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With the sombre anniversary of January 6, 2021 just past, the empty side of the Republican Chamber, bar the Cheneys, at the memorial services at the Capitol was a metaphor for the “Republicans”, minimizing the internal terrorist assault that nearly effected a coup d’etat by the Trump inspired mob. It was a stark reminder that unlike 9/11 where there was bipartisan unity in the face of an external terrorist threat to the Republic, the “Republicans” were seen supporting an internal one. In a year they had transformed themselves into a lawless band supporting autocracy under the leadership of Donald J. Trump.
The only democratic game in town is the Democratic Party. Their leader President Joseph Biden took off the gloves for the first time, all but calling Trump a terrorist, while crystallizing the future of the American Republic between a dictatorship and a democracy. The days of benign Uncle Joe were over. The question now was what lay ahead for America - autocracy or democracy? The most immediate challenges at the moment in the struggle for democracy were voting rights and the Supreme Court decision on whether to release the Trump WhiteHouse logs relating to the coup attempt,
The former Republican Party, who are the ones now responsible for Donald Trump’s prominence, have given up the ghost in the fight for democracy and out of a desire for power have accepted that they are no longer the Grand Old Party, (GOP). They are the the Trump Old Party, (TOP). This leaves only the Democratic Party, (DP), to act on Benjamin Franklin’s iconic warning, that America would have a Republic, “If they could keep it”.
Leadership is what matters and whatever is said about Trump he is a leader. The world would have been a different place without Hitler or Churchill. Likewise America would be in a different place if Kevin McCarthy, “Republican” leader of the House and Mitch McConnell “Republican” leader in the Senate stuck to what they said about Trump when they were still in the old GOP. They are now obsequiously accepting that Trump is their leader. However the GOP/TOP is in a shambolic state. The only identifiable “policies” that they have is that they accept Trump controls their base and that the Big Lie is their gospel. In addition their sole objective is power and are on the side of autocracy versus democracy.
Where the “Republicans” constitute the greatest danger to democracy is in the “Republican” controlled States where there is a shameless rigging of the voting system to ensure that, sans minority electoral participation, they can shepherd in an autocracy. The “Republican” States' co conspirators in the Senate are protecting their efforts hiding shamelessly behind a procedural mechanism, the filibuster, which was last extensively utilized to fight the sixties’ Civil Rights. It is an irony that the “Republicans” are revisiting the freedom that many of them voted for in the sixties so as to entrench white power.
LEADER BIDEN AND THE FUTURE
Biden’s leadership skills are underrated. While not processing the charisma of an Obama or a Trump, his lack of glibness lends a sincerity and conviction. Matt Lewis the conservative columnist was blown over by Biden’s 1/6 memorial address, claiming that it ushered him into “becoming President”. Biden cannot be dissatisfied with year one of his Presidency. There is consensus that the paralyzing Covid crisis will have receded by the end of the month, he has provided enough money in the Covid relief package and together with the large infusion of money in the infrastructure package the problem on the horizon is not stagnation but inflation. The unemployment numbers are less than four percent, a decades old low, and the companies are spewing out profits. The small agricultural owners are singing his praises as are most of the Governors for his Covid management. He obviously wants his social “Build Back Better” bill to get through but that has to take a back seat to the priority to save democracy.
Biden behind the scenes has mustered all that he is able to convey the urgency and the importance of dispensing with the arcane filibuster so as to pass the Voting Rights Bills in the Senate. He is off to Georgia, which is ground zero in the battle, to campaign publicly. Senate leader Schumer is not delaying bringing the issue the floor for all the world to see the DP commitment and to test whether Manchin and Sinema will end up on the wrong side of history together with the “Republicans”. There is a need to push this issue to the forefront particularly as TOP lieutenant Mitch McConnell offers instead legislation to ensure that the Vice President legislatively cannot manipulate the outcome. For Senator McConnell’s information, the present incumbent of the position is a Democrat and it is a self serving “compromise” lest a Democrat try and subvert democracy in 2024 via the Vice President as was mooted by Trump.
Politics is a zero sum game. For practical purposes it is still Biden versus Trump so it is useful to analyze where that is at.
LEADER TRUMP AFTER 1/6 ANNIVERSARY
Trump cancelled his competitive 1/6 Press Conference when he realized that he was not going to receive much live coverage. To his chagrin besides the usual suspects, CNN and MSNBC, both FOX and his newest best friend NEWSMAX covered Biden live. He issued the usual screed claiming that he is really the legitimate President tra la la. He stated that he was going to Arizona to hold yet another rally to tell his old story. Like ABBA’s Mamma Mia the show never ends. Just for the record the Republican Arizona election board have just told the “Republican” State legislature for the zillionth time that there was no fraud in that election.
Trump’s major problem lies with the January 6 House of Representative investigation. They have gone gangbusters and obviously know everything there is to know about the months’ long conspiracy. When you are asking former VP Pence nicely to come to talk to you this obviously is as near to the end that makes very little difference. (Pence’s Chief of Staff has already testified so who needs Pence anyway?). With close on three hundred and fifty witnesses they obviously have the conspiracy down to a T and a minute by minute commentary on what Trump was doing while democracy was almost in its death throws. There is one piece that would seal the deal and that is hung up in the Supreme Court, but more on that later.
The most scary scenarios for dear Donald is Liz Cheney, with her daddy by her side, who is commenting daily about a criminal referral to the Justice Department. The second terrifying story line is the open holdings the committee are scheduled to hold on the evidence they have. These hearings will make for compelling TV and will feature the conspiracy in every detail that they will be referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It will be stage managed. Can you imagine, for example, the impact of a the stream of convicted rioters confessing they did it because of what the Supreme Leader told them and now he has abandoned them?
