Republicans Shocked—Shocked—That Trump is Trump
What? He's undisciplined?
Axios (“Trump’s Capitol Hill allies fume at his unfocused candidacy“):
Former President Trump’s apparent inability to stay on message is grating on some of his Republican allies on Capitol Hill, who worry the 2024 election is slipping away from their party.
Why it matters: Republican lawmakers fear that an unfocused campaign could doom their chances of winning control of Congress — a concern voiced by the leader of the House GOP’s campaign arm in a call with colleagues on Thursday evening. “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the most left-wing ticket in history,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) said on the call, according to a source familiar with his comments. “If we aren’t disciplined in repeating that message — we could lose this country.”
What we’re hearing: “I hear a great deal of frustration from supporters,” one House Republican told Axios of Trump’s campaign rhetoric, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about their party’s presidential nominee. We are all hoping that he will focus more,” added the lawmaker, who, like most other Republicans in Congress, has publicly endorsed Trump. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a Trump endorser who is fighting to hold onto a district President Biden won in 2020, said Harris’ progressive Senate voting record “should be the message every day.” Another House Republican told Axios of Trump’s current dark spot: “If he doesn’t have message discipline, and he doesn’t focus on the sh*t we need to be focused on right now, it’s not going to pass.”
Salon (“‘It’s like he’s choosing to lose’: Trump allies fear he is self-destructing over Kamala Harris surge“):
One month ago, former President Donald Trump seemed poised to retake the White House from an ailing President Joe Biden. Now that he’s falling behind Vice President Kamala Harris, people close to Trump’s campaign are complaining to Vanity Fair that the GOP nominee is only making matters worse. “It’s like he’s choosing to lose,” one of them vented.
The first obvious signs of the unraveling came in late July, as Harris’ entry into the race seemed to re-awaken Trump’s deep-seated impulse to attack rivals based on their identity. At a July 31 conference for Black journalists, Trump said that Harris, who is mixed-race, changed her identity from Indian to Black for political gain, an attack line he continues to use on the campaign trail. At a rally in Georgia days later, Trump spent 10 minutes ranting about Brian Kemp, the state’s popular Republican governor, for being insufficiently loyal during his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. “Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy,” he taunted.
On Truth Social, Trump has been posting far-fetched conspiracy theories, including a prediction that Biden will crash the Democratic National Convention to wrest back the nomination and disproven claims that Democrats are creating AI images of Harris’ packed rallies. “It’s nuts,” one Trump confidante told Vanity Fair.
[…]
Trump’s allies fear that Harris’ momentum has thrown their candidate into a panicked fury, and are urging him to focus on the policy debate. “I do think it’s counterproductive to call her stupid,” longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told Vanity Fair, referring to one of several epithets that Trump has lobbed against Harris alongside nicknames like “Laffin Kamala” and “Kambala.” Trump is reportedly unmoved, telling his circle: “I know what I’m doing.”
Let’s stipulate that he’s gotten a bit worse since 2020 and has not reacted well to the switcharoo atop the Democratic ticket. But Trump has been a rambling, incoherent, angry guy on the stump since the moment he came down that escalator in 2015. To paraphrase Denny Green, he is what we thought he was. Why are these guys surprised?
Granting that the Republican primary electorate chose Trump in competitive primaries in 2016 and 2024, it’s not like these leaders made a concerted effort to point out the obvious after the 2020 debacle. That they’re stuck with a losing candidate is largely their own damned fault.
100%
But as Republicans begin to suspect that they made a bad decision backing a woman-hating, racist, rapist and traitor, hoping to become an autocrat, they need some self-preserving rationalization. It was always going to come to this because the alternative is admitting that they were willing, witting bootlicks to the worst creature in the history of American politics.
We’re slowly moving into our new Lost Cause mythology. You know, the one where the Civil War was never about slavery it was about, um. . . state’s rights and a way of life. Or tariffs. Or mint juleps. And the Nazis? That was all about the Versailles treaty. And Manifest Destiny was just about proper land use. Mongols? Hey, ponies need grass, don’t they?
It won’t be that Trump was a piece of shit from Day One and they all knew it, no, it’ll be that he was fighting for our rights but then, hey, he got older and didn’t adapt and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
We must not allow this. Let’s have no Gone With The Wind for MAGAts. They are liars and bigots, hypocrites and traitors to everything this country stands for at home and abroad. They never had a good cause, it was always, from the start, about self-pity and entitlement and hate.
They got exactly what they wanted. They need someone with a sort of common man charisma who’s ignorant enough to sincerely believe their bullshit: Reagan, W, Trump. (OK, Trump doesn’t actually believe anything, but he doesn’t care, which is close enough.) Elect a clown …
I think someone here linked to Jamelle Bouie’s recent column What the Republican Party Might Look Like if Trump Loses (gift link). Bouie’s conclusion is consistent with weak parties, Trump owns the base and as long as he does, he owns the party. He also notes GOPs are still strong in the empty states, which also means they maintain national influence in Congress without the prez.
