CSotD: We’re Not Yet Warm And Dead
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There is an expression within the Cold Water Rescue community, “They’re not dead until they’re warm and dead.” It comes from having pulled people out of icy water with no discernible signs of life, only to find that they can be revived by appropriate action as they warm up. Only when they are warm and yet still show no vital signs are they pronounced dead.
At the moment, there is plenty over which to despair in this country, but Matson notes an interesting development, which is the growing rumors of Republican lawmakers quietly deciding not to run for reelection in the midterms.
Johnson would be a fool to ignore the rumblings, because we’ve had special elections that strongly indicated disaster ahead for the GOP. If the midterms are indeed headed for the falls, losing incumbents would add to the challenge of holding onto their slim-but-critical majority.
Johnson is not the most charismatic and powerful Speaker of the House in history, while over in the Senate, John Thune appears to be operating more on party loyalty than on personal power. This is not Lyndon Johnson stopping by to issue gentle, folksy threats but, in both houses, appeals to be one of the guys.
However, you can’t primary someone who isn’t running.
Donald Trump has taken over the Republican Party and imposed unity and loyalty from the heights of the executive branch, making the appeal of the GOP more a function of marketing than of policy. This use of Hollywood appeal in place of political stances worked for Ronald Reagan because, in addition to his movie-star fame, he had a significant background both leading the Screen Actors Guild and as governor of California.
Reagan could appeal to those who want fame and folksiness, while also satisfying those who wanted a rigid brand of old-school conservatism.
But Telnaes attributes Trump’s appeal entirely to marketing, and notes that his trip to Pennsylvania, which was supposed to be a revival of his mass appearances, went significantly off-track as he mocked the idea that “affordability” matters.
Goris suggests that even the most loyal of MAGA types will have to strain to accept the notion that affordability is a “hoax,” hoax being Trump’s catch-all term for anything that fails to resonate with his narrative.
We’ve come a long way since Trump’s first inauguration, in which he declared a record crowd despite obvious evidence to the contrary, and his absurd boasting was explained by Kellyanne Conway as an “alternative fact.”
Loyalists then declared that enormous throngs had gathered after the pictures were taken showing a small crowd.
There’s no such effort to explain the yawning chasms between fact and fiction anymore, and Karoline Leavitt is perfectly comfortable claiming on Newsmax that China bought no soybeans under Biden despite figures showing sales in excess of what is currently being sold there. As this analysis concluded:
Leavitt is either so profoundly uninformed on this subject that she didn’t know her claim could be easily disproven, or she just liked the sound of her lie and didn’t expect, or receive, any pushback from the Newsmax hosts conducting the interview.
They’re not even trying anymore, instead, counting on the dogged loyalty of the MAGA crowd, which is far from an electoral majority.
The average consumers, Mike Smith insists, will only be distracted by big, macho moves so long, given that they still have to put food on their tables, heat their homes and dress their children.
The advantage Trump retains is having loyalist networks like Fox, Newsmax and OAN to praise large gestures like seizing foreign ships while downplaying, and sometimes ignoring, day to day factors that impact average voters.
Kristi Noem made a fool of herself in front of a Congressional committee, in which she said no American veterans had been deported, only to be immediately confronted with two cases in which they had. Noem was reduced to spouting a word-salad that offered distractions but no answers.
And that’s not the biggest bump in the road she hit: The moment Brodner marks came when Rep. Dan Goldman got her to agree that people with ongoing cases are here legally and are not in violation of immigration law, which reduced her to irrelevant blather about Joe Biden in place of responsive answers.
Of course, the people who need to see these exchanges never will, because they won’t be shown on loyalist channels. And Trump’s desire to see CNN fall into friendly hands, plus his ongoing friendship with the new leadership at CBS, should remind us that a free press belongs to those who own one.
Or who post independently.
Brodner offers a two-fer, also noting the failure of national Republicans to intimidate Indiana Republicans into approving an insanely revised electoral map designed to deprive Democrats of any possible Congressional seats.
State legislators reported a flurry of threats, bomb scares and other grassroots terrorism, which helped many of them decide to reject the official pressure that came along with it.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rand Paul may be signaling a trend in Washington that has already gained a foothold in flyover country: Ignoring orders in favor of providing service. What a concept!
Will the farmers who voted Trump into office see past the three-card-monte game he’s playing now, in which he returns some of their tariff money to help repair the damage done by those tariffs?
As noted before, losing NFL teams still fill their stadiums, and lifelong fans are equally loyal to political parties. Like abused partners everywhere, they’ll find a way to explain why it was their fault and how they know it will never happen again.
Still, there is hope. They don’t all have to change. Each lost sheep who returns to the fold is cause for celebration.
And Now For Something Completely Different
It’s time again for the annual kerfuffle in which people once more forget that TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” isn’t always a good person and doesn’t always mark a positive development.
So a tip of the hat to Thor Benson, who observed: I guess it’s fitting that it’s a reimagined, worse version of someone else’s artwork.
Meanwhile, as Mr. Rogers said, we should look for the helpers:
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