A desperate, but never to be underestimated Trump, operating from his Mar - a - Lago bunker, with yet another election rejection in red Georgia while the legal noose closes in on him, has become becomes more and more unhinged. He is embracing his foot soldiers who sacrificed their freedom for his wild fantasy of taking over America by force while calling for the suspension of the American Constitution to put him back in the White House!
All this would be good and well if Trump was the leader of a fringe group but he is the leader of one of the two major political parties of America, the so called Republican Party, (GOP), - the once proud Party of Abraham Lincoln. The latter have morphed into the “Make America Great Again, (MAGA) and The America First Party. The last named having the same title as the celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh, the friend of Hitler, gave to his Nazi movement in the 1940's.
Jay H. Ell now puts the Grand Old Party in apostrophes, as the “GOP”, as the Grand Old Party no longer stands for the principles of Lincoln. Nor do they honor the integrity of the constitution, openness to immigrants and fiscal responsibility that were their landmark principles. Nor are its fiscal modern day conservatism and limited Government much in evidence. All that remains is their outmoded social dogmas so as to ensure the support of the Evangelical Christians.
The fact that in the midterms Trump’s “GOP” under performed and Trump’s totalitarian response to the outcome has been ignored, almost totally, by those still in the "GOP" including the National Committee, bodes badly for the MAGA Party and the country.
Newt Gingrich one of the original 1990's Republican revolutionaries and a former Speaker of the House, stated that the significance of what Biden had achieved had been completely unappreciated by all including the “GOP”. Gingrich warned that Biden has obliterated the "GOP”. He amazingly has joined the Liz Cheneys and Adam Krizingers of this world who have taken a principled stance against the constitutional hooliganism of their former colleagues.
Two questions arise out of these surreal circumstances - How the hell did the Grand Old Party become the vehicle for Trump totalitarianism and will any of the now "MAGA GOP” majority stand up to the values that the Party once espoused?
WHERE THE COUNTRY IS NOW
The reality is that that the majority of the country have moved away from Trump. As outlined in the Blog November 20, 2022 “USA 2022 midterms, “We The People Deliver”, election denial hardly raised a whimper. The overwhelming majority of Trump endorsed candidates in the contested seats lost. The leaders of Trump’s civilian army have been locked up, some as traitors to the American constitution.
So nobody cares about Trumpism except the Legislative leaders of the "GOP”. The masses aren’t rising up as the investigation into Trump proceeds apace and the Attorney General reassures all that anyone involved in the attempted coup will be prosecuted. The judiciary, with a few glaring exceptions, are having no truck with the usual Trump tactic of running out the clock. So while the leader of the “GOP” in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, and the right wing gang are backing the former President and all his MAGA, AMERICA FIRST dross, they are out of sync with the vast majority of Americans.
So McCarthy and the “GOP” legislators provide the leadership of the MAGA movement. Leaders matter. There would have been no holocaust without Hitler. Of course there is collective responsibility for those who go along for the ride as brilliantly researched By Daniel Goldhagen in his best seller “Hitler’s Willing Executioners - Ordinary Citizens and the Holocaust”. The Iranian and Chinese mass protests may effect some change in policy but they are leaderless and the outcome cannot be change in regime.
HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE?
It is fair argument that throughout America’s two and a half Century History there has been prejudice against the “other”. In fact the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were aspirational. Right up to the twentieth Century it was the Democrats, (DP), mainly from the South that were the protagonists of segregation. This state of affairs lasted right up to the middle of the twentieth Century.
After a period of “Reconstruction”, following the emancipation of slaves and the Civil war, over the objections and veto of President Johnson, the Republican Legislators enshrined the rights of the “Negros”. This was fought bitterly and negated by the DP Southern States. The advances of the "Negro" spawned the formation of the infamous Klu Klux Klan, (KKK), who were responsible for a hundred and fifty years of lynchings and harassment and discrimination right into the twentieth century.
Although the KKK became inactive at the time of the Great Depression in the 1930’’s, segregation and the impossibility of the “Negro” to vote was endemic in the Southern Democratic States until the Civil Rights Movements in the 1950 and 1960's.
