Now that it’s less than two years before the 2024 Presidential election, a small crop of Republicans whose last names are not “DeSantis” or “Trump” seem to have convinced themselves that they’re viable Republican presidential candidates. These people are either wrong or running for Vice President. The lack of enthusiasm for all four of the would-be candidates is palpable.
Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. For some reason (photogenic?), NRSC has been using her as one of their email begathon pitch-critters for a while, which probably explains why I’ve been receiving countdown emails (“I’m making a special announcement in 6 days.”) for her-not-even-remotely anticipated run. One struggles in vain to find the significant party faction Haley appeals to. Soft feminist Republican businesswomen? Indian-Americans? Plus: She appointed Tim Scott to the senate. Minuses: Backed Rubio in 2016, and was soft on culture war/social justice issues until about late 2020, and refused to fight transgender bathrooms, very low-hanging fruit for actual conservatives, back when she had a chance as SC Governor. No thank you. Effectively running for Vice President.
Former Vice President Mike Pence. Former Vice Presidents (Nixon, Bush41) used to have the inside tract to a White House nod in the Republican Party, but those days are gone. A solid, unexciting Vice President in the Walter Mondale mode for the first 46 months of his term who royally pissed off Trump supporters with his words and deeds in the last two months. Rational or not, Trump supporters now seem actively hostile to a Pence run, and since they were his only potential base of significant support (and only if Trump didn’t run), that’s a real obstacle, despite him checking almost all of the right policy boxes. If he runs (I have my doubts, as he doesn’t seem to have even his own website), he’s effectively running in the John Kasich lane (right down to the “unexciting Midwestern governor” background), which is a one-way ticket to Palookaville. No thank you. The only candidate here that we know isn’t running for Vice President.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. There was a time when being Secretary of State was a solid stepping stone to The White House. And that time was “the early 1800s,” as Martin van Buren was the last to do it, and only after a stint as Vice President. Which is bad news for Pompeo, arguably the most successful Secretary of State since James Baker. Between the Abraham Accords and keeping the War on Terror coalition together long enough to destroy the nascent caliphate of the Islamic State, Pompeo was a vast improvement over the largely ineffective Rex Tillerson, and worked well with foreign nations and international organizations that were, to put it mildly, not wild about his boss. And he has some other impressive credentials as well. “He graduated first in his class from West Point, and from Harvard Law and was on Harvard Law Review. After six years in the House of Representatives, he became CIA director for Trump, and then secretary of state – the only person ever to hold both jobs.” His short congressional tenure earned him a 97% score from the ACU. For me one of the biggest problems with Pompeo is that, like Haley, I primarily know his post-office career as a guy constantly in my inbox begging for money, and also talking like a career politician that’s already cranking up the baloney factory before properly introducing himself for a run. As Beto O’Rourke found out, three terms in the house is exceptionally thin electoral experience for a Presidential run. Plus his attempt to use “pipehitter” as a catchphrase for some sort of imaginary blue collar credibility was just laughable, as the term conjures drug addicts rather than plumbers. There’s just a bit too much standard issue political phoniness here, and Pompeo strikes me as someone who’s time has already passed. No thank you, but the softest no thank you of these four.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. I was only vaguely aware of Sununu The Younger, but his attack on DeSantis for having the balls to fight the poison of social justice instantly rocketed him to the bottom of my list. You would think Romney’s failure would have soured the party on moderate business-oriented governors, but evidently Sununu didn’t get the memo. Likewise, I doubt modern voters are interested in voting for Bush Lite The Next Generation. No thank you. An unwillingness to actual fight for conservative values is automatically disqualifying, and I don’t him bringing anything to the table as a Veep pick.
So there you have it. Four people who are not going to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2024.
Bring on the Trump-DeSantis match!
Tags: 2024 Presidential Race, Chris Sununu, CIA, Donald Trump, Elections, Harvard, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, New Hampshire, Nikki Haley, NRSC, Republicans, Ron DeSantis, State Department, Tranny Bathrooms, transexual
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I don’t see anyone on the stage who I want to vote for. When 2024 rolls around, I’m no doubt going to be holding my nose and voting for whoever isn’t the Democrat, and just resigning myself to four more years of the same.
