Ready. Fire. Aim.
Back before Donald Trump’s wing of the party took over the establishment, one of the issues that provoked the anti-establishment conservatives to back Trump’s coup of the party was the non-stop promise-making of the establishment that the establishment never intended to keep.
They promised to repeal Obamacare. They did not.
They promised to cut spending. They only did this when conservative Freedom Caucus members forced reconciliation.
They promised to fight and never did.
They’d fundraise on their plans to fight for life; then they would fund Planned Parenthood. They’d fundraise on their plans to repeal Obamacare, then make it more complicated. They’d fundraise on fighting the EPA, then claim their hands were tied and there was nothing they could do.
People had enough and decided they’d rather burn down the party than hear more lies and promises prepared to be broken.
So it’s more than a little ironic that the present Trumpian establishment is now embracing the same strategy — make bold promises, fundraise, and blame everyone else when they cannot executive and break their promises.
In Georgia, State Senator Colton Moore and the Georgia Freedom Caucus, an entity I generally support, are behaving just like the establishment — promising action without any plan. They’ll fire, then aim.
Moore is bullying his fellow legislative Republicans to sign a letter calling for a special session of the state legislature to find a way to oust Fulton County DA Fani Willis. That sounds good, except it is impossible. The Republicans would need a 3/5 majority, which they do not have.
Moore’s agitation, amplified by the Georgia Freedom Caucus, is getting members harassed by Trump supporters nationwide who do not realize he cannot pull off what he wants even if every Republican supports his plan.
The fallback has been to claim that signing the letter is just a show of support.
Except we’ve been down this road many times with the establishment in the past. If all the Republicans sign on to the plan, many voters will wonder why exactly the GOP is not doing anything. These voters do not understand or care about the fine print that reads, “The GOP majority lacks the votes to call a special session.”
The stunt will rile up and agitate a lot of people who do not understand the nuances of Georgia’s constitution. It’s like the people demanding Governor Brian Kemp do something when there is no provision in the Georgia Constitution or laws that give him the power to just do something.
Even, of all people, Marjorie Taylor Greene is mocking State Senator Moore and the Georgia Freedom Caucus’s effort. She points out that Republicans lack the votes to impeach Fani Willis or even to call a special session to investigate her.
Nationally, however, voters don’t know. They are being whipped into a frenzy. The only person who benefits is Colton Moore, who is fundraising off the whole endeavor that he knows is doomed to fail.
In the meantime, his constituents will suffer because he is burning so many bridges with his colleagues that he’ll be hard-pressed to take care of his district’s needs when any legislation he adds his name to will be dead on arrival.
The Trump Establishment is no different from the pre-Trump Establishment. It’s all grifting off promises never meant to be fulfilled, leaving many angry people who didn’t know not to send money.
The grift needs to be purged
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Just put Normal Finkelstein's new book "I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom" on my list to read. Finkelstein, I think, helps shed light on one big glaring pile of brokenness (among many) in the old Republican establishment in their tacit approval of so much anti-Israel foreign policy direction. Bashing Israel is good virtue signaling cocktail party stuff of the uppity class. However, this new book, I think, sheds light on the biggest pile of establishment Republican brokenness, and it seems to be a similar virtue signaling uppity cocktail party attraction, and that is the failure to definitively and purposely defend and attack the left in their radical destructive identity politics movement that the establishment Democrats have fully embraced because otherwise the general publics hates the establishment Democrats almost as much as they hate the establishment Republicans.
From his new book, Finkelstein writes:
"“The cancel culture of my childhood targeted, in the name of anti-communism, popular leftist movements rooted primarily in class politics. The new cancel culture still targets class politics but this time round in the pseudo-radical name of identity politics."
"Whereas class politics has historically focused on a massive redistribution of wealth from the haves to the have nots, identify politics (racial, sexual, etc.) in the uppermost tier of a social structure left largely intact in all its steep gradations.” he writes. “The primary vehicle of this politics is the Democratic Party, the mass base of which was once the white working class, but which is now in transition to becoming an identify-based party, in which identity displaces class as its organizing principle and base constituency."
The telling thing here is that the people pushing this crap to replace class struggle with identity political wars are in fact the upper class, headed by the Ivy League managerial class dominating government and Wall Street, that are responsible for destroying working class economic opportunity and looting the country to an empty shell. As the money and status growth opportunities diminish in this country the upper class call home, they find fewer reasons to protect it and set their sights on the WEF globalist agenda... were the US is only an ATM for the world, and American workers can be central-controlled in a new collectivist model and placated by Universal Basic Income and "free" healthcare.
Any Republican that does not aggressively and actively combat this woke "progress" by the elite upper class has no business calling themself a Republican. Liberty, freedom to pursue self-interest, national pride and focus and God-given rights as embodied by our Constitution, equality of opportunity, etc. These are the bedrock principles of Republicanism that are being threatened by the march of progressive politics. If you are not with us in the war to defeat the managerial class woke destruction, then you are against us.
Eff establishment Republicans. The only thing they are good for today is losing to Democrats. Nobody likes establishment Republicans except Establishment Republicans. It is a big circle-jerk and circular firing squad. The basic problem is that they have zero constituent groups but cannot get past their class dislike of the working class. They hate Trump both because of his personality, but also because they are embarrassed by the people that support him. Here come Vivek, really the only other candidate that can attract the working class, and the old Republican guard mounts attacks on him as being too like Trump.
News flash… there is no path to Republicans winning without the working class. Either get over your hypersensitivity to personality, or leave the party to register as the Democrat you really are.