll be a minority party the way it was after 1932, standing for. . . well pretty much nothing but a sort of milk toast conservatism.  If it boots Trump now, it stands a chance of reforming itself sufficiently before November that the looming disaster can just be a bad one, rather than a catastrophic one.

Of course, booting the demented would be dictator requires courage, something most of them lack.  Most of them fear MAGA.  But a breach with MAGA, which has nowhere else to go.  It took Soviet tanks in Berlin to free German conservatives from the Nazis.  The Republicans will be freed from MAGA, but at what cost?

If nothing is done, by January 2027, it'll be way too late.  Like Red Army policemen directing the traffic in Berlin, the Democratic Party will be directing the social and legislative traffic of the country.  That might be what's going to happen definitively anyway.  I do not see the Republicans being able to salvage their immediate electoral fortunes.  The absolute stench of Donald Trump and his betrayal of democracy sticks to them too much.  But at a bare minimum, the GOP can avoid the discredit of the metaphorical fighting in the streets of Berlin, which will occur in November through January as Trump and his fanatic backers maintain they didn't loose and they aren't going to recognize the results.  That will occur.

And if that' occurs, a pox on the GOP in general . That's what most Americans will think as well.  

And perhaps its necessary.  The party of Lincoln sold its soul and became the party of Orange Mussolini.  An entity like that needs to be purged to its core, with the Lees, Tubervilles, Millers and all relegated to the political dustbin and recalled in our memories the same way that Trump will be, an embarrassing disaster.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 7th Edition, Do not stand with those who promote the sins that cry out to Heaven.

Labels: 2026 Election, American Solidarity Party, Blog Mirror, Christian Democrats, Christianity, Chuck Gray, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Effect, J. D. Vance, Megan Degenfelder, Pope Leo XIII, Predictions, religion, Utah, War

The 25th Amendment Watch List. A Fourteenth and Special edition. Attacking the Catholic Church.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Christianity, Chuck Gray, Donald Trump, Megan Degenfelder, Mental Health, Pope Leo XIV, religion, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration