A Few More Highlights From Last Night

Greenville, NC dateline — https://t.co/KrSiaVL71R

— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) June 6, 2021

“The evidence is too voluminous to even mention,” Trump said at one point. Tellingly, he never mentioned it, choosing instead to insist that dead people had voted, that Facebook had encouraged get out the vote drives in liberal enclaves, and that “Indians” were paid to vote (ostensibly referring to Native Americans) — none of it supported by fact. “It was a third world election like we’ve never seen before,” he said.

And about that "comeback":

The speech served as a quasi kick off to the will-he-or-won’t-he stage of speculation around whether Trump will give a White House run another go. He has privately told confidantes that he is inclined to do so and recently put out a statement premised on the idea that he wouldn’t just run again, but win. Saturday was Trump’s first public speech since appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February. Since then, the ex-president has made remarks behind closed doors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida and has done interviews with friendly, right-leaning shows.

“He just can’t quit it and get away from it,” said one former campaign adviser. “He probably sees this as a legacy defining thing, and I know it’s superficial to say but he doesn’t want to go out as a loser.”

Trump is planning to cross the country making a series of speeches this summer. So far, he’s expected to appear in Ohio, to support former White House aide turned congressional candidate Max Miller; in Alabama to support Republican Senate candidate Rep. Mo Brooks; in Georgia, where he remains embittered about the outcome of the 2020 election results; and his home state of Florida. He’s also scheduled to speak at CPAC Texas this July in Dallas.

Not one of those is an actual Trump "rally."  He's not risking any more Tulsas, and he's certainly not paying for them.  Other people are; he just wants to be sure he's the bride at everyone else's wedding, the corpse at everyone else's funeral.

If I had the skills, I'd create a GIF of Saint Ronnie morphing into Donald Trump.  As someone said on MTP this morning, Trump hasn't taken over the GOP; this IS the GOP.  All the anti-Trumpers at The Bulwark and the Lincoln Project who swear undying loathing for Trump once swore undying fealty to the political canonization of Ronald Reagan.  They created this cult-of-personality-cum-political-party, and now they are reaping the benefits of it.  The so-called "liberal" Democrats never recognized the legislative genius of LBJ; they just excoriated him for Vietnam.  FDR came closest to be being a Democratic icon, but Democrats have never really been "the party of FDR."  Or Truman, when he was briefly in vogue.  But the GOP went rather easily from being "the party of Lincoln" to being "the party of Reagan" (more properly "St. Ronnie") to now being the party of...Trump.

Sorry, guys, it's in your "genetics," so to speak.  Organizations and institutions have a culture that can be likened to a genetic code:  it's a set of traits, characteristics, behaviors, that persist over time despite the replacement of all the constituent members.  Think of the paradox (so-called) of Theseus's ship:  if you replace each part of it over time, repairing it to preserve the original, when is it no longer the original and no longer really Theseus' ship?  Any organization eventually loses all the founding and original members and yet will generally persist in the behavior/function it had from the beginning. Some of that may be due to contracts and by-laws (particularly in the case of businesses), but churches can carry on being beacons of light or a pit of snakes, depending on how the congregation began, long, long after all the original members are dim memories, if that.  Political parties are no exception to this rule.  So the party that began by identifying itself (soon enough, anyway) as the "Party of Lincoln" has always looked for someone to canonize as their next icon, their next exemplar (whether he was or not) of the "ideals" the party represents.  Once it was Lincoln, then it was Reagan; now it's Trump.

They have met the enemy; and it is them.  Small wonder the Lincoln Project and The Bulwark want to remake the Democrats in their old Republican image.  But what this country doesn't need is a second party that is GOP-Lite.

Trump is a doddering old fool whose people are joining him in still fighting the past and blaming everyone else for their failures when they had the responsibility of governance.  But that's what happens when you worship false idols (and all idols are false).  You make the idols responsible, and when they fail you (being false, being idols, they always do), you blame them, rather than shoulder the responsiblity yourself.

Trump blames anyone not loyal enough to him, by his definition.  Never Trumpers blame Trump and everyone else but themselves.  Now, if we could only put 'em together in a room and lock the door....