Don’t Bother, They’re Here
I would wager that most people don’t know the name Anthony Gonzalez — no, not the Hall of Fame tight end who held off retirement for one more chance at a Super Bowl with the Falcons only to see them go 4-12 in his final season — I’m talking about the Ohio Republican representative who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote in favor of Donald Trump’s [second] impeachment. He was also one of 35 House Republicans who voted in favor of a commission to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
While Gonzelez is certainly not a household name on the national scale, on paper he is basically the platonic ideal of a congressman. He’s a family man, former standout athlete for the state’s largest university, he played professional football, after his sports career was over the received a Master’s degree from a prestigious university, and he came back to run for Congress as a local-boy-done-good. He won both of his elections in the neighborhood of 60-40; and in normal times he would’ve been the kind of candidate who, if he’d wanted, could have stayed in Congress until he was wheeled out on a gurney.
Alas, these are not normal times.
Late last week, Gonzalez announced that he would not be seeking reelection in 2022. While he touted the usual tropes about “spending more time with his family” and whatnot, he made no bones about the fact that his decision was heavily influenced by “toxic dynamics within our own party.” That’s a nice way of saying “my family and I were receiving death threats, and it’s not worth it to me to go through all of that only to have to serve with people like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.”
Never missing an opportunity to be an ungracious pile of garbage, Donald Trump released two statements on the matter:
The “1 down, 9 to go!” of course is a reference to the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment that Trump has vowed to defeat.
I don’t want this to turn into another whiny political homelessness post, but my God is that depressing.
Not only are people like Anthony Gonzalez and Liz Cheney no longer welcome in the Republican party, they are being actively targeted and driven out of it. I just don’t see how this is sustainable. There’s been a lot of whistling past the political graveyard that Republicans aren’t really a cult of personality around Donald Trump; but evidence is piling up to the contrary.
In district after district, state after state, Republican primaries are dominated by candidates who share one basic characteristic — fealty to Donald Trump. Sure, that comes with a lot of other baggage about stolen election conspiracies and opposition to COVID mitigation and whatever else; but it all flows from the principal belief that Donald Trump is the unquestioned and rightful leader of the Republican party and anyone who is insufficiently reverent is a heretic and an apostate. And I just don’t see how that could possibly be to the long term benefit of 1. The Republican party specifically, but more importantly 2. Good governance generally.
As for the first point, it’s entirely plausible — even likely — that Republicans will win back control of the House due to a combination of political gravity (the president’s party is almost always punished in the first midterms of his administration, and Biden’s approval rating has been slipping). And the dynamics within the Republican party are currently such that a new Republican majority could be even more Trumpified and crazier — if you can believe it — than the current minority. When you run people like Anthony Gonzalez out of the party, they’re not usually replaced by Democrats. They’re going to be replaced by some Trumpist clown in the mold of Paul Gosar or Matt Gaetz. But Trumpism is still, blessedly, a minority opinion in this country. So two years of a Republican majority really letting their Trump flag fly would almost certainly be to the long term detriment of the party. Which brings us to the second point: When one party loses its collective mind, the other party sees an opportunity to pursue it’s more extreme goals. The result is a shift of the political center of gravity toward the non-crazy party. In this instance, that would represent a shift to the left in American politics. A shift which — as my liberal friends don’t want to hear — is not supported by the average American voter.
Democrats may cleave off some college-educated voters who are willing to forego some policy preferences to prevent the resurgence of Trumpism, but then some working class voters — most notably in the Hispanic community — are willing to put up with Trumpism in exchange for a brake on cultural leftism. But mostly, I think, people will simply continue to feel less represented by either party. So as the two parties diverge, politics becomes even more dysfunctional. Can’t wait!
Tilting at Turtles
I didn’t intend for this to be such a Trump-heavy edition, but the news is what it is. According to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump has begun probing Republican Senators to see if there is interest to depose Mitch McConnell from his leadership post.
Now, I could provide analysis of this plan, but I’m afraid it would melt the H and A keys on my keyboard.
I make no secret of the fact that I am a fan of Mitch McConnell. I wasn’t always — back before I knew better, I assumed he was part of the RINO Establishment standing in the way of great conservative victories. But as someone, I don’t remember who, once remarked: Mitch McConnell sets up a lawn chair at the most-achievable victory for Republicans and waits for everyone else to realize he’s correct. So McConnell knows what he’s doing, and he’s quite good at it.
Which is all the more of a contrast to Donald Trump who has no clue what he’s doing and is nevertheless bad at it.
Donald Trump has no motivation for attempting to depose McConnell other than “he’s not loyal enough;” and even if he had a better reason, he is wholly illiterate of what such an effort would require or how to go about it.
But what’s most galling about the entire thing is Trump’s rank ignorance of and ungratefulness to the fact that Mitch McConnell is the only reason Trump had any success at all as president. If not for, say, McConnell’s willingness to eat bad publicity on the Merrick Garland nomination, Trump loses the main justification of his presidency. The fact that Trump was able to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg two months before an election he was almost certainly going to lose is, again, thanks to Mitch McConnell. Donald Trump should grovel at the feet of Mitch McConnell, because he’s not worthy to even carry Mitch’s political jockstrap.
It’s an exercise in sheer petty vindictiveness, and even though it’s destined to fail, it still makes me irrationally angry that the resentful moron leading the effort has an iron grip on the political party he is ruining.
Trient-Weekly Trivia
Friday’s answer:
Category: Actors
Clue: He was a long-time presence on television as amiable astronaut Anthony Nelson and ominous oilman J.R. Ewing.
Larry Hagman
Today’s clue:
Category: Government Acronyms
Clue: The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the CPI; this index that confirms groceries, among other things, are getting more expensive.
Dispatches from the Homefront
I’ve noticed that as my daughter has increased her vocabulary, it hasn’t yet really translated into better communication about problems she has. Before she could talk, when she would cry we could safely assume it was one of three things — hungry, tired, or new diaper. But whenever she was crying for something that didn’t fall into any of those categories, I would think “this would be so much easier if you could just tell us what was wrong.” But now that she can say things like “my tummy hurts,” all that does is make the list of possible causes longer. “Are you hungry? Gassy? Constipated? Sick?” She just blankly stares back at me when I ask such questions, and my Google survey was not any more well-received.