If you become a paid subscriber to The Warning, this is an example of the daily commentary you’ll receive from me. This essay was originally published on November 22, 2022.
In addition, you can take advantage of other benefits, including:
Monthly “Ask Me Anything” sessions
Full access to daily essays, including audio recordings (150+ since July 1, 2022)
Post comments and join an incredibly passionate community engaged in civil discourse
Thanks for your support.
Steve
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Trump industrial complex is collapsing and the Trump era is ending. Donald Trump will never be elected to public office again. He will likely be indicted and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida will be the nominee-in-waiting by Valentine’s Day 2023 at the latest. It’s over.
What isn’t over are the consequences of the Trump cancer that coursed through American life and remade American politics in his loathsome image. He has ignited a vast extremist movement, nearly toppled American democracy, enthralled violent militias, invigorated white supremacists, stoked a cold civil war and engaged in vast personal corruption that beggars imagination.
Donald Trump was always exactly what he appeared to be. The disgustingness of this era was not wrought by Donald Trump alone. It was caused by the moral collapse of thousands of high elected officials, CEOs, and others into a state of complete submission and obedience around Donald Trump.
One by one, they gave in and became complicit and then deeply involved accomplices in what they knew to be deeply wrong and damaging to the country. Each repudiated every conviction, standard, belief and stated word that could be found to gain the favor of Donald Trump and stay safe from mean tweets. The result has been one of the worst political crises in American history that continues to unfold with total disaster — just having been narrowly averted.
Let’s look at the unprincipled sycophancy and hollowness of three putative presidential contenders.
First, there is Mike Pence. Sometimes Americans wonder why it is that he seems so affectionate towards the man who tried to hang him. Perhaps this video will help. It remains a wonder of our time and will for all time.
Second, there is Chris Christie. The man standing behind Donald Trump like a Stepford wife could have been the Republican nominee in 2012. He missed his window. Instead, he crashed through it and wound up yoked to Donald Trump forever. It demonstrated both a lack of character and judgement on Chris Christie’s part. More than anything though, it revealed the blustering former governor as toothless, weak, and while not exactly cuddly, he is nothing to fear unless traffic jams trigger PTSD. That’s lethal in the transgressive era of ”f@#k you” politics Donald Trump has left behind. Chasing someone down with a soft serve cone on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore lost its novelty as an act of decisive leadership for Republicans during the Trump era.
Third, there is Nikki Haley. South Carolina’s female Lindsey Graham matches his fecklessness and total lack of moral core, conviction, integrity and dignity. The main difference between them seems to be in the boundary space that separates self-awareness in human beings. For all of his faults, at least Lindsey would be the first person to laugh out loud around the idea of Lindsey Graham being president. Nikki Haley, not so much. She exists today in a pre-Palin stage of her own making, hollowed out by her own cynicism. She turned out to be none of the things her admirers hoped for, and nearly all of the things her critics said she was. Her blundering stint at the United Nations isn’t a qualification; it’s evidence of incompetence, cynicism and ignorance. She has no chance — even though those qualities have been the ticket to ride in the Trump era.
Since an overwhelming percentage of political reporters aren’t interested in history, and know little about the American people, it isn’t surprising that they don’t know or understand much about the Republican Party. Generally speaking, they know nothing about its history, founders, divisions, geographic transformation, ideological battles and long-standing differences between internationalist and isolationist factions. They don’t conceive of the Republican Party as a Midwest party that moved West, before it was a neo-Confederate party.
There was a convention in American politics that held until the Trump era. It is around the insiders’ determination of the Republican frontrunner and nominee. Simply, it’s the notion of whose turn it is.
Typically, Republicans like their Tory cousins and the British Royal family like succession to be orderly. The best way to predict the next GOP nominee has been to typically ask the question: whose turn is it?
In 1976, it was Gerald Ford’s. In 1980, it was Reagan; in 1988, Bush: 1996, Dole; 2000 Bush; 2008 McCain; and 2012, Romney.
Each man was ambitious and waited for their turn. They felt defeat at the hand of the people who were next in line.
All of that held until 2015/2016.
When Barack Obama was inaugurated, the Democratic Party held the White House, Senate and US House. The seat of Republican power moved in an instant. It moved to 6th Avenue in New York City — to the offices of Roger Ailes. Roger Ailes was the undisputed “king of the hill” in the GOP between 2009 and 2015.
It was during this era where conservatism was fundamentally redefined and disconnected from public policy issues and political philosophy. The test of conservatism became who had the most fidelity to the craziest statement and personality in the growing and metastasizing right-wing media business. Loyalty to Rush Limbaugh became an essential test and FOX News was the center of the GOP world. This was the era when FOX News became a potent political organization. This is when it left the news business and became a party of its own with profound and terrible consequences.