But. In mid-2028 Trump will be 82. His mental and physical health are already visibly failing. His criminal cases will continue. (A wealthy elderly white guy isn’t going to prison.) I’m still thinking, weak party or no, Trump won’t be a factor in 2028, and he’ll probably fade earlier, going the way of the Tea Party. He could try to play kingmaker, but I can’t see him supporting anyone outside the family, and they’re all laughable.
“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the most left-wing ticket in history,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) said on the call, according to a source familiar with his comments. “If we aren’t disciplined in repeating that message — we could lose this country.”
This is the most pathetic messaging, and it’s all they can manage. Which makes it a perfect distillation of the Republican Party.
They’ve outsourced all discussion of “policy” to fringe weirdos with conspiracy theories and grievance complexes. They collectively have zero idea how – and zero desire – to do critical analysis. They can’t even sort out real from fake, and their proposals for fixing what’s fake are laughable, self-serving trash. No chance they can propose anything to fix what’s real.
Given my reference to Bouie above and @Michael Reynolds: talk of GOPs adopting a “Lost Cause” mythology wrt/ Trump, Bouie’s column today is a critique of 1993″s Gettysburg (gift link). He’s basically OK with it as a movie, but objects to it’s Lost Cause lean. I didn’t strongly object as it was about the battle, the leaders, and the troops, and as is usually the case, the war itself became the cause. But Bouie has a point about Gettysburg, and almost all Civil War movies, eliding the cause. And Ken Burns’ The Civil War was, if anything, worse. I forget which historian has a habit I’ve copied of referring to it not as the Union Army, but as the United States Army. The rebels were, in point of fact, rebels, and over a horrible cause.
@ptfe:
As I noted in the other thread, if your intent is to govern, you need to have coherent policy positions and a plan to enact them. If your intent is to rule, all you need is a demonic opponent and a plausible case that you alone can protect the people.
The Republicans aren’t going public with their issues with Trump now because they are surprised by some sudden lack of focus. They are dissing Trump now because his plausibility as a strongman is being powerfully undercut by his flailing response to having his ass kicked by the worst Democratic ticket ever.
Gettysburg link didn’t work for me.
Maybe this?
“NYT_Gift“
@charontwo: I linked it (gift link) in the tabs post as well.
@charontwo: @Steven L. Taylor: Dang. Sorry.
Oh, damn. If only there had been some way for Republiqans to pick a better candidate earlier this year!
@gVOR10:
I think a candidate as deeply, massively flawed as Trump is but can still poll within the margin of error indicates it’s not all about Trump. America, United States of, has become something very different from what it once was. This demographic must be understood. They’re here, they’re weird, and the underlying causes of their outrage must be accepted.
I think McGovern/Eagleton, ptfe,
would be surprised to hear this.
@Joe:..left-wing ticket…
As I was looking for campaign memorabilia representing the the Democratic ticket that eventually ended up on the ballot in 1972. I stumbled on this. Did big oil have the Democrats in their back pocket in ’72?
@Mister Bluster:..the
the…I have this recurring fantasy that soon Trump will say: “I am 1,000 percent for J D Vance and have no intention of dropping him from the ticket.”
However I am not holding my breath.
Is he prepping for an insanity defense?
Leaving aside the boring partisan non-analyses that resolve down to the opposition being moustache twirling cartoon villians, the most troubling take-away from this process is the extreme weakness of the US party political system, essentially having only a rudimentary ‘immune system’ of norms that once weakened have little to no good institutional off-set tools. Pr. Taylor’s observations as to the risk of this (and one that it is historical luck for the Democrats to dodge) are important and useful. As it is otherwise utterly baffling to see the evident non-coordination of Republican party elites to have missed taking any chance to put a knife in Trump when any proper party apparatus would have seen the immense risk, but then the coordination problem arose [it remains unflattering that none of the possible actors did so, but that’s perhaps also their own incompetence along with weak institution, as see De Santis].
@Michael Reynolds: quite regardless of sanity, it is hard to see this as appealing to anyone outside of the Trumpist core. Which is a comfort at some level insofar as Trump non-adaption to new challenge is a positive (not for Trump).
@dazedandconfused: Fundamentally if one wishes to head off Trumpian outcomes writing off as the Democrats have de facto the progressive loss of the labouring classes ex-historical-ethnic-minorities is not a path to electoral success nor stability.
Since the data indicate a significant portion of the Trumpian base was once Democratic party voting within two decades, there is rather evidently a problem – and writing them off as deplorables and otherwise “false-consciousness” voting (in modernised language) is a path to continued knife-edge elections, given the demographic structure within the electoral college which makes such overweight concern.
Rather than going on about a changed country it seems rather more useful to pragmatically look at paths to addressing what is obviously a bad sales approach to those segments (of which snobbery and over-focus on the university educated, with extensive blindness to the non-uni educated).
@Lounsbury:
The problem isn’t one of sales, IMO. Have to look at the underlying cause of their discontent, as arguing with the bullshit they have been told is a mug’s game. The underlying cause is they are getting poorer and this is a change them most definitely do believe in. Cure that, or at least address it directly with plausible solutions*, and watch the BS melt away.
*Yeah, I know. Hell of a lot easier to say than to do.