The president of the United States lost his re-election bid on Nov. 3. But you wouldn’t know it if you talked to most members of the Republican Party. While the president occupies his time retweeting an account called Cat turd and the craziest paranoid ratings of the “dumbest man on the internet,” Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, the party that has been largely held hostage by Trump for the last four years continues to be… held hostage by Trump. While still in captivity, the Republicans have splintered into three main categories: the crazies, the quiets, and the hostages.
The first group, the crazies, is the one that has flourished under Trump and Trumpism. They’re the people who would start firing squads if necessary. They are the Trump cheerleaders, the worst and ugliest of the Trumpian sycophants, the Matt Gaetzes, the Louie Gohmerts, the Lou Dobbses, the Maria Bartiromos. These people are happy to ride the elevator down to the basement with Trump.
Recently, Dobbs delivered a monologue on his Fox Business sycophancy hour that might make one of Kim Jong Un’s newscasters blush: “If I may, Mr. President, the problem here is that you’re not just fighting fraud any more than you were just fighting the Russia hoax. That was an effort, not a hoax, to overthrow your presidency. Not a hoax. An outright effort to overthrow the presidency of the United States that went on from the time you won the office to the time right now. The irregularities in this year’s election are not just fraud, electoral or voter, they are another attempt to overthrow the President of the United States.”
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And the once (a long time ago) respected “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo told Trump that “the facts are on your side” (they aren’t) and continued with “will we be hearing a victory in Pennsylvania in the next couple of days?” The election in Pennsylvania had already been certified.
In this group are the president’s large adult children and the president’s craziest lawyer (at least today—it’s a very competitive field) Joe diGenova, who said on the Howie Carr radio show that Chris Krebs, the former head of cybersecurity who declared the election honest, was “a class A moron” and “should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.” You know; normal stuff.
Then there are the quiets, the people who know better but are too cowardly to do the right thing. These are the people who live in mortal fear of alienating the base. People like Mitch McConnell, Roy Blunt, and all those senators nobody’s ever heard of from Idaho and those places that shouldn’t have two senators to begin with. Blunt, of Missouri, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and was too pathetic and cowardly to call Joe Biden “the president-elect” despite the fact that he is pretty indisputably the president-elect.
This category now includes, at least for the moment, Ronna McDaniel, RNC chair and niece of Mitt Romney. McDaniel, who has a Twitter feed that makes Neera Tanden look like Mister Rogers, is usually to be seen hanging around the first-class lounge of the lunatic caucus, but suddenly she’s quiet. That’s because this weekend, Ronna found herself in a sticky wicket trying to convince Republicans to vote in likely the most important Senate run off of our lifetimes.
These two Georgia Senate seats will dictate who controls the Senate and its power. Trump supporters are conflicted about voting in an election that their mango-flavored God King has been repeatedly telling them is “rigged.” Ergo they asked Ronna why should they donate “money and work when it's already decided.” So now the RNC chair gets to try to figure out how to keep the president happy while still encouraging his base to ignore him and vote. One might be tempted to feel bad for McDaniel if her own cowardice hadn’t created this pickle.
And finally there are the hostages—the Republican elected officials, the people who didn’t think the leopard would eat their face too, the people who never thought Trump’s GOP would come for them. These are the people like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. All three of whom are being threatened by Trumpists for not delivering their states to the president. Raffensperger told The Washington Post that he’s being getting death threats that say things like, “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.” Raffensperger calls the threats “very disillusioning” and notes this is true “particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle.”
On Monday, Ducey certified the presidential election while Rudy Giuliani held a presser down the street. Either the president or the vice president tried to call while Ducey was signing the document, which we know because Ducey ignored a call that rang with the ringtone “Hail to The Chief,” which is the ringtone that Ducey uses for them.
There is a temptation to feel badly for the smoldering corpse of the Republican Party, but I implore you not to. These people did this to themselves. The Republican Party put power over values, and now they are hostages to the Trump base, and it’s well deserved. Never before in American history has a political party so debased itself in the name of enabling a reality television host with no principles.
Usually one roots for the safe return of the hostages. But not in this situation. The hostages kidnapped themselves and can leave anytime they want. The question is… will they?