The Republicans are losers. I’m sorry, but that is the truth: With everything they have on Biden, they’ve yet to do a damn thing that is effective. The Democrat machine can get someone like Fetterman elected; all the Republicans can do is throw up some excretory product of the media, and then can’t even see the sense in getting behind him. Assholes like Trump and McConnell can’t even work together to help get good Republican candidates elected, which is an indicator that they’re part of the problem themselves. I still suspect Trump is something of a Democrat stalking horse, meant to serve as a distraction while they pull a bunch of other bullshit with their hidden hand. I mean, he did a better job than I expected, but… Jesus, the man’s ego is incredible. He ought to be working with Desantis, not against him.
Likewise, with the capture and subornation of the organs of government? LOL… Who even cares who wins? The rude fact is, the backs of the FBI and the CIA need to be broken, and I don’t see that happening. Along with all the crap at the inJustice Department.
Frankly, I don’t see any of this getting fixed short of the bloody revolution they seem so hell-bent on pushing us into. A pox on all their houses.
Agreed. Trump needs to be the elder statesman, so to speak, and get behind DeSantis, who is obviously the sole chance the GOP has of overcoming what will be massive fraud in all the usual places, at least, all of which will be primed with yet another infusion of ZuckBucks and “legacy media” fondling of every Democrat in sight. Add to that the fact that many who supported Trump and who loved what he was able to accomplish have reached the same conclusion as Kirk and I describe here. I know people always say this, but honestly, 2024 may be our last chance to stop the collapse of the Republic. We aren’t going to do it with Trump and DeSantis eating each other alive.
I have my doubts about Desantis. I like a lot of what I see him doing, but I have to wonder “who sent him”, and who is backing him.
The whole thing is starting to look like bad theater; the real power brokers aren’t ever up for election, they’re the ones like Fauci buried deep in the bureaucracy making decisions like funding gain-of-function research in China.
The fact that he’s untouchable and unaccountable? And, wealthy from all the royalty payments he’s getting from NIH? WTF? That’s like having J. Edgar Hoover getting payments from the mafia and gangsters he prosecuted. Which I suspect he probably did… I can’t explain Hoover’s career any other way than “corruption”, and I see Fauci as another one in that vein. Dude screwed up the AIDS epidemic, a bunch of things after that, and he’s still got a job for COVID? Seriously?
And, here’s a thought: The fact that Trump didn’t have the smarts to look into any of this crap, which is public record, speaks volumes as to how he got rolled so easily by the Deep State. It also speaks volumes as to why I question his fitness for office. Like General Flynn, ferchrissakes… Dude’s this high-and-mighty intel type, and he has zero insight into the legal/intel morass that is Washington DC, and trustingly thought that the FBI wouldn’t f*ck him over? What the hell is up with that? How stupid would you have to be?
Sweet babblin’ Baby Jesus… I was only ever on the periphery of any of that bullshit, and I still would have had the sense not to go wandering into the jungle without knowing what the hell I was doing or who I could trust. Trump and Flynn both did that; Trump, I can excuse. Flynn? WTF, man… Just… WTF?
I’m still wondering if we all aren’t getting played, whether this is all just theater for the rubes. Some of this sh*t is just too stupid to take seriously; they can’t really all be this dumb… Can they?
Trump’s VP will be Kari Lake.
Pompeo is using “pipehitter” to enhance his military credentials. Pipehitters are what we called the Special Operations Community, the SF / SEALs / Air Force’s Commando’s / Rangers/ Marine Raiders. But Popmpeo was never was one. He started out as an Armor officer, troop leader but ended his Army career in charge of a maintenance pool.
It’s not they’re dumb, per se, Kirk. It’s that they’re incredibly short sighted.
The folks ‘in charge’ don’t believe the rest of the world can ever credibly challenge the US; that went out with the end of the Cold War thirty years ago.
Which means that they now treat the rest of the world as a stage for domestic politics. That thirty years makes this time roughly the political equivalent of being Detroit in 1980, building horrible cars, just starting to really feel the pinch from foreign competitors, yet still certain that being American is a guaranteed ‘I win’ button.
All while decrying the idea of American exceptionalism. Maybe they are just stupid.
The “stupid” doesn’t explain the ineptitude of both Trump and Flynn.
The more I think about it all, the more I’m convinced that he didn’t expect to win. At. All. There was no plan on his part for what to do if he did; there was not even a vague attempt to take advantage of the situation by the Republican Party establishment in DC. If anything, from observing their actual actions, you rather have to conclude that victory was both unintended and actively worked against by all concerned in the establishment. There were no attempts to even work with Trump; it was all obstructionism, all the time. Look at how they rolled his first Attorney General, talking him into recusing himself. Which looks a lot different now, with all the fraud about Russiagate coming out.
