Get Trump
Like aging mob leaders' McConnell and McCarthy's primary responsibility, aside from lining their pockets and servicing their large donors, is to stop President Donald Trump's hostile takeover.
The Republican establishment in Congress and the various Red States agrees on one thing above all else: their self-interest - It's not personal; it's just big business. They have no political programme, no goal to reverse social progressivism, no coherent critique of the decline of the family, and no answer to the left taking over a college education. Whatever they say they will do can be discounted because they have no intention of implementing it.
There is no need for introspection or course correction. They favour free markets, but that is because their donors monopolise all industries; they appear to favour liberty, but this is an illusion. The January 6th peaceful protesters continue to languish in prison, without charge, two years on.
They prefer wars on terror or for the "democratic rights of nations", but only when it suits their self-interest and geopolitical dominance. They can neither be trusted abroad nor trusted at home. But to understand their nature, we must first look into the mirror of their adversaries.
The best way to understand the Democrats is to see them as aged gangsters leading ailing but ruthless and dangerous mobs. Everyone knows, at least in Chicago, that Sam Giancana fixed the 1960 election for Kennedy, so let's start with the windy city.
Top of the tree are the Obamas “out of” Chicago, biding their time until Michelle can be sure of an easy opponent. Newly retired Nancy Pelosi represents the old guard out of California. The Clintons out of Arkansas are convinced they've one last Presidential payday, even if no one else is.
Joe Biden, consumed by greed but limited by family dysfunction, mediocrity, and dementia, has the sponsorship of Barrack Obama and managed to relaunch a racket in Ukraine of all places. Straight out of Brooklyn, Hakeem Jeffries newish kid on the block, will likely take over from Pelosi, marking a shift from West to East Coast in the House of Representatives as Democrat minority leader.
Stacey Abrams is still a wandering, baseless embarrassment. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont kingpin, might have one more come-second Presidential nomination run in him before he sells his latest endorsement for the predetermined leader, one last cash-in on what's left of his waning credibility but potent name recognition. Someone else will emerge as the far leftist and Hollywood car sticker favourite pied piper. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looks like she was too eager to cash in, period.
If you want to get rich through democratic politics, you rely on your family to play bagman. You come to "understandings" after you insider trade or fix business regulations and contracts, or a juicy Netflix deal awaits after you leave office. Others set up Trust Funds and Foundations (Clintons) to launder their international bribes; others get places on boards and large salaried consultancies for their no-nothing spouses or progeny (Hunter Biden).
Washington is the centre of the biggest deals via international trade, military hardware, CIA regime change, and all kinds of favours. And so extravagant and extensive are the deals, laundering of money, via Kiev or Tehran, London, Cairo or Mexico City, with both parties, intelligence agencies and many other factions profiting. Watch their bank accounts and tax returns expand far beyond their wages and note the astronomical campaign budgets and PAC battalions that guarantee their runs for power, and it all falls into place.
But when the White House starts insulting those nations and leaders who have formerly been willing to pay up - and the racket ceases to afford them any protection - many second-tier countries are finding out, like the European countries are discovering - that being a friend of America can cost you continental peace and a Nord Stream pipeline or two.
The Saudis, the Indians, and spirited little South Africa see Russia and China as more straightforward, reliable and less likely to insult them to their face. They might like the Climate change reparations, but they know in their heart-of-hearts, it will all end up back in American and European hands (minus their cut, of course). They will remain as underdeveloped and lectured to as ever. It's getting a bit rich listening to Western leaders talk about third-world election practices whilst the Democrats and the Republicans use all the same techniques.
This brings us back to the Republicans: Mitch McConnell, out of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, and Kevin McCarthy, out of California's 22nd congressional district and the leader of the House of Representatives. These guys, like the Democrats, are old and getting older because they trust no one - and in the case of McCarthy, a non-aggression pact with the Democrats over his California seat.
The ceasefires, mutual fixing, and turning a blind eye can occasionally break down - these are a den of thieves and liars, and did I mention greedy with it? After all, they are politicians. But at the moment, just like in Serpico, the last thing they want is someone not on their take, which is where Donald J. Trump comes in.
McConnell and McCarthy's primary responsibility, aside from lining their pockets and servicing their big donors, is keeping discipline in the Republican ranks and stopping President Donald Trump - formerly of New York but now in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida - from completing his hostile takeover of what they consider is their Grand Old Party (GOP). They work together to torment, mislead and, wherever possible, demoralise and neutralise the Make America Great Again activists and voters.
They want to get rid of the independent blacks, rednecks and Hoi polloi attracted to the party by President Trump. They want to return to idle promises they do not intend to deliver on; they want to fleece the small supporters for money and use that money to buy loyalty from new candidates and those seeking re-election on the Republican ticket.
They want to spot the MAGA candidates and keep them away from primary nomination, and if they can't unsettle their campaigns, then buy them off and turn them to the dark side like they have done with so many Tea Party candidates before them. Yes, I'm talking about you, Marco Rubio.