In the 1930’s right through WWII twenty three members of Congress were paid by the Nazi Party to thwart Roosevelt from entering the war. Bishop Cochran had a radio following of a fifth of the country’s population to whom he spewed out Fascist propaganda. This forgotten episode of history was vividly portrayed in Rachel Maddow’s podcast “DUAL”. Some historians claim that this was the beginning of the Republican Party’s modern day era of discrimination. There were a only a few members of the DP amongst this group. Also at Republican Party Conventions there was solid support for this position.
JAY H. ELL BELIEVES THE MODERN DAY REPUBLICAN ANTIPATHY TO BLACK VOTERS BEGAN WITH NIXON
Jay. H. Ell believes the MAGA of today was conceived in the sixties under the tutelage of President Nixon. President Lyndon Johnson, who preceded Nixon, knew that by pushing the Civil Rights Legislation that the DP legislators from the South weren’t going to buy in. In 1965 the percentage of whites in America was eighty - four percent. Johnson was proved right. Nixon started on his Southern Strategy which was to herald a new Republican era as it morphed into the “GOP” of the nineties.
Jay H. Ell has a personal anecdote about the state of the Republican Leadership in the Senate prior to the Nixon era. As a student leader in 1964 he was the guest of Senator Hugh Scott the future Republican Minority leader. Senator Scott told him that he and colleagues felt a duty to support Johnson on Civil Rights which needed a two thirds majority in the Senate to pass. (At the time of the actual vote the legendary Everett Dirksen was the Republican Minority Leader of the Senate). The filibuster was engineered by the Southern Democrats. The Senate debated for sixty days. The final vote that broke the filibuster was seventy - one to twenty nine. The two thirds majority would never have been attained without the Republicans support. Senator Scott was subsequently one of the three Republican leaders that descended upon Nixon and informed him that should he resign as the Senate would impeach him. By then Nixon had already implemented his Southern Strategy.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy was to unashamedly support the racism in the South to court the white votes that had formerly gone to the DP and would sustain the Republican Party for decades to come finally ending in Trump. (But stick around that comes later). In Nixon’s 1968 campaign he used code language and dog whistles for the Southern Democratic vote. He signaled in that campaign that he would ease pressure in the South on segregation. He won the support of Southern Democrat Strom Thurmond who began a procession of Southern DP legislative members joinIng the Republicans.
In the 1968 election an unsuccessful third candidate George Wallace an out an out bigot ran as well. Nixon courted those votes following the 1968 election. His adviser Kevin Phillips wrote that Nixon had to win over the Wallace voter because, “The negroes were beginning to seize control over the national Democratic Party in some Black Belt areas”. The Nixon administration went to court to slow down school integration.
THE REPUBLICANS CONTINUED THEIR BELITTLING OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN AFTER NIXON
In the years from 1968 to 1992 Republicans occupied the White House for eighteen of twenty - two years. Reagan, (1980 - 1988), who was known mainly for his disastrous trickle down economic policy, also spoke of an African American woman being "The Queen of Social Security" who used fifty names and other deceptions to obtain a ton of Welfare money. Reagan when challenging Gerald Ford, then the Republican President, for the 1976 Republican nomination, launched an attack on welfare spending, assuming that African Americans were the
beneficiaries.
Between 1992 to 2000 the moderate DP Clinton won an eight year term to be the followed by the second Bush, H. Dubbaya who had an eight year term till 2008. Put another way between 1968 to 2008 there was only a Democrat in the WhiteHouse for twelve of the forty years. And from 2004 to the present date, 2022, the Republicans only once received the majority of votes in a Presidential election.
The Gingrich movement to MAGA in the 1990's
Between Nixon and Trump there was the 1990’s revolution started by Pat Buchanan and followed through by Newt Gingrich and supported all the while by Rush Limbaugh who was the George Coughlin of the 1930’s and the forerunner to Murdoch media in the twenty first century.
In fact many historians postulate that MAGA began in the 1990’s. That it was kicked off by Pat Buchanan who hobbled daddy Bush by challenging him in a Primary when he was due for his second term. William Buckley the Conservative Intellectual of that era wrote a forty thousand word essay criticizing Buchanan calling him out as an anti semite. George Dubbaya’s daddy was further kneed in the 1992 election by Ros Perot who stood as a third party candidate. However the real mover and shaker of who is considered the forerunner of MAGA was Newt Gingrich.
