“You stepped on my message.” – Anonymous establishment Republican political consultant up-in-arms about a certain former president dominating the political news headlines.
I did? Where? “Right there! Don’t you see it? Well pick it up! Anyone can see that we’re supposed to limit discussion of the 2022 elections to feeble and senile president Joe Biden and ‘safe’ topics like inflation and Afghanistan and kitchen table issues and Democrat spending. If you start bringing up controversial non-woke cultural matters and that agenda stuff it just gives Democrats the chance to run TV political ads against us accusing Republicans of wanting to deprive seniors of their healthcare and women of their right to choose. What are you, ignorant?
“And don’t even think about mentioning Donald Trump.”
A fictional mini-back-and-forth, yes, but a debate that’s continuing to rage within the Republican Party. With the Labor Day holiday now in the rearview mirror, talk and attention shifts to the home stretch of the Republican party’s mission to wrest control of Congress away from senile president Joe Biden and Democrat congressional leaders and thus place procedural and legislative shackles on the current ruling party.
For only holding a relatively slim majority in the House and no advantage at all in the 50-50 senate (plus vice president cackling Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote), Democrats have banded together to inflict a remarkable amount of destruction on the American public. Give credit where it’s due – both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader “Chucky” Schumer have done a more than respectable job of getting their caucuses to cling to each other and pass stuff, the only barrier to their unfettered domination proving to be the upper chamber’s filibuster tradition.
Those Republicans who figured that the combination of Democrat senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema together with the filibuster would equal more than enough to stop the majority’s most damaging new laws were sadly mistaken. As predictable as the tides, Democrats, with generous help from certain establishment Republicans named Mitch McConnell, were able to sanction a good portion of senile Joe’s agenda to be etched into law despite his extreme and warranted unpopularity.
Rampant inflation and an economic recession have resulted. Gasoline prices dropped some over the summer but remain impossibly high for wage earners to afford. Food products, you probably have noticed, are still as outlandish as they’ve been all year.
Biden’s COVID-19 policies have been a total failure. As he and wife Dr. Jill themselves demonstrated, the vaunted vaccine didn’t do much of anything to prevent getting infected. The first couple caught it twice – each.
The American people are angry, as they should be. Joe Biden is incompetent at best and shrewdly crooked and compromised at worst. He seemingly can’t walk a straight line without shuffling or stumbling and his speeches are a mixture of nonsensical shouts and whispers, but the people around him are pushing through some really bad stuff.
How should Republicans go about winning in November? There’s hardly any consensus, but the usual suspects are still complaining that former President Donald Trump is intentionally or unintentionally stepping on their message. What else is new? In a piece titled “‘There’s enormous frustration’: Trump forces Republicans off-script… again”, Meridith McGraw, Andrew Desiderio, Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney reported at left-leaning Politico last week:
“After having decried the FBI’s search of the ex-president’s home, many Trump defenders went silent upon the release … of the probable-cause affidavit that revealed the extent of Trump’s efforts to hold onto the top-secret documents. GOP worries about the developments of the case and Trump announcing a 2024 run before November are giving way to a subtle, broader warning about putting the former president too much on the ballot this fall.
“’Republicans should focus on defeating Democrats, and every Democrat should have the word Biden in front of their name,’ said Trump ally and former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. ‘The Republican focus should be to win the election in November. Trump will do a fine job defending himself. He’ll be fine.’
“Some top Republicans acknowledge the growing angst and concern, as it’s become clearer that Trump may have been warehousing some of America’s most sensitive secrets in an unsecured basement — and even refused to turn them over when the National Archives and Justice Department tried to recover them. One top Republican fundraiser asked to describe the mood among donors, said, ‘There is enormous frustration.’”
Worry, worry, worry, gripe, gripe, gripe, grumble, grumble, grumble. Rather than issue no-holds-barred pointed assaults on the obvious nature of the deep state’s ongoing campaign to get at Donald Trump, ruling class Republicans give credence to the leaks and innuendo garnered from the investigators’ official explanations of what they were after in Trump’s underwear drawer.