Even the dead want to get rid of Trump. The late Senator John McCain's outfit in Arizona politics got their revenge on Kari Lake, just like John McCain did by getting off his brain cancer deathbed to vote down President Trumps Health Insurance legislation. Are you surprised that the Republicans might conspire with the Democrats against their President?
Well, when Judge Roy Moore ran in the Alabama special Senator race, McConnell worked with the Republican Governor Kay Ivey to ensure thousands of prisoners were given the vote. Accusations of sexual misconduct against Moore dominated the campaign that even a Trump endorsement could not save (of course, the misconduct allegations melted away after the election).
Doug Jones became an unlikely Democrat winner with a 20,000 majority. But President Trump got his own back three years later when his next pick, Tommy Tuberville, defeated Jeff Sessions, Trump's former failure as Attorney General who was attempting to make a return to Alabama politics, in the primary. Tuberville went on to beat Jones by a massive 20-point victory. But by then, Mitch had bigger fish to fry: the President himself.
The candidacies of Bush, Dole, Bush Jnr, McCain and Romney were variously successful or ineffective. Still, it consistently offered a mixture of managed industrial decline, global trade sellouts and payoffs, minor or significant lucrative military interventions, and corporate ascendency. The Republican Party’s brand declined in the wake of the Reagan era, whether it was the "Read my lips: no new taxes" of George Bush Senior, followed by a lot more taxes, or the later War on Terror of his son, with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the signing into law of the Patriots Act which unleashed what we now know as the Surveillance State on the American people.
The critical states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada are central to any Presidential run. And today, the GOP, run by Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, has aligned interests with the Surveillance State and the Democrats; this is a formidable majority of the ruling factions that run the United States of America and precisely what the Constitution, with its divided powers, was supposed to prevent.
The Red wave of swing votes to Republicans existed and can be seen in considerable increases in the Republican ballot for Governor, Senate and the House of Representatives seats. The popular vote numbers were up. As of Thursday morning, November 10, 2022, the Republicans had won 50,113,534 votes, or 52.3% of the vote, compared to 44,251,768, or 46.2% for the Democrats. A Republican lead of 6.1%, three times the level in the opinion polls at the end of campaigning. Yet somehow, this did not align with the key states. Where Democrats were caught napping, the results in New York State show huge swings, the capture of vital House seats and a candidate with limited funding nearly ousting the sitting Democrat Governor. In retrospect, this means nothing, of course, if crucial electoral races are lost. The important "tell" here is the silence from McConnell and McCarthy over the massive early postal balloting, prolonged voter counts well over a week after polling day, discovered ballots, failing voting machines (Arizona), and blackouts in camera CCTV coverage of polling offices during the count (Nevada), with some still counting on 16/11/2022. Some of this is legal, and quite a bit of it is illegal in the relevant states.
The red wave was there in Florida and New York but not in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Yeah right. And as the "incomplete counts" for the House are in California (and I think New York), the Dems were left with a political calculation: do they want to keep control of congress with an ailing unpopular President and a rapidly worsening economic situation or let the Republicans have the House and impeach Biden. They went for the latter.
In effect, a second stolen nationwide election and a marker played by the GOP to the base "Select Trump, and we will do exactly the same in 2024".
The methods don't require complex digital manipulation or Dominion machine algorithms. Just front-load mass postal ballot harvesting of the living or the dead on postal rolls, often containing people who have moved state, so you start ahead on voting day, sabotaged voting machines and ballot forms in Republican voting areas, drag out the count so you can work out how many voters you need for victory and then “discover” ballots if you need them, "uncured" (signatures that do not match the original) and "found" ballots "accidentally" merged-in with the legitimate ones - and the gauntlet is thrown down to the opponent knowing full well that going to court to demand a recount will take weeks. There has always been fraud in American elections, but getting away with it on a one-day vote and count was much harder. And before we get complacent, it is what is awaiting us in Blighty if we ever get behind a party that is a real threat to the establishment.
President Trump is not responsible for a midterm Republican campaign strategy that resulted in disappointing and, in some cases, disastrous results even though his principal contribution was to endorse 105 primary candidates, 100 of whom got the party nomination, and 73% of which were elected, in-between holding mega rallies across the nation to rally the troops, and warning of an original election steal and the importance of avoiding another one, whilst being under a sustained attack from the FBI and New York Attorney General and his own party hierarchy and billionaire funders. They find his style of MAGA a little too close to their lucrative bones. They intend to impeach his ass for a crime that does not exist and convince Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida - who showed what cleaned-up efficient elections meant on the night: a Republican landslide - to run for the nomination. President Trump would crush DeSantis in any battle for the nomination were DeSantis foolish enough to run against him. But were a DeSantis candidacy a theoretical possibility and he won or was installed in 2024, it would quickly settle into business as usual, albeit a slightly more animated, articulate version of Jeb! Bush.