In his Book, “The New Republican Party”, Julian Zekzer, labelled Newt Gingrich as the person who set the Republican Party on a bitterly partisan and ruthless political path. His brand of warfare worked and in Clinton’s midterm he toppled the Democratic House of Representatives by winning forty - five seats. He introduced “The Contract of America” very of little which was fulfilled. He shut down Congress, was behind Clinton’s impeachment and polarized the Republican Party into its take no prisoners approach. In the short term his star shone but in 1998 the new Republicans suffered a big loss as Clinton benefitted politically from Gingrich’s excesses, including his impeachment. But the ethically challenged Gingrich had built on the Nixon legacy and helped the rise of MAGA cult of Donald Trump.
THE AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES AND SO DOES BOTH THE ESTABLISHMENT AND THE RIGHT WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
The Republicans after their second loss to Barack Obama in 2012, when the white population had dropped to sixty three percent, realized they could no longer be a viable party or survive if it was predominantly a white party. They published a report that to survive it needed to attract African Americans and Latinos. What had to have shaken the Republican Establishment there and then was that the rise of Obama to the Presidency was not only by his mobilizing the votes of minorities he had catapulted into the Democratic nomination first by winning rural white Iowa and barely losing in white New Hampshire by a few thousand votes.
However, the Republican Establishment movement was too little too late, as the right wing of their Party had formed the “The Tea Party". They were against the establishments in both the parties. The Tea Party articulated going back to the glorious past. They were for lower taxes as well as small government spending, code for dropping the welfare programs. They were the hell in with George Dubbaya Bush, (2000 -2008). They hated his immigration reform proposals and his foreign ventures to Iraq and Afghanistan for regime change to a democracy. The Republican McCain in the Presidential election of 2012 had to pick the Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin as his running mate. The Tea Party were the forerunners of the Freedom Party faction that is leading Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy a merry dance.
And then came Trump and that black swan phenomenon that allowed him to win the 2016 election with about three million less votes than Hilary Clinton and in 2020 to lose against Biden by seven million votes.
THE BLACK SWAN FACTORS THAT ALLOWED TRUMP TO BECOME PRESIDENT.
Donald Trump, a celebrity for decades, a supposed highly successful businessman and TV personality with incredible skills as aa salesman emerged as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2016 elections. Like all salesmen he could instinctively appeal to the feelings of his customers to clinch the deal. Serendipitously for him the anti establishment ground had already been laid by the Tea Party, Gingrich and Nixon's Southern strategy.
In 2016 the full impact of the deindustrialization and outsourcing of jobs had taken hold while the plight of the rural areas had worsened as was so empathetically explained by J. D. Vance. The 2008 economic disaster which robbed many of their homes and savings had not resulted in any accountability of those that profited adding to the anger of the electorate.
Russia ran a successful cyber campaign in Trump's favor. While the Muller report never proved that he colluded with the Russians, they showed that members of his inner circle met with the Russians and the Russians intervened on Trump’s behalf.
Trump made a direct appeal to the Evangelical Christians backed their agenda and claimed to be a reformed sinner. He promised them Supreme Court Judges who would axe Roe versus Wade thereby restricting a woman’s right to health care decisions. The other major Evangelical objective was to ensure the stability of Israel. Their rationale for that was not the love of Jews but rather without Israel the Messiah cannot return. In fact if the Jews do not recognize Him when he does arrive they would be killed. Trump claimed he would axe ObamaCare and provide a superior health care plan which he never quite got around to announcing.
The final shoe to fall in this scenario was when a few days before the Presidential election, the megalomaniac James Comey of the FBI announced that he was reinvestigating Hilary Clinton for her emails. This was completely against Justice Department Policy, which has as a standing rule that for sixty days prior to an election, no investigation, indictment, or statement should be made that could impact the outcome. Candidate Clinton stated from that moment her internal polling showed a dramatic turn against her. With Trump's victory the MAGA “GOP” was entrenched.
All this resulted in the black swan outcome that inaugurated President Trump as the forty fifth Commander in Chief of the USA.
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WILL THE REAL REPUBLICANS PLEASE STAND UP!
So the USA has experienced a triple electoral rejection of Trump, whose election denialism has come down to one county in Arizona which eventually caved under threat of legal action. All that is left of the individuals that scream vote fraud is one former TV anchor in Arizona and Trump has earned the title he despises most - Loser.