None of the establishment figures in the Republican Party made a single attempt to accomplish anything during the first two years of the Trump administration. Instead, they worked hand-in-glove with the Democrats to sidetrack and destroy the man, for having the temerity to run against his betters.
All of them are culpable, with a few notable exceptions like Nunes.
My thinking is that Trump was supposed to be this stalking horse for Hillary; she certainly did all she could to get him the nomination, working with her shills in the media. When he won, she and everyone else in the system behaved as though he’d betrayed her, and I suspect that might have been true: The fix had been in, and whether it was conscious or tacit, they expected him to be the patsy and fall down when told. For whatever reason, he didn’t, but like the dog who finally caught the car he was chasing, he had no earthly idea what to do once he did. And, he badly f*cked up the transition, allowing all sorts of BS to creep in with his appointments and initial takeover of the government. He should have purged every single agency of partisan operatives, Democrat and Republican, before he did anything else. The fact that creatures like Fauci were still there to screw him over? No fault but his own. In fact, if Fauci had been purged for his manifest incompetence when he should have been, in 2016, then it’s arguable that COVID would have never happened.
Flynn? LOL… Yeah, he’s a major disappointment, and a major clue that our military is throwing up the least competent and most political group of senior leaders in our history. It’s not like Flynn hasn’t been in DC, and spent all his time out in the field doing stuff. The man was intimately involved in the DC power game; he gave testimony that the FBI was screwing over female agents in the counterintelligence field, for example. I mean, there’s naive, and then there’s whatever Flynn is, which I would have to term “Affirmatively Stupid”. I can’t wrap my head around him blithely talking to FBI agents the way he did, after having knifed their boss in the back. Was he unaware of the likely repercussions? How could he miss the venality, the corruption? Having provided testimony against that same agency, the stupid bastard should have known better and made damn sure he had a lawyer with him whenever he had to interact with the crooks.
These people ain’t rocket scientists. Which is why I have to wonder about their sincerity; the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we all haven’t been played by the actual actors who’re running things behind the scenes. You look at the surfaces, and you begin to wonder what’s actually lurking in the depths, and I don’t think Trump could possibly be as naive and/or foolish as he’d have to be for this to have worked. Same with Flynn; you seriously want me to believe someone who’s had the jobs he’s had, and who supposedly is this bona-fide intel genius couldn’t observe what was going on in the swamp around him, when he actually testified to the existence of the corruption? WTF? None of this makes the slightest bit of sense; it’s an incoherent and contradictory narrative, one that would get thrown out of any publisher’s office in the land if you tried selling it as a political thriller. The whole thing is just too f*cking implausible.
Which has me going “Yeah, right…” or “Man, this is too stupid not to be true…” in alternating arbitrary sequence. I can’t see the rube, looking around the table, and I don’t think it’s me, but… Jeez.
My two cents on this topic is that my interest is not so much WHO as WHAT.
I’m old enough to remember that Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980 on reducing the size of government, even getting rid of Energy and Education. Inaugural comment about “Government isn’t the solution to our problems – government IS the problem.” None of that happened, and the monster kept growing. It’s now 10x bigger than it was back then.
Tell me who will actually deliver on downsizing the federal “government” and the DC grift machine. That’s where my support goes.
“three terms in the house is exceptionally thin electoral experience for a Presidential run.” – Consistency flag!
1st in class at West & Point & Harvard Law? Very intelligent & hard working, within two cultures that could hardly be more different. Veteran.
Head of CIA – Knows all the secrets. Very successful.
Secretary of State – Beyond successful, he actually changed the Middle East.
By resume standards, who beats this?
2024 seems to be a wasteland of minimal choice.
Bring on Trump DeSantis and lets see where it goes.
None of the others would ever get my support
“three terms in the house is exceptionally thin electoral experience for a Presidential run.”
Bush 43 never held a national level office, Obama didn’t even finish his full 1 senate term, Trump never held any elected office at any level. I am not interested in Pompeo, but it has nothing to do with qualifications.
Governors (and Bush was in his second term when he was elected president) have long been considered Presidential timber. Obama and Trump both violated long-standing conventional wisdom about presidential suitability in different ways (though Harding, like Obama, served less than a full term in the senate and only as a state senator before that).
@kirk The sense I have is Republicans do not want to win. They want to be the opposition party, sitting at the kids’ table, throwing a tantrum once in a while, but never deal with the ickiiness of being in charge or muster the courage to actually fight to win.