The simple truth of this era was that the average Republican congressman would have sooner drowned their mothers than get on the wrong side of Roger Ailes. They trembled in fear of him. They did until someone rose up and defenestrated him. It was fast, vicious and brutal. The person who did it was Donald Trump. Long live the king.
The person who did it to Donald Trump was Ron DeSantis. Long live the king. DeSantis stands at the top of the hill. Trump is at the bottom and huffing up the incline being pursued by prosecutors and the FBI. His family is running the other way.
Trump’s announcement spectacle at Mar-a-Lago was the end of an era — not the beginning of a restoration. The trappings of the White House were long gone. The Mar-a-Lago security was caught locking the doors to keep the captives of Trump’s delusions hostage for a bit longer. It looked like a scene from the “Poseidon Adventure.”
The MAGA celebrity detritus like My Pillow loon Mike Lindell, Dick Morris and other creatures from the MAGA creature cantina filled the front of the room, but there were no business titans. Where was Trump’s coalition? Where were the Fox News propagandists? Gone.
Where was Rupert Murdoch? Gone.
Where were his factotum and the cowed CEOs who gorged at the public trough? Gone.
Where were the tech moguls and oil executives? Gone.
Where were the people he made? Where were the governors, the senators and members of Congress? Gone.
Why? Because Trump is a grade AAA three-time certified loser. An organized conspiracy to take power can’t properly function without any chance of taking power.
Why is Fox News board member Paul Ryan just now proclaiming himself as “Never Again Trump?” What changed in the heart of the “Lion of Kenosha?” What changed in any of them? It’s simple.
Trump is now a bad deal. The collaboration is over because parasites move on after their host is bled out and dry. The question is: what do people who have no moral fortitude, vision, grit and toughness do when there is instability at the top? They look to restore it by finding someone to get in line behind as quickly as possible. Who is that person? It’s the new tough guy on the block. It’s the guy who took out Trump, and he did it in a way that Trump still hasn’t figured out it’s over.
It’s the 44-year-old who used Trump as opposed to letting himself become Trump’s chew toy. He won a crushing reelection victory with a unique and committed coalition behind him. The governor never debased himself to Trump, but played him like a fiddle until he took the MAGA crown. Ron DeSantis is the man in MAGA land.
Karl Rove, author of a fantastic book entitled “The Triumph of William McKinley,” modelled Governor George W Bush’s juggernaut to the nomination on the principles used by Mark Hanna a century earlier. The DeSantis front porch campaign in Tallahassee will be a steroid-era version of that and those were fairly decisive.
The greatest single predictor of behavior in American life among its elite is the following with few exceptions:
1. Cowardice
2. Self-interest
3. Cynicism
Those waypoints never fail in helping predict the next debacle in American life, or in explaining the collapse of the American social compact.
Trump got away with poisoning American democracy, helping kill a million Americans with incompetence, bloodying the peaceful transition of power, radicalizing the electorate, inciting violence and extremism, stoking conspiracy theories, stunning corruption, abuse of power, international blackmail and non-stop degradations towards every important institution in the country. Paul Ryan and the entire archetype for which he stands all folded tent and got in line. That is what they do. Until, the leader does one thing that cannot be done.
Herein is the difference between Democrats and Republicans at the highest levels of American politics. There is no tolerance for incompetence once the verdict has been rendered in the Republican Party. Losing is not tolerated. Trump is a loser and the evidence of that is the willingness of so many weak and hollow politicians like Paul Ryan to finally speak out. The rabbit has lost his fear of the lion, which means the lion’s reign is over forever.
Trump is no longer feared. He has always been scorned within the GOP, but now he has been defenestrated by Governor Ron DeSantis.
Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie and all the rest of the MAGA has-beens seem to think that they may be able to overcome their terrible judgement by making an argument that expunges it. Perhaps, but it won’t matter.
They can never wash the stench and stains of weakness and submission off of them. It’s a scent that Ron DeSantis never picked up. It’s why everyone will be getting in line behind him.
The Trump era is at its end. Beware. Worse could be ahead.
People who know DeSantis have already warned that he will be worse for our country if he becomes President.
Newt Gingrich says he fears and predicts a Trump vs. anti-Trump split in the Republican Party, with Trump winning the nomination against a crowded field, but Biden winning the 2024 election in a landslide and bringing with him solid majorities in both houses of Congress. Not indictment, nothing less than ignominious defeat in 2024 may pry the Trump cult from their man. Even with a DeSantis nomination, the Republican Party is bereft of popular ideas.