No One Falls On Their Sword Anymore

There was a time in Western Civilization when if the party screwed up as badly as the GOP screwed up last Tuesday, the people in charge would resign out of shame.

They have no sense of shame anymore. The grift is too strong.

Tom Emmers, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, thinks he deserves a promotion to House Republican Whip. In what world does the man deserve that after the GOP took a red wave and turned it into a bloodbath by suicide?

Kevin McCarthy wants to be Speaker. The man thought the GOP would get up to sixty seats.

And on top of it all, Ronna McDaniel wants to be RNC Chair again. What the actual hell is up with that?

Under her watchful eye, the GOP has declined in relevance at all levels. It has failed to innovate. It has used its entire brand to promote one man who the party is starting to leave behind.

The party should leave her behind too.

I don’t care if the RNC members love her more than they love Jesus Christ; she has presided over three consecutive elections that were crap. She does not deserve re-election.

The GOP used to dominate early voting. But the McDaniel GOP as the Trump GOP brainwashed the Republican voters to be scared of it and now they all think every race is going to be stolen. McDaniel’s GOP has suppressed its own freaking voters and has offered up no compelling plan to win the early vote over multiple election cycles. She, as much as Trump, is an albatross around the party’s neck.

Where is the sense of shame? Where is the accountability?

The only guy who will be held accountable, more likely than not, is Rick Scott. And, in fairness to Scott, he tried to get a bunch of Trump’s candidates across the finish line and apologized for a bunch of turd burgers not of his choosing.

And still, Scott will be dealt with by his Senate GOP colleagues in some way even if only no longer NRSC Chairman.

But McCarthy? Emmers? McDaniel?

In Georgia, the Governor of Georgia has decided to gut the state GOP. Kemp is setting up a leadership PAC that will siphon off most of the GOP donors from the Georgia GOP. The Chairman of that state’s party found primary opponents for Kemp and several other statewide officials. The Chairman won’t resign, so the state Republican elected leader will destroy the party, and deservedly so. It must be burned down to save it.

We may need to do the same with the party in DC, except it is not so easy. There’s too much grift.

Lee Zeldin is almost single-handedly the man who handed the House of Representatives to the GOP. Though the man did not cross the finish line himself, he moved every county in New York to the right by several points and that helped the GOP win even the seat held by the Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Make Lee Zeldin the RNC Chairman.

We are in another election cycle where the GOP, across the board, spent its money on TV and radio commercials, paying big commissions to consultants instead of coming up with a compelling digital campaign strategy.

In two years, there will be another election. The best way to get it right is to hold accountable the party leaders who presided over the election instead of promoting them.

Arizona

Arizona Republicans had a very good election. They successfully defended their state legislative majorities in a tougher-than-it-should-have-been environment. They look set to pick up six of nine congressional races, three of which were designed to be swing districts.

That should put in perspective just how poorly received Kari Lake and Blake Masters were by Arizona voters. Lake ran six points behind the generic Arizona GOP vote and Masters ran eleven points behind it.

Lake and Masters were heavily tied to Trump and to denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The voters of Arizona awarded the GOP a majority of the state legislature, a majority of the state’s congressional delegation, including seats not drawn for the GOP, and rejected both of those candidates.

Some may not be able to move on from their election denial claims, but the voters have signaled they are done and moving on. Katie Hobbs got 11% of the GOP vote, mostly McCain Republicans — a voter constituency Kari Lake said on stage shortly before election day that she did not want. But she could not win without them.

Lake’s Republican primary opponent regularly polled higher than Katie Hobbs, but could not win the primary because GOP voters went with Trump’s recommendation. Doug Ducey, Arizona’s Governor, would be heading for the Senate, but Trump declared he’d move heaven and earth to defeat Ducey, so it wasn’t worth it to run. The GOP could have picked up that Senate seat.

The blame lies with the voters. But the voters trusted Trump, and he led them off the cliff. You will not be surprised to learn Trump spent very little to help either candidate. In fact, Arizona is another state where McConnell spent more than Trump.

It is well and truly time to move forward and hitching our wagons to the past is not the way to do that. As Trump makes an announcement today at Mar-a-Lago, the voters of America are signaling they’re changing the channel for good.