How else to explain McCain ’08, Romney ’12, and don’t forget Jeb! in ’16. And their hatred for Trump, even after he won, even after he had policy successes here and there.
Too many think they can go back to 2015, before Brexit and Trump shook everything up.
@icepilot “Head of CIA –> Knows all the secrets”
I wouldn’t be so sure. I expect if the CIA has a person in charge that the CIA wants to keep out of the loop, they’re more than capable of accomplishing such.
Breaking Points had a fun live panel discussion on this topic. Question was, “If Trump and DeSantis both pass away, who gets the nomination?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVXVkCEC_2w
Fascinating discussion, it’s the first 10 minutes of the video.
TL/DW? Alright, here’s the final answers:
Marshall: Marjorie Taylor Green … not because she’s great, but there will be 50 candidates, and she’ll somehow end up with 2.5% while everyone else has near 2%.
Kyle: Mike Pence because he polls in 3rd place these days. OR, Ted Cruz, because in 2016 he came the closest to beating Trump.
Krystall: Don Jr … again there will be so many candidates diluting the race, and following Trump’s passing there will be eulogies and mis-remembering how great he was, etc etc etc, and Don Jr will ride that wave. Plus he’s great at triggering the libs, so the Republican base will like that.
Saagar: Sarah Palin
Like I said, fun discussion. They subsequently get into who the D nominee might be, if Biden were to pass away. I’ll let you watch to see that. Amusing answers.
The names mentioned are really auditioning for VP.
Please please please include John Bolton on this list, if only because then we can make fun of him.
It’s far too early for the Republican Party to commit itself to any candidate. Some of the DeSantis backers here and elsewhere have the unseemly habit of demanding that everyone else clear out of the way for him—before a single primary vote has been cast, before the field has even taken shape, before the candidates and Party have decided on official platforms—you know, the actual issues, and before we’ve seen any debates and how each candidate handles the rigors and exposure of a national campaign.
Well, sorry, but as a self-respecting grown man, I’m not a fanboy of anybody—Trump, DeSantis, whoever—and I don’t need politicians to deliver me to the Promised Land, and I abhor true believers who thrill to every word uttered by some would-be Messiah. The main two things I want out of a President are 1) a smart and tenacious defense of this nation’s sovereignty, leveraging legislative and executive powers to combat illegal immigration, and 2) a relentless focus on meeting the challenge of the Chicoms, which requires toughness and nous to marshal and develop the full range of our national resources.
Aside from that there are many other items on my list, including vanquishing the woke madness to destroying AFFH to shrinking the federal government and reversing the inexorable growth of the entitlement state to promulgating sanity (and nuclear power) regarding supposed CAGW to expanding gun rights to fixing military procurement and getting women out of the infantry to winning the new space race and updating our nuclear triad and reforming government management and funding of basic science and medicine to addressing the baby crisis and the failure of our younger generations to grasp the nettle of family life and building our civilization.
But anyone can mouth platitudes to check a box; I want a President who in his core being has firm convictions (which largely coincide with my worldview though prefect alignment is not required), fundamentally understands these issues, and has mature strategic plans for achieving goals in these areas.
Some of the politicians mentioned by our host here are, I agree, non-starters, though I see nothing wrong with Pompeo and would entertain the idea of him as President. I often have an easier time figuring out who to vote against than to vote for, and I’m generally finely attuned to even the tiniest vibration in the way of amnesty or “can’t we all just get along” bovine excrement. The post also leaves strong contenders like Ted Cruz unmentioned. And of course the reality is that if it comes down to a choice between a squish like Sununu or Haley and a frozen smile Johnny Cab woke robot like Pete freakin’ Buttagag, then I’m going to grit my teeth and vote for the Republican.
A simple question: what if Mr. DeSantis doesn’t run?
Now is the time to be assembling the key elements of a presidential campaign team. Now is the time one starts putting together the money people, the connections to the dark money, the big donors, etc. Now is the time a candidate finds a trustworthy campaign manager and starts lining up people in the most essential slots. One doesn’t want to be too visible or spend too much now, but if one waits for late 2023, the better people are already drafted and the money people are already committed.
Is Mr. DeSantis doing any of this? Again, he isn’t going to be too visible right now but he hasn’t formed an exploratory committee (that I know of). If he’s working behind the scenes then he’s doing it very well and very quietly.
