Trump's Party Still - Why?

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I don't even know who that Kevin McCarthy guy is, so I'll have to look him up,

but Donald won't have any of the popular social media platforms on his side, so I doubt he will be reaching many new supporters.

Besides, he can have all the "influence" he wants by preaching to his choir, as long as the rest of us get peace and quiet.

Hopefully all of the media has the good sense to stop focusing on him for good...

unless he's on trial for something, because we all need some entertainment.

Regardless of what happens, at least it's out of sight, out of mind for four years.

Kevin McCarthy is the Republican Minority leader of the House of Representatives.


He'll still get plenty of mostly-favorable coverage from Fox News, Newsmax, et al. And he'll still have plenty of fanatical followers who still do have access to the popular social media platforms. And Parler is back.


Problem is his "choir" still includes pretty much the entire Republican Party, including nearly all the Republicans in Congress and in the majority of state legislatures -- and their still very solid base of voter support.

The disturbing new news is that even some Republicans in Congress who seemed to be breaking away from Trump are now back under Trump's thumb.


Nope. Won't happen. Coverage of Trump (pro or con) sells, almost as much as sex sells. It would be suicidal for any of the major media to stop covering Trump, who is still a master of the art of attracting attention.


No, it's not. Perhaps the major media will stop covering him 24/7, but he'll still get plenty of coverage I'm sure.

The establishmentarian GOP is heading for the exits.

Ahead of what should be a strong midterm election cycle for the party out of power, incumbent Republican senators are retiring in conspicuous numbers. On Monday, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt announced that he will not seek another term in office next year. His statement follows retirements from his Republican colleagues in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Alabama—none of whom owe their careers or allegiances to the Republican Party’s ascendent populist wing.

Much of the political class has interpreted these abdications as a response to the likelihood that the GOP will continue to self-Trumpify for the foreseeable future. A cursory survey of the Republican Party’s obsequious displays of supplication before the former president even despite his hostility toward that institution would seem to support that conclusion.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s attorneys sent a shot across the Republican Party’s bow with a flurry of cease-and-desist letters directed at the GOP’s national, Senate, and congressional campaign committees. The former president threatened his party’s chief fundraising apparatuses with the demand that they stop using Donald Trump’s name or likeness when soliciting donations or selling merchandise.

That’s a significant escalation of tensions. Trump remains the party’s most popular figure among Republican voters. As of last month, Trump’s Political Action Committee had $105 million on hand—a haul he helped raise alongside the Republican National Committee amid his efforts to contest the 2020 election results and, eventually, insist that the race had been stolen from him. Trump has already announced his intention to deploy those resources in the effort to stoke intraparty feuds and finance primary challenges against Republican incumbents who failed to support that effort.

That’s bad news if you’re in the business of protecting incumbents, which the GOP’s committees most certainly are. Trump’s announcement is nothing short of a declaration of war. So, what has the RNC done in response? Sue for peace, of course.

On Monday, press reports revealed that the RNC had decided to move part of its spring donors’ retreat scheduled for next month to Donald Trump’s resort in Mar-a-Lago. Convention planners who spoke with the Washington Post offered a variety of unconvincing explanations for the move, but reporters also couldn’t help but notice that “Spending money at the club is also likely to curry favor with Trump…”

So, having received his taste, we can presume Trump and the Republican Party worked out their differences amicably. Right? Wrong.

Earlier that same day, Trump’s PAC sent out a short and sweet fundraising pitch affirming his intention to siphon off as much donor cash away from Republican lawmakers as possible. “No more money for RINOS,” the solicitation read. “They do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base—they will never lead us to Greatness.”

Send your donations to Save America PAC,” the email concluded. “We will bring it all back stronger than ever before.” That is the entirety of Trump’s pitch to donors. And maybe that is sufficient for people who don’t know or care what they’re supporting with their political contributions, but, presumably, donors to the Republican Party’s committees do. Or, maybe, they did. If there is any instinct for self-preservation left within these organizations, it has gone dormant.

If this recent sequence of events reads a little bit like a classic shakedown, that’s not your imagination. And that should trouble anyone with a vested interest in conventional Republican policy objectives

The imminent passage of the Democratic Party’s COVID-relief bill, for example, has presented the GOP with a variety of tantalizing messaging opportunities—most of which have been neglected.

The Trumpian wing of the party hasn’t displayed much inclination to educate the public on these matters, preferring instead to lean into abstract culture wars that have only a tangential relationship with the affairs of government.

woke enablers