The Witness Chronicles, March 1, 2024

Photo by Антон Дмитриев on Unsplash

There Are Cracks Appearing in the Trump Party (Republicans)

MAGA may be all he has left at the end

I have the luxury of not having to pretend to be ‘fair and balanced’ because the things I write are observations and opinions. You might think this automatically makes me a doom and gloom guy. But I’m not feelin’ it right now, because I think the political world is changing, big time.

The Republican Party under Trump has, for the past year, chosen to ignore the will of the people, as demonstrated in poll after poll, in nearly every issue important to Americans. Ukraine aid. The border and immigration. Keeping the government open. Abortion and reproductive rights. IVF. LGBTQ rights. Books (books!).

But it is the will of the people that wins elections. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson sat in a meeting this week with the country’s leaders, the President and Vice President, the Democratic leader of the Senate and the Republican leader of the Senate to talk about Ukraine and the future funding of the government.

It is a strange tale of how a nobody religious fanatic from Louisiana came to be in the room representing a razor thin majority in the House of Representatives. He was literally in over his head so he did what small minds do. He retreated to his fantasy world and stated that since he was the small guy there he must represent all the small guys.

This attitude is the justification the Republican Party under Trump uses to reassure itself, as it follows his agenda of obstruction and inaction. And it appears that delusion is starting to crack under the weight of reality. Finally.

Let’s digress just a bit. Candidate Trump is facing an onslaught of criminal court cases for very serious crimes against democracy. He has lost two civil cases and been hit with enormous fines which he says he cannot pay, despite a lifetime of claiming to be rich beyond imagination.

Trump’s only defense, which is essentially an admission of guilt, is to use attorneys to delay his trials in the hope that he gets elected and then can end them. That sounds like Hail Mary desperate to me. And you can be certain that these trials are his only focus.

Everything he is doing is targeted at those delays and finding a way out of crimes he allegedly committed, crimes for which there is overwhelming evidence, including the testimony in plea deals of his closest aides.

This is the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

This is also the man the Republican Party has staked its entire reputation on, abandoning common sense and ignoring what we, the people, are telling them we are seriously worried about. But their Trumpian head in the sand world is falling to pieces.

And the more sane members of the Party are starting to realize he will take all of them down with him. Mike Johnson is not one of them. He still lives in a world defined by extreme ideology and outright fantasy. But now he and the other far right ideologues are playing the big game, the one where people die, are imprisoned for speaking their minds, and where everything falls apart.

A reality where a maniac controls our lives through fear in his personal pursuit of power, and ultimately, his own safety. Not unlike Putin’s Russia, which the Trumpians now openly admire. 

The goal of the right this election year, if you can call it that, is to do nothing, to stall and delay, just like their fearful leader. But this goal has a huge flaw and we are starting to see the cracks. The American people like action, and we do not like bullies.

Yesterday saw Trump and Biden do their first head to head political encounter, probably the closest we will see to a debate this year. They both went to the border in Texas to survey a problem which is the biggest issue right now for most Americans.

The results were telling.

Trump went and made proclamations about how, when elected, he would wave his wand and fix everything. And he made his usual claims that every immigrant was a major criminal version of Rambo coming here as an invading horde.

Biden did something statesmanlike. He challenged Trump to work with him and pass laws already approved by a bipartisan majority in the Senate, that would go a long way towards fixing the problem. Laws that Trump imperially ordered his minions to block.

Biden offered the ability to take action now and invited Trump to help him.

This was political genius, but it also happens to make enormous sense. It represents an opportunity for Trump to make a huge gesture that would change his reputation with a lot of voters. A risky step but a good bet on Biden’s part.

His bet is that Trump won’t do it, because he cannot. His ego, which rules all his choices, will not allow him to take that bet because it would concede something to the President.

I don’t yet know what Trump’s response to this challenge will be. As I write this I have intentionally ignored the day’s news, but I’m guessing Biden wins this one because he has backed Trump into a corner.

He has stood up to the bully and punched him in the face.

This might not be the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning*.

*apologies to Winston Churchill 

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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