Observing the finger pointing festival (or if you prefer, the blame game, or the circular firing squad, etc.) currently going on amongst the Democrats following the massive drubbing that they received from Donald Trump and JD Vance is predictable at least, but boy. is it ever soul satisfying to watch, despite being totally expected.
Now, while it goes without saying, that Democrats refuse to acknowledge that Harris ran one of the worst campaigns in history, showing if nothing else that she was totally unqualified for the position that she was running for.
Her big selling point? “I’m not Donald Trump”… Which, as it turns out, the electorate considered that to be the largest reason for voting against her. So weak was that argument that not only was Trump’s electoral victory a landslide, but he also won the popular vote, something that only Reagan had managed to do before this.
(As an aside, the numbers for Trump were most likely actually even larger than that, if we assume the same level of both fraud we saw back in the 2020 cycle, but I don’t propose to go down that particular rabbit hole just now.)
All of that was eminently predictable, and I did predict it, within these spaces, several times.
I wish I could say that the reaction of the GOP establishment was any less predictable. That reaction is probably best described in one word: butthurt.
And if past is prologue, they won’t learn anything this time either.
Back in 2015, I said as regards The Establishment GOP;
If Reagan and his successes did not teach the GOP establishment the truth of the matter, simply repeating those successes under another name isn’t going to teach them either. Remember, gang, the GOP establishment wasn’t too happy about Reagan back in the day either. That’s how we ended up with Bush for a vice president. The leadership felt the ticket needed what they called balance. They thought Reagan was…. sing along together children…., “too conservative”
Alas!, for the GOP establishment, that situation hasn’t changed. It’s to the point where many of the supposedly oh so “conservative” GOP establishment were actually announcing that they were voting for the socialist, and it is obvious they did so, simply because of their butthurt over Trump.
Butt hurt, indeed. What else could it be? If you claim to be a conservative, and yet are inexplicably so emotionally involved with the defeat of someone who has moved the conservative football further down the field than anyone since Reagan, it seems to me that the principles that you base that decision on are ill-defined, or at the very least misrepresented. It’s time for introspection in the GOP establishment. Based on previous experience, I doubt they will subject themselves to it.
They still don’t allow themselves to understand that there are demonstrable reasons why both John McCain and Mitt Romney lost their presidential bids and why Jeb Bush … the choice of the GOP establishment… was rejected out of hand before it even got to the nomination process. It is the very same reason that Donald Trump has been so wildly successful, despite having to fight both the GOP establishment and their fellow travelers in the Democratic party and their corruption…. Corruption which the GOP establishment has been trying desperately to avoid mentioning.
It’s certainly true that the Democrat party for the last several generations has been immune to introspection. Unfortunately, the ever increasingly smaller GOP establishment is of a similar blindness, when it comes to people who actually lead as conservatives, such as Reagan and Trump.
Now, before you start, Trump isn’t Reagan, (I’ve said that several times, too…) but let’s recall that the establishment GOP was never happy about Reagan, either, and spent the next 40 years after Reagans two Landslide victories, trying to disassociate themselves from the lessons that Reagan taught us.
The totals from this cycle are in, and the conclusions from those numbers are obvious, just as they were in Reagan’s two landslides. There are a large number of people who voted Republican for the first time in their lives in both the electoral and popular vote. Same can be said of Reagan.
Here, however, is the key to understanding all of this: I said back in 2015, before Trump took the Nomination:
There’s a reason they don’t stand up for our beliefs, the leadership. It’s because they don’t believe in them.
…
We are now seeing indications that the GOP rank and file has had enough and is about to go nuclear on the leadership. 15 years ago I argued against such an eventuality. Its to the point now where I’m actually looking forward to it because I see it as the only way to save the GOP.
And what can both the original nomination and election of Trump be considered, but “going nuclear” on the GOP establishment? This second election of Trump sent the message even louder and clearer than the first about the desires of the voters. The GOP establishment has a choice, and it is one they’ve been trying to avoid for generations now. They can either embrace the will of the people, which was shown so overwhelmingly on the 5th of this month, or they can go back to being a minority party with no influence to speak of. It is as Ronald Reagan once said, a time for choosing.
Choose wisely.