“Oh, the top-secret documents! Oh, Trump the cad didn’t protect them! They could fall into the wrong hands, and, and, and… well, it’s just really, really, really bad!” These intestine-less wusses weren’t the least bit concerned when Hillary Clinton’s devices contained easily-hackable electronic records, but they sure seem possessed about Trump’s highly secured home having boxes full of paper records probably gathering dust in a rarely visited storeroom at Mar-a-Lago. This isn’t to minimize the fact they perhaps shouldn’t have been there, but let the size of the punishment match the severity of the crime. Isn’t that the American way?
As far as campaign messaging goes, of course Democrats and the media would prefer spending 99.9 percent of their time and energy focusing on the “national security secrets” allegedly illegally housed at Trump’s home resort. “Doesn’t Donald Trump love Vladimir Putin, and aren’t there Russian KGB agents regularly casing Mar-a-Lago? Who was on the guest list? Were the ‘help’ all properly screened for possible espionage propensities and Russian backgrounds?”
Yeah, there’s no double standard, is there? Dianne Feinstein can employ a Chinese spy as a limo driver for decades and no one seems overly concerned about secrets going to the wrong people, and of course there’s Congressman Eric Swalwell getting jiggy with a “Chinese honeytrap” (a.k.a, Fang Fang). What, me worry?
What about all the sweet nothings (somethings?) Hunter Biden certainly must’ve whispered to his Chinese and Ukrainian “companions” when he was naked and lit-up on crack? Heck, if the FBI was primarily concerned with catching spies, shouldn’t they be making visits to the prostitutes seen on Hunter’s computer? What national security related “documents” are contained in the Biden home? Did the “big guy” report all of his meetings to federal law enforcement?
The outrage mob, which includes a lot of establishment Republicans (and not just Liz Cheney, either) picks and chooses their degree of shock and anxiety based on who’s committed the secular sin against the deep state deity. If the alleged perpetrator’s name starts with “T” and ends with “-rump”, then it’s automatically time to mobilize the damage control specialists and move to a position of “Um, well, if he did it – this time – then of course the voters should be fed up with him.”
Somewhat surprisingly, there appears to be a decent-sized contingent of Republican commenters who don’t think the Merrick Garland-led Department of Justice and Christopher Wray-led Federal Bureau of Investigation probes into Trump will dent his street-credibility with the MAGA base. Of course, by downplaying the possible ramifications of the “Get-Trump” pursuers’ quest, these few voices will not be invited to participate in “expert” panels on the mainstream establishment media news shows.
The fact is, Republicans shouldn’t be scared that Trump’s battle against the Democrats and their stormtroopers in the federal deep state is knocking them off message. They should be including it in their pitch to the voters this year as an example of the types of dangers Americans face to their way of life whenever liberals control the levers of power. Whereas Democrats champion miscreants like George Floyd while aligning themselves with the “defund the police” crowd, Republicans support local police forces, individual liberties (including free speech and religion) and safe streets.
And the United States border patrol. They’re federal, right?
It's been said a lot lately, but Republicans will win by condensing their “message” down to the topics that always get conservatives juiced – namely, crime, illegal immigration and national security. If Democrats are so upset about secrets being stolen by hypothetical infiltrators to Mar-a-Lago, how can they deny the blatant dangers surrounding unknown individuals crossing into our country undetected? Will these terrorists make a beeline for Trump’s house, break-in to the documents room and lift classified papers? Hardly.
Conservative and Republican candidates can also highlight differences in philosophy regarding energy exploration and production, their desire to delve into the COVID response and the true origins of the coronavirus as well as bring Dr. Anthony Fauci out of retirement and make him tell the truth.
There’s plenty of “message” there if Republicans would stop taking the establishment media’s bait on Trump every time. There wouldn’t be a need for anyone to be “frustrated” that Trump is knocking them off topic. The answers are simple – and the voters will come around to the pitch before November arrives. Let’s not forget we’ll have two months of Democrats obsessing on “climate change” and other stupidities before the elections.
Donald Trump held a rally on Saturday night in Pennsylvania. I didn’t see all of it, but judging by the clips I saw, he was his old self, the man he’s been since he entered politics seven years ago. Trump may not be the message everyone wants to talk about, but he excels at shaping and delivering the things folks want to hear.
These two months will go by quickly. It’s time for all conservatives to stand up and be counted.
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