During his self-serving announcement Wednesday night, former president Donald Trump said he’ll seek reelection. At that moment, the former president confirmed today’s Republican party will remain a hive of fear, extremism and a show-palace of unending divisive political chaos.
In order to make America great again I’m announcing my candidacy for presidency of the United States, he said.
Trump’s announcement is buttercream icing on an already delicious cupcake of good fortune being served up to Democrats during this midterm election cycle. The big takeaway from the midterms couldn’t be clearer: the Republican party is a divided big polarizing mess infected by extremists and the majority of American voters aren’t having it.
The red wave turned out to be a mere spot on a blue dress that can easily be removed by more Trumpian nonsense which will now be back on main-stage display.
As Trump was trying to stir up the scary from Mar-a-Lago, millions of more traditional conservative Republicans from coast to coast could be heard heaving heavy sighs of utter despair and frustration.
They know mainstream conservatives and independent voters have continued to jump off the GOP’s crazy train in the years since Trump was forced out of office in 2020. Confirmation of voter sentiment about Trumpism came especially hard on Monday night when Trump’s glossed-up camera-queen Kari Lake was declared loser in the Arizona governor’s race.
Of all the midterm smackdowns of Trump endorsed candidates, the former TV anchor’s loss in a state that’s come as close as any to anointing into power full-on conspiracy theory spewing election deniers was the most telling and reassuring for the reasonably minded.
But even if Trump were not seeking another term, one need only look at the party’s infighting over its leadership to see how wrecked the party has become in the Trump-era. In the House, where Republicans will likely hold a single digit lead over Democrats, there’s already been a kerfuffle over whether or not Kevin McCarthy or the way far-right representative Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs should be named leader.
House Republican support for Donald Trump is most likely still healthy. Among his more extremist disciples, he’s still a god-like figure sent down from above. Take Florida’s Matt Gaetz who on November 9 wrote in the ultra-conservative Daily Caller that America needs Donald Trump back in the White House.
“The job President Trump started was not finished. Only Trump can be trusted to enact the ‘America First’ agenda he ran on in 2016. We won’t accept any imitation. Despite what many Washington, D.C., conservative elites want you to believe, we are not in the ‘post-Trump era’ or close to it,” Gaetz wrote.
Here in New York City, America’s oldest and largest young republican club is betting on Trump. Just a few hours before he made his announcement at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Young Republican club endorsed and pledged its full support to the reelection of Donald Trump as president.
“Do not kowtow to the Deep State,” the club tweeted.
The 111-year-old club will host its annual gala on December 10 at an undisclosed tri-state location and the guest of honor will be none other than Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the alt-right broadcaster Jack Posobieck. Leave it to a New York City club to host a high-end MAGA gala.
But Republicans in Washington are reading the writing on the wall and beginning to talk more openly about the political challenges they’ll likely face among voters in the coming years with Trump and his extremist disciples still in the spotlight. If nothing else, these midterms confirmed Americans prefer steady hands and optimism or at least, middle of the road politicos not fear-mongering conspiracy theory embracing snake-oil salesmen like Trump.
"The Republican Party, as we have known it, is dead," Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said on Monday. "Voters have made that clear, and in particular, the folks who did not vote for Republicans in this last election were independent voters, working-class, independent voters, folks who voted for President Obama, once upon a time, folks who then voted for President Trump but stayed home this time,” he said. “We are not a majority party unless we can appeal to those voters."
Hawley and other Republicans should understand, they won’t win the hearts and minds of those voters by raising a defiant fist to angry mobs who then overrun the capital and threaten to hunt down and kill people including the vice president and speaker of the house. For more than six years, Sen. Hawley and the other moral cowards in the upper echelons of today’s GOP, knowingly sold their souls to the devil and normalized Trump’s ugly, nationalistic, far-right extremism and now, the old devil has come to collect.