The GOP has once again managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, squandering their biggest opportunity in years, and perhaps last opportunity, to advance Conservative principles and restore limited government. Assuming they ever intended to do so in the first place. (Newsflash: They didn't.)
The GOP spin machine is in full damage control mode, portraying the loss of the House as no big deal, in order to keep its constituency of lemmings enthralled to an administration and party that has once again proven a spectacle of dawdling ineptitude. The statements I'm currently seeing from Trump/GOP officials and supporters range from unrealistically optimistic to outright delusional and psychotic. Perhaps nowhere more conspicuously on display than Trump's own statement in regard to the outcome of last night's elections.
On what planet is losing the House a "success?" This statement conveys a lot about Trump and the GOP, like how party interest transcends all other things, for example.
• GOP partisans would rather cling to and dispense blatantly false narratives than give the opposition the satisfaction of admitting defeat. No one mentally tethered to reality thinks this election result was a "victory" for Republicans. This is a huge problem with both major parties. They loathe each other so much, they prefer withdrawing into fantasies of their own making, to concession. What hope is there of reasoning with such people?
• It exhibits the culture of diminutive expectations that pervades the GOP. They're consistently content with getting only a portion or even a fraction of what they want, and the GOP delivering only a portion or fraction of what it pledged.
• It vindicates my now long standing claim, that Republicans consistently believe they're winning when they're really losing, and can no longer reliably tell the difference between one and the other. Losing less than you could have isn't winning; it's still losing.
Donald Trump and the GOP scored a victory last night, in the same manner that LSU scored a victory against Alabama, by holding Alabama to 29 points instead of 50. (That's an analogy. LSU lost.)
Allow me to explain something to you folks. Something you're not going to to hear from Trump and the GOP leadership, either because they can't, or won't admit it. The Trump agenda is now effectively dead in the water. Do you understand that? If Trump couldn't get Obamacare repealed, Planned Parenthood defunded, and the wall built in two years with control of both the House and Senate, he's sure as hell not going to get those things done now. And if you doubt that for a moment, allow me to reacquaint you with reality.
"'It's about stopping the GOP and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell's assault on Medicare and Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the health care of 130 million Americans living with pre-existing medical conditions,' she said."Not that this would matter much to Trump. Trump's a Socialist and never intended to abolish nationalized health care anyway. He praised it repeatedly during his campaign.
The Trump agenda has effectively been castrated. (Though it never had much vigor in the first place.) The myopic GOP has wrought the fruit of its complacency. The GOP spent the last two years doing little more than having a self-congratulatory orgy or sorts, in which they reveled in winning the presidential election nigh interminably, and conducted themselves as though they would be in power forever. And now they've experienced one of the first in what will certainly be a series of ego deflating reintroductions to reality.
Trump supporters repeatedly scoffed and made excuses when I pointed out the lethargy of the newly elected President Trump and GOP in delivering on their pledges. It's only been six months they said. He needs more time. It's only been a year they said. He needs more time. This excuse persisted all the way up to last night. And now none of those pledges are likely ever going to materialize. And they're not going to materialize, because the Republicans had two years to get them done, but thought they had a thousand. So the GOP spent the last two years assiduously patting themselves on the back, and enjoying power, instead of actually wielding it judiciously. They spent the last two years rubbing their presidential victory in the faces of Democrats, and resting on their political laurels, operating under the utterly preposterous belief that the Democrats were vanquished and they'd secured through Trump some sort of perennial victory. While conversely the Democrats, as they always do, conspired and worked around the clock to advance their agenda.
In much the same fashion the GOP and Trump shills were predicting a Trump landslide victory in the presidential election. But unlike GOP loyalists I'm a pragmatist. I knew that wouldn't happen.
"Anyone who thinks Trump is going to win in some blowout, Reagan-esque landslide, is simply deluded. Trump never had that kind of appeal or support, is a profoundly divisive candidate, and has the highest unfavorable ratings of any candidate." - Me, April 1st, 2016.I was right. They were wrong. Trump didn't even win the popular vote. But upon Trump winning, they immediately commenced to deluding themselves yet again, by claiming the Democratic party was "imploding," losing support among the people, and a litany of other ways of basically saying the Democrat party was irrevocably damaged and/or dying. And as we saw last night that clearly wasn't the case. I never believed that for a second, and I rebuked it from the outset. And once again I was right, and they were wrong. And then this started.
This kind of sentiment, this dismissal of the very notion the Democrats could be a threat, was being regurgitated throughout GOP circles for months. On October 29, 2018, Peter Van Buren of The American Conservative posted an article entitled "There Will Be No Blue Wave," in which he states.
"There will not be a Blue Wave. The Democrats’ goal in the Senate has diminished to limiting losses, not gaining seats, and they are unlikely to take control of the House."Meanwhile, last night here in reality, the Democrats went from a deficit of 42 to a surplus of 26 in the House. And now it seems Republicans, who implied it wouldn't happen at all, have now shifted to trying to convince their base it's completely inconsequential instead. We didn't really lose, and even if we did, it doesn't matter seems to be the new partisan spiel. Worse, some of them are still claiming as they did during Trump's presidential campaign and the first two years of his presidency, against all logic and sanity, that this was actually a good thing and the product of some strategic masterstroke by a president whose genius cannot be quantified.
As I said all along from the earliest days of Trump's presidency, as long as his supporters can claim the economy is better under Trump than it was under Obama, they will declare his presidency a resounding success even if he fulfills no other campaign pledges whatsoever, and even if he's not personally responsible for the economy. (Which presidents, not being legislators, should not be.) And as expected I was right once again.
