Saturday, January 16, 2016

TRUMP MAY BE THE EFFECTIVE HEAD OF THE GOP SOON. THE BELTWAY MEDIA'S PLAN: JUST PRETEND HE ISN'T.

I keep telling you that there's absolutely no way Donald Trump is going to destroy the Republican Party, or even do serious, long-lasting damage to it, simply because the Beltway press won't allow that to happen -- the press has too much invested in the notion that both parties are equidistant from the political center and both are equally to blame for government dysfunction, so even if Trump wins the nomination and then crashes and burns in November, the press will give the GOP a mulligan soon after Election Day and declare the party's slate wiped clean.

This Ronald Brownstein article from National Journal is a few days old, but it suggests that the Beltway isn't even waiting until Trump is nominated, or even faces voters for the first time, to proclaim the existence of an alternative GOP. And as I said a few days ago, the preferred Beltway narrative is that the alternative GOP is the GOP of Paul Ryan, who's sending thrills up journalists' legs again:
Why Paul Ryan Is Becoming the Counter-Trump

The new speaker offers the clearest contrast to the presidential front-runner’s confrontational vision of the Republican future.


On Fri­day night in Rock Hill, about 80 miles north of here, Don­ald Trump roused a rauc­ous over­flow crowd with im­pas­sioned pop­u­list at­tacks against a dizzy­ing ar­ray of tar­gets. The next morn­ing in Columbia, House Speak­er Paul Ry­an wowed a re­served but still over­flow crowd at a for­um on con­ser­vat­ive think­ing about poverty with a dizzy­ing ar­ray of policy pro­pos­als and his im­pas­sioned in­sist­ence that the party must ad­dress the prob­lems of the poor.

... with Jeb Bush fal­ter­ing in the pres­id­en­tial race, and Marco Ru­bio mov­ing to­ward a dark­er mes­sage, Ry­an emerged from Sat­urday’s for­um as the na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an lead­er of­fer­ing the sun­ni­est con­trast to Trump’s bel­li­ger­ent vis­ion of the party’s fu­ture.

... “This is a struggle for the soul of ... the party,” says Ar­thur Brooks, the poly­math pres­id­ent of the con­ser­vat­ive Amer­ic­an En­ter­prise In­sti­tute and a Ry­an ally.
Just for the record, the event at which we're told Ryan "wowed" the crowd was the Jack Kemp Forum, which, according to news reports, was attended by "hundreds of voters." The crowd for Trump's rally? 6,500 people. So I think Trump wins that round.

But it doesn't matter. The press can't bear to acknowledge that the party of Trump (and Ted Cruz) might be the real Republican Party, so we'll hear endlessly throughout Trump's time at the top that there's a shadow party just waiting to wrest control from him. So nothing to see here! The GOP's just fine -- really!

9 comments:

  1. Our MSM folks, both male and female, just can't quit that blue-eyed, chisel-chinned, math-challenged, charmer with the Eddie Munster hairline and the Roman nose (it's roamin' all over his face), the new and improved Speaker of the House, "Privatizing" Paul Ryan!

    In their admiring eyes, he's the Republican's Dauphan, just biding his time before his sculpted butt-cheeks ascend, and settle upon the throne.
    And our MSM can't wait to kiss his pampered and powdered tushie!

    I swear, our cowardly, compliant, and complicit MSM, will drive me to drink!
    Drink more, I mean.
    A hell of a lot more!

    Ok, it's almost 7. Time to switch to fiction - which, sadly in these times pales in comparison with the "news."
    Oy....


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  2. There comes a time...

    MSM lost me with the first "eyewitness" news broadcast in the 70's

    Newspapers lost me when I was in my teens.

    Why?

    The same reason I stopped believing in "Gilligan's Island."

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  3. "a struggle for the soul of the party"?

    The Reptilians sold their souls (individually and collectively) to the Devil in 1968 when Nixon ran the Southern Strategy ... and sealed the deal for all time in 1980 when Reagan opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a place only known outside its own county for one thing: its sheriff and his cohorts murdering 3 civil rights workers and burying them in a dam. The Devil does not return souls, once collected.

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  4. I think the party managers will gravitate to Trump before the billionaires, because the latter as a class find him icky, untrustworthy, self-centered (Compared to THEM!) & a shameless media exhibitionist prostitute - whereas the former are already figuring how to function under his comb-over. AFAIK neither I nor anyone here can do a damn thing to affect that process, so I'm determined to enjoy the spectacle, particular the debasement.

    Speaking of which, there's a promising one on NBC right now, I don't expect capable of matching that incrediblyh crazy fuhbow flukiness in AZ last night, but nonetheless: Boston John Henry's Liverpools hosting the Tampa Bay Glazers Man Uniteds.
    '
    And in honor of this game and Steve M.'s slaving over the hot poltical news takes, the pre-game song of this fixture inspires me to a wee bit of encouragement:

    When you have to post like a kvetch
    Remember: Pronate & stretch
    And don't ever give in to the trolls
    Somewhere on your site
    There's a tip jar to excite
    With the tinkling of electronic coin rolls

    Blog on past the crap
    And don't be tempted to fap
    (It'll just make your energy sap).

    Blog on
    Blog on with trust in your regs
    And you'll never blog alone
    You'll never blog alone
    You'll. Never. Blog. A. Lone.

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  5. Poor, poor MSM. Without their cherished BothSidesDoIt narrative, whatever would they do for political coverage? (Besides praying for panty-sniffing stories to slaver over, of course.) Why, they might actually have to think! Investigate! Make an effort!

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  6. Don't hear often of the Dauphin, though I find it curious that just earlier today I read a historical anecdote common amongst those paying attention: the French Revolution had far more influence on western democratic thought than the "American". Ryan the Dauphin, the lost and true king, is an apt measure of merchant class desperation.

    With his recent ascension to number three with the nuclear keys I've modified somewhat my thoughts last year of Romney sitting out the clown car and presenting himself to the convention as the respinsible candidate. Imagine my lack of surprise were Ryan from the floor nominated to thunderous applause.

    Curious indeed.

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  7. It occurred to me that we really might end up with Trump vs Bernie. And that if the economy spends the rest of the year on the trajectory it has started out with...

    It made me want to send a message back to my 80s self. "Don't laugh at those Spy magazine articles! He's going to be President!"

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  8. You're spending way too much time worrying about the Beltway media. As Charlie Pierce keeps saying, the Republican Party has ceased to exist.

    At the state level, the Koch Brothers & ALEC have essentially built their own privately-held Party that is currently renting the Republican name. And they have very successfully resolved any tension between social conservatives and Corporate interests.

    This Party barely cares how the presidential election comes out - President Trump or Cruz or Clinton or Sanders isn't going to have a major impact on what their Party is able to do in the states they control.

    When the national Republican Party crumbles in a few years, the Koch Party will simply rebrand and go on about their business.

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  9. b5, the one possibly hopeful note is how frickin' old are the two more public Koch bros. Their grandfather was the Founder of the Koch Krazies, tho their pop was more of a caretaker, and we've yet to get a handle on their kids, but there's always the chance that something very Ruling Classy happens to the family that deserves it more than any other.

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