Missing Republicans and Empty Chairs

By David Glenn Cox

For all the world it reminds me of Dick Nixon and Watergate. At first, it looked like Nixon would soldier on through Watergate. Ugly perhaps, but not fatal to his Administration. Then in dribs and drabs the tone changes from an innocent man going along with an investigation. To something is very fishy here and he’s trying not to tell us about it.

With each revelation, more and more Republican House members tried to shield their own careers from Nixon’s nuclear melt down and switched sides. Nixon didn’t participate in the burglary, but he helped to set it in motion. So, he might as well have held the flashlight. That was a high crime and misdemeanor if ever there was one.

Member by member, the mood of the Congress slowly changed. Nixon looked invincible at first and then suddenly, Nixon looked like a Macy’s balloon after the parade, tired, sinking into the pavement and leaking gasses. Donald Trump is getting more vitriolic every day. Calling people animals and calling seditionists patriots.

Trump’s been doing a whale of a job manipulating the media. The problem arises, the temperature must constantly get hotter and hotter just to keep them all enthralled. And then one by one, they no longer adhere and peel off like so many chips of paint.

Of course, there are the obvious ones, the Liz Cheney’s, and the Mitch McConnell’s. The Mitt Romney’s and Mike Pence. Now, Karl Rove the Party’s Martin Boreman character. Unofficial recording secretary and spiritual Godfather of the Republican Party has now peeled away from Trump. He’s lost KKKarl Rove. Karl Rove! That’s like Captain Crunch losing milk. The list grows daily. From just a few to quite a crowd, to almost everybody. Very Nixonian!

Somehow, all the smart kids are locked out of the honeycomb hideout and watching the Trump monkeys run the zoo. They begin realizing a ride on the Trump train could be a one-way ticket to ride. Lest the boiler overheat and the whole thing explodes. When members have to defend themselves after the maniac gurgling and bloviating of Donald Trump before an election.

The chimp wits don’t care what Trump says because they place no value in the meaning of words or of language. Trump could read a selection from that immortal Dr. Suess classic “Green Eggs and Ham.” It would make no difference to the dim penny stinkers. But it’s a long way from “Build the Wall” to calling people animals. The untermunchin.

It’s no fun anymore. Too many people being convicted of crimes. Too many court cases to keep up with. And Trump calls the seditionists inmates – “patriots!” Everyone has seen at least some of the tapes. Trump is asking them not to believe their own lying eyes but to believe him instead. That task gets harder each day.

Rather than move on and downplay January 6^th Trump wants to embellish it and proclaim it, and guess what? The Party doesn’t want to go along. This is where the Republican Party’s interests diverge from Donald Trump’s interests. Trump needs the Party to escape his legal tar pit and doesn’t care what’s left of the Party once he’s out. Trump is going to drive the Republican Party like a stolen car into November.

Trump has no political philosophy except sophism. And no ethical philosophy except to grab. Riling up the chimps in the monkey house. He’s taken the Party over and put them all in the closet with Patty Hearst. The Republican Party is the Trump Party but that doesn’t mean the Trump Party is necessarily Republican. Trump needs the Republican Party more than the Republican Party needs Donald Trump.

There was a reason Trump faced such light opposition in the primaries. He was considered too strong and unbeatable. But he was also seen as a sure loser. So even as Trump cake walked amid the punch dummies in the primaries, the money isn’t coming in as it should. Reality rears its ugly head! They love you still Don, but just don’t really think you can win.

Like the Republicans of a generation before, things are changing and the situation is fluid. If the Party were to let Trump dictate the campaign, they face a catastrophic defeat which could finish them as a national Party or hobble them for next twenty years.

Trump’s fascist vitriol does more to energize his opponents than to engage his supporters. It divides the Party between Republicans and Trumpers leaving no room in between. And we ain’t seen nothing yet! This is how Trump talks in April, just wait until September. Trump will be singing falsetto! I’m not guilty! A perfectly innocent phone call! Crooked Joe Biden DOJ!

But the tone is changing, and the defections continue occurring. There is a sense of historical inevitability to it all. I can’t wait for the Republican convention in Milwaukee. A half empty venue of screaming Trumpers, missing Republicans and empty chairs.

“Yes,” I said, “that is what I mean to say. I am not going to vote for him.” The others began to find their voices. They sang the same note. They said that when a party’s representatives choose a man, that ends it. If they choose unwisely, it is a misfortune, but no loyal member of the party has any right to withhold his vote. He has a plain duty before him and he can’t shirk it. He must vote for that nominee. I said that no party held the privilege of dictating to me how I should vote. That if party loyalty was a form of patriotism, I was no patriot, and that I didn’t think I was much of a patriot anyway, for oftener than otherwise what the general body of Americans regarded as the patriotic course was not in accordance with my views; that if there was any valuable difference between being an American and a monarchist it lay in the theory that the American could decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t; whereas” – Mark Twain