However, the Republican leadership in The House of Representatives is backing the MAGA ex President to the hilt. The latter to the extent where Kevin McCarthy the "GOP" leader in the House, responding to Trump’s call to dump the Constitution, stated that he will read the Constitution again. McCarthy and The Freedom Faction Caucus are providing the leadership for the Trumpist electorate now that the lay leaders are locked up and the Murdoch media empire have dumped him. McCarthy is a slave to the Freedom Faction Caucus, (the old Tea Party in disguise). He has pledged to back the most bizarre agenda to get some of their votes for Speaker.
These are some of the promises McCarthy has made to the way out members such as Majorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan who are conspiracy theorists and Qanon believers. He would make them both Chairpeople of key Committees, investigate Nancy Pelosi for failing to secure the Capitol on January 6, investigate the January 6 Committee for crimes they committed during their investigation even grandstanding that they must keep all their paperwork for possible prosecution and hold hearings on Biden's son Hunter a confessed former drug addict with mental problems. They have Hunter's labtop where there are photos of him in the nude and on and on. All this will supposedly will show the country what phonies the DP are and how Biden benefitted from Biden's son's inappropriate ways of earning a living.
Mitch McConnell leader of the "GOP" Minority in the House made a Faustian bargain with the MAGA President whom he regarded as the devil incarnate. He is at odds with McCarthy on Trump but in a way more culpable as he has claims to respectability and used Trump to further his agenda. Furthermore, he has refused to commit to not support the “GOP”candidate in 2024 who may well be Trump with a minority of the “GOP" electorate.
The only leader of note in the “GOP”, Mitt Romney, their defeated 2012 Presidential candidate against Obama, warned McCarthy that this approach is crazy. However McCarthy is so power hungry that he would change religions if that was necessary!
GET REAL “GOP”
Now Jay. H. Ell believes that the “GOP” legislators need to get real because the following is going to happen one way or another in the next six years:
- Biden will retain the Presidency if he so choses. Otherwise for four of those years another DP candidate will step in: Likewise the Department of Justice, for that period will be in Merrick Garland’s purview or some one else in his ilk; All this garbage about Judicial referrals is just that - so much garbage that it barely needs refutation.
- Trump will never be President again because if he runs there will be a third party candidate, such as Liz Cheney, to siphon votes away from him and if he is not the nominee he will run as a third party candidate splitting the vote between him and the “GOP” nominee.
- *Nobody will beat a Democrat even if they don’t pass another piece of legislation as all that money from the Infrastructure and Jobs Act hasn’t hit the American economy yet. It is aimed at all America. Those benefiting most live in the rural areas where construction will provide high paying jobs and broadband and whatever.
- In Biden’s first term he passed monumental legislation and reversed most of Trump’s Executive orders and just to add one further point he has advocated the rotation of the Democratic Primaries in a fashion to nominate a Presidential candidate that is reflective of the country’s minorities and purple States - hence one two and three are South Carolina, Michigan and Georgia.
So Jay H. Ell appeals to the “GOP” leaders to lead for heaven’s sake - stand up and repudiate Trump. Get back to the fiscal conservatism and small government. No one believes the baloney that they are the “worker’s party”. They voted against the DP Bill to give the Rail Workers five days sick pay leave a year.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The biggest loser in the Georgia run off was Governor Kemp supposedly a non Trumpist who joined the unholy "GOP" coalition, sharing his ground game that won him the Governorship by two hundred thousand votes, with Walker. The latter being the Trump nominee whom he had shunned in the midterms. The Georgia swing vote defied Kemp.
The biggest winner was defeated DP Governor candidate Stacey Adams who was responsible for moving red Georgia to just leaning red. Next time round she will be the first Black Female Governor.
The DP won All The Marbles in the Senate Run off Race in Georgia.
DP Senator Sinema’s move to become an Independent won’t make a jot of difference because that is the way she has behaved for the past four years. If she doesn’t join the DP Caucus like other Independents have, such as Angus King of Maine, she will be a lame duck and have no committee positions.
In 2021 the percentage of white voters in America had decreased to just under sixty percent. Another reason for true Republicans to stand up now if they feel they have any contribution to make to the national debate.
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