This has been a staple of leftist Republican rhetoric for years. By making the economy a monolith and emphasizing it to the exclusion of all other things, they consistently manipulate the egregiously stupid Republican base into forgetting that any other issues matter, or even exist. (Romney did the same thing during his campaign, pledging to focus on the economy and job creation, and neglect social and moral issues.) As such the economy is all Trump supporters talk about, because if they acknowledged anything else they'd be forced to admit the abject lack of progress being made, and policies that are even outright contrary to Conservative interests occurring under the Trump administration. So any time you bring up another issue, like Socialized medicine, Planned Parenthood, unconstitutional warfare, unconstitutional gun legislation, etc., they immediately seek to redirect the conversation back onto the economy. If we pretend the economy is all that matters or exists, then we can continue living in denial, and pretending that Trump is a political messiah who deserved our vote.
I felt strongly the GOP would not retain control of both the House and Senate, based upon their demeanor over the last two years alone. But rather than admitting defeat, the GOP continues in denial by claiming that there wasn't really a "blue wave," because the Democrats didn't win as many seats as they thought they would. Again, that's kind of like claiming Alabama's victory over LSU wasn't a victory, because Alabama didn't get as many points as Alabama fans thought they would. The fact is the Democrats didn't need to gain commanding majorities in both the House and Senate to stymie Trump and the GOP. Hell, they've been doing that with incredible efficacy thanks to the GOP's spinelessness and ineptitude, without a majority in either. The fact is the Democrats gained power and the Republicans lost power. The fact is the GOP is worse off than it was the day before, and it's not just a little worse off, it's a disaster for anyone who actually expected Trump to deliver on key campaign pledges.
The repealing of Obamacare, defunding of Planned Parenthood, and funding of a wall on the border all require Congress to reify. (That is unless Republicans expect Trump to operate unilaterally. You know, like a dictator, which many of them plainly do.) And the GOP no longer controls Congress. Even the economic policies, and things like tax cuts that Trump/GOP supporters so love to cite as proof he's a success, are now in jeopardy as a result of last night's elections. And instead of any acknowledgement of that from Trump and the GOP whatsoever, all I'm seeing is more delusion, denial, and references to retaining control over judicial nominations through the Senate. In what is a flagrant effort on the part of the GOP leadership, to prevent its base from realizing that this was a decisive victory for the Democrats, and that the GOP leadership has failed them by twiddling their thumbs for two solid years. GOP power has been significantly diminished. Democrats in Congress are already stating they plan to open investigations into what they consider Trump's malfeasance. And I have little faith in the fumbling keystone cops of the GOP, acting as if they've still got everything under control, to handle that with any sagacity. Nor am I, like the lemmings of the GOP, so facile as to believe a party that couldn't get things done with two representative bodies at their disposal, will get those things done with only one.
The GOP had two years to reduce spending, make government smaller, and reverse the leftist agenda. And they did nothing on those fronts. Nothing. Quite to the contrary the Trump GOP passed the biggest spending bill in American history and imposed more gun control unconstitutionally through the Department of Justice. Both of which Trump/GOP supporters likewise refuse to acknowledge to any extent, and in the rare event they do, resort to brazen misconstruction in efforts to excuse.
Conversations with my Trump shill friends remain unchanged. Despite this turn of events one friend assures me Trump remains the savior of the GOP and America. When I said Trump should have never gotten the nomination, my friend said I was "crazy" because "the dude packs stadiums like a rock concert." Merely serving to once again vindicate what I've said about Trump since his campaign. Trump is a demagogue whose supporters value popularity over substance. My response to Trump packing stadiums? "So what, so did Hitler." He then claimed I had "TDS" because I used a "Hitler parallel." Proving that Trump supporters, just like Democrats, don't understand analogies or what they do. I wasn't equating Trump to Hitler. I was using Hitler to illustrate that filling stadiums doesn't mean anything. Hitler's rallies dwarfed Trump's, and the culmination of Hitler's tenure (regardless of how you feel about him), was a ruined Germany. Obama supporters too, cried and fainted at his campaign speeches, like school girls at a Beatles concert.
According to Trump supporter logic, Rod Stewart should be POTUS, because he got 3.5 million people to show up to a concert at Copacabana Beach. Back here in reality however rallies can't repeal a single bad law. Rallies can't reverse a single component of the leftist agenda. You know what does do those things? Congressmen. But now the Democrats have more of them than the Republicans.
Rally attendance didn't mean anything to me under Obama, and it doesn't mean anything to me now. And all the constant references to such prove, is that Trump supporters place popularity over principle, or one's ability to actually accomplish an objective. And the fact is Trump's ability to do the latter has been significantly compromised. He couldn't get the Democrats to support any of his initiatives when they had no leverage. And now they do, and have openly expressed their intent to obstruct Trump, yet again rendering his campaign claim to be able to get Democrats to go along with him abject horse hockey.
Watch that video. Listen to what Trump says about Pelosi. And then scroll back up to the picture of her above. Either he's the biggest moron on Earth, or the biggest liar. Because this, like so many of his other claims, never materialized in any meaningful way (and it never will). And this, like so many of his other claims, has been absolutely and utterly ignored by his supporters.
The problem with the GOP is that it is at every level, from the voters to the leadership, plagued by incompetence and delusion. It is, just like the Democratic party, thronged with people separated from reality on a perpetual basis. The GOP electorate, in all its wisdom, tasked abolishing nationalized health care to the only one of sixteen candidates on the GOP ticket openly endorsing it. As a result the GOP can't even repeal Obamacare much less save America. Pigs will sooner fly, ladies and gentleman, than the GOP restore us to liberty.
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