Republican Lifers Turn Their Backs On Republicans
Mr. Trump must unify the GOP. This means forgoing attacks on fellow Republicans, acting gracious toward party leaders who skipped the convention, and making the gathering about more than simply himself. He should emphasize the party’s values and the success of down-ballot candidates.
—Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2016
No. No. No. No.
My old drinking buddy, Karl Rove, has once again emerged from his moth-ball laden hyperbolic chamber of bitter defeat and humiliation to wax poetic on what the man whom he derided for eight months should do to become president of the United States. But like his infamously doomed FOX NEWS argument on election night four years ago that Obama did not win Ohio and thus the presidency, he is wrong.
Rove is so spectacularly wrong it proves once again how an alarming number of stalwart Republicans, confused by its electorate, cling to the weird notion that elections and democracy don’t matter. These past 11 months of campaigning, polling, actual election results from a long and painful primary is merely a mirage and Mitt Romney is president and the Bushes aren’t relegated to the junk heap of American history and everything Rove believes in has not been roundly rejected.
The pending nomination of the Republican candidate for president will be entering the arena in Cleveland for the party’s convention this week precisely because he has de-unified Rove’s precious Grand Old Party, which has been looking older by the year. He garnered more votes than any Republican who ever sought the office in the party’s 162 years specifically because he has been ungracious to the politically shackled and ideologically paralyzed “party leaders”. He is now one of only two Americans standing who have a shot at the presidency in large part because he made this whole thing about “simply himself”.
It is as if Rove has stumbled from H.G. Wells’ late 19th century time machine blathering about the wonders of carborundum.
And so poor wounded, blubbering Karl represents the parade of anachronistic stumblebums that have been kicked to the curb and now insist on walking out on the will of the Republican electorate, which overwhelming chose Citizen Donald J. Trump over the usual putrid fare. It is that same gaggle that whines and stomps its collective feet like children and refuses to support the people’s nominee. Major party figures, nearly the whole of the senate and a huge portion of Republicans in Congress are either sitting this one out or openly running for cover.
Let me get this straight; Republicans, who have built their brand, careers, their very existence on the Republican Party, which is purportedly a representation of Republicans, the majority of which voted for Donald Trump throughout four months over 50 states and several U.S. territories, are not participating in this (they love to claim) sacred democratic act—the very democratic act they have sworn to uphold in the very jobs that define them?
So, democracy is all well and good, unless the results of said democracy don’t go your way.
Slap that nonsense on a bumper sticker, some rube will buy it.
Also, it is important to point out at this juncture in the diatribe that the Republican Party had all of the candidates sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee, which would be decided fair-and-square under the rules they agreed to, and now only one of them, Ted Cruz, is going to honor it?
It should also be pointed out that Cruz would show up to anything as long as there are cameras and a microphone. He is headed to a Christian/NRA Monster Truck Rally right after he speaks and is rumored to be hawking some new metal cleaner on the Home Shopping Network every Thursday for two months.
This is as interesting a political story as we have seen in these shape-shifting historical times. Party lifers, public sector parasites, who’ve built dynasties and decades upon decades of power and privilege through the ranks of the Republican Party, the Bushes, Mitt Romney, John McCain, even the governor of Ohio, John Kasich, who sought the office only a few months ago, all refuse to endorse the party’s candidate and will not show up to the party’s convention this week.
If there is not a more glaring example of why Trump has been a boon to the American political landscape, nothing is. For all intents and purposes, Trump has so badly broken these freeloading lapdogs they have forgotten how many far more disturbing miscreants they deigned to support in the past. None of these sore-losers have any trouble singing the glorious praises of such shady luminaries as Ronald Reagan and his underhanded cronies, war-criminal, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, who cheated on his wife while she lie dying of cancer, or the hypocritical ward heeler, Romney, who now sees Trump as a lunatic but begged for his endorsement in 2012 while the former was still insisting the sitting president of the United States was illegitimate for not having been born in this country.
This week, Trump’s whipping boy, Jeb Bush, had the gall to state on national television that Trump lacked the necessary tools to lead, because as a Bush, he claims to know “first-hand what leadership is”. Yes, and as he conveniently dismisses his brother’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, he now conveniently forgets how pathetically awful his father and brother had been as presidents. Hell, Jeb says he won’t even vote. Really? This ungrateful, soul-sucking jackass, whose only reason for even having a chance at a national voice is because daddy’s condom broke, is openly refusing to “do his duty as an American” because he doesn’t “agree” with either candidate.
Who agrees with candidates?
I have no problem abstaining from the mostly meaningless exercise of voting and have openly defended everyone’s right to do so, but Jeb Bush? He is government. He is the Republican Party.
And all this because Trump called him names.
Can you imagine if anyone actually voted for this pussy?
Lord knows what kind of freak show Donald Trump has planned for this week, but it doesn’t appear that beyond the speaker of the house or senate majority leader and some fairly insignificant congressmen and maybe Sarah Palin or Gingrich or whatever sycophant the nominee drags onto the ticket, it will not include “party leaders”.
Trump’s run, this convention, the entirety of the ridiculous political party system is being dragged into the spotlight and that light has come to show us that indeed those who choose to stay away and thus reject the will of its party’s voters admit in the most vigorous way that they do not care for or represent the people, the very description of the jobs they have supposedly held for more years than should be tolerated.
I don’t have a fucking clue what “America” Donald Trump thinks would be “Great”, but this one right now is pretty goddamn fantastic.
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. and his new book, “Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon”.