Then there are the subpoenas from New York prosecutors where the finance investigations have proceeded non stop. With his company and his chief company financial officer criminally charged and with his life long accountant singing like all immunized, (against prosecution), birds, the noose is tightening. Then there is his most flagrant breech of election law, all on tape, being investigated in Georgia. And all the civil cases including those that have resulted from 1/6 added.
The perception is that he controls the TOP even with those who are at heart of the old GOP and that his candidates will win the Primaries. Whether they do or they don’t they then have to win their respective elections. Jay H. Ell is not so sure that he still has the draw that he used to have as he is fresh back from a flop of a paid gig with him and Bill O’Reilly. So the time has come to look at his support as well as the problems they face.
TRUMP’S, SUPPORT
Just over sixty- five percent of the TOP, which has lost at least twenty percent of the old GOP, back Trump to the hilt and believe the Big Lie. Nothing gives the democratic news channel the giggles more than gleefully interviewing the Trump faithful and hear them say that there is overwhelming support that the election was stolen. It isn’t actually funny. Trump’s lingering power lies in this statistic and what has followed has been the legislative enshrining of the Big Lie in the swing States to ensure that “The Steal” will never have to be “Stopped” again.All this which to date has been backed up by the Murdoch propaganda machine which would have made Goebbels proud.
Trump’s voters are the rural inhabitants, non college educated, Evangelicals and white males, mainly blue collar former middle class working types. He has lost forever the Republican Bush/Cheney establishment group and for practical purposes all the real Republican intelligentsia who are regular features on all the sane channels. For the most part they have joined the DP as Steve Schmidt has rationalized, “I am a one issue voter and that issue is democracy”.Trump’s most vociferous group are the militia types who made up the ruck of the Capitol invasion - the Q,Anon conspirators, the Oath Keepers, The Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and so on. About fifteen percent of those are ex militia types. He has also legislatively a crew led by Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Green and a couple such as Jim Jordan and Josh Hawley who are allegedly implicated in the conspiracy.
The "intellectual" leaders of the militia type crowd are an amorphous lot from the anarchist Steven Bannon, Michael Flynn as well as the lawyers that represented Trump all over the show and produced memoranda as to how to subvert the constitution. According to reports they are all scrapping among themselves for money and position. The leaders that do the fighting are in jail or awaiting trial while Trump plays golf.
Much is made of the militia types especially when the fear of civil war is brought up. However the facts that the Q of Q’Anon is no longer speaking, that the future symbol for the struggle, the Kenosha shooter Rittenhouse, claims that his Trumpy lawyers just used him to make money, that Q’Anon followers aren’t talking to Flynn because he claimed that the Q’Amon conspiracy theories were “nonsense”, that Alex Jones declared Trump “evil” because he supports vaccination and that Candace Owens wrote Trump off as “old” for the same reason, means that the gang leaders are very much at odds. In addition this crowd together with Rudi Giuliani are in deep deep money trouble. They with the leaders of the Charlottesville riot have had, in civil cases, astronomical sums awarded against them or are facing billion dollar claims for their outrageous defamatory claims that backed up the “Big Lie”.
What this beheading of Trump’s militant sycophantic followers’ leadership means at the voting booths no one can tell. It certainly has impacted the turnout of their 1/6 rallies in support of the “Capitol riot political prisoners”. The crowd at the main event in Washington could be counted in the tens and those throughout the country had smatterings. How this will play in the midterms no one knows but with both the white collar and mob leadership at sixes and sevens and as the trials in Washington proceed Trump is AWOL and distancing himself from those that were once “special” and whom “we loved”.
Trump has turned on his Fox echo chamber claiming that he will start a media company that will wipe them out. Fox star, Tucker Carlson is fighting with Ted Cruz who is the natural right wing successor to The Donald while Hannity is at a standstill while Fox decides how he should respond to the invitation to explain why he thought the Capitol invasion was a disaster.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The Republic is once again under severe strain as it is half way to autocracy.
The immediate outcome of the vote in the Senate on Voting Rights is crucial both because of the battle between autocracy and democracy and the fact that the angry African American civil rights group demand action not words. They believe Biden can enact miracles.
The Supreme Court decision on whether to hear Trump’s docket to stop the release of the WhiteHouse logs is highly consequential. The latter is all that the January 6 House Committee need to dot the I’s and cross the t’s in the conspiracy. The Court precedent is clear - Nixon, the Executive President, had to produce the tapes to the investigating Legislature - an unanimous Supreme Court decision. In this instance both Governmental agencies, the Biden Executive and the Legislature, are ad idem that the logs be released. Trump, a private citizen, has no standing. But as Associate Justice Sotomayor so aptly concluded the SupremeCourt is quite prepared to accept, “..the stench that…. The Constitution and its reading are just political acts”. So who knows?
The Trump dominated Supreme Court is destined to play an oversize roll in the US political future in more ways way than one but Jay H. Ell will save that analysis for another day.
It is a long long way to the midterms and sooner or later the high ratings for Biden’s policies have to impact his lower personal ratings. That will influence the midterms.
Will the Trump’s legal woes consolidate the support of his cult or enrage them against him? Likewise will the unfolding of the conspiracy on prime time TV in all its gory details result in a digging in on the Big Lie or unify the country as did the Watergate hearings?
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings and as you know she can go on forever as well.
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