What if he doesn’t run? Is there another candidate who could unhorse Mr. Trump? While those who favor Trump would be very happy, could Mr. Trump win in 2024?
I have another question: What if we never have anyone competent and decent ever run for president again?
I mean, looking at the spectacle that was Trump’s administration, why would any “outsider” stick their dick into that meatgrinder?
I halfway suspect that that was precisely why they did what they did; to make Trump an object lesson for “the rest of us” so that nobody outside their little coterie of incompetents would ever dare to challenge their hold on the halls of power.
I remember a conversation I once had with a guy who told me he wasn’t an atheist because he didn’t believe in God, he was an atheist because he’d looked at the record, and the world around him, and decided that any entity that would set such a world up and then run it the way he has shouldn’t, on principle, be encouraged.
I think the bastard was being a facetious smartass, but… I’m coming around to his point of view with regards to the US government. Anarchy is starting to look like a much better way of life than I once thought. Preferably a heavily-armed one, where I can just shoot the assholes impinging on my space and my people…
I like where Kirk ends up in his last two lines — anarchy as outcome, but with the people heavily armed! I see others with your disgust at politics.
But let me fill you in on how R’s ideally nominate entrepreneurial business men like Trump who then are overmatched by bureaucratic inertia — a vast, gargantuan behemoth of Federal government that owned by the People’s Enemy, the CommiKKKrats.
Columnist Mark Steyn in January of 2016 wrote about the Trump campaign in New Hampshire, from firsthand experience. After all, Steyn lived there, then.
Trump spoke at a rally with notes, but largely from memory. He ran an issues campaign that won, largely building on the issues of the Tea Party (“Taxed Enough Already” circa 2009-12.)
Steyn observed how ultra slim his campaign team was — basically composed of himself, his campaign manger, scheduling secretary, and certain assistan5s like someone on site, as well as Trump’s brain, Donald Trump, Jr.
Thus, it was a campaign of about five people, but only three composed it’s core.
People of federal experience who later joined Team Trump like K T Macfarlane (so?), or late joining outsiders like “Overstock.com” founder Patrick Byrne — both of whom have published accounts of their time with Team Trump — are amazed that this family oriented entrepreneurial plus attached insiders team composed the core of his leadership and decision making group, from beginning to the end.
Both, plus latecomer Covid19 adviser, Scott Atlas (who also published an account of his time on Team Trump) all confirm that Republican Party advisors
functioned to slow Team Trump, and block Trump’s urge for radical reform and divert him from drastic actions to counter bureaucratic intransigence.
Now, let’s plumb the depths of that Team Deep State power and the absolute loyalty is commands. Consider these hard facts. DC is the Center of Federal government. Not only did it win Hillary’s D vote at 92% in 2916, but the entire third party presidential votes cast, over 4%, was greater than the 3.9% vote for Trump.
That a measure of the Trump hostility that manifested AGAINST popular control of the Federal absolutist State.
Here are some more indicators of the entrenched and institutionalised resistance to real, popular, dramatic reform of the national state. In 2008, The Cato Institute published a report showing that when lifetime or career benefits are added to Federal employees benefits and are fully accounted for, the same job in the private world earns about half of what the sinecure Federal employment nets each state worker bee.
Put differently, Fed jobs benefits and income are DOUBLE of private sector work. And until and unless this is completely reversed, the dynamics of motivated interests will always ensure MORE POWER FOR BIG and Bigger FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
WE SEE THIS in accounts of Federal employees political campaign contributions. One recent study looked at Federal political contributions by Cabinet level Departments like State and Department of Defense. The median was over 95% Democrat Party. As high at 98% for State Department (ie, diplomacy and policy abroad). Only two fell below 90% (88% was one)! And this didn’t include the non-cabinet level EPA, which issues most regulations and employs the second largest number of Federal people, after Defense. Anyone want to bet it’s less than 95-98% Democrat?
THIS constitutes the real enemy of the People, the Institutionalists of the Permanent government, which the Deep State recruits from and whose loyalties it rewards and promotes.
THIS IS ALSO why Trump’s agenda was a revolutionary threat to their comforts and security. And why, should a real shooting war come, most of them will have to be dispatched with extreme prejudice.
The enemy numbers and powers are enormous. The taxpayer may well employ them. But we cannot fire them — they hold us, including our faux elections, hostage to their control.
FEDERAL EMPLOYEES should be incapable of contributing money or manpower to political campaigns.
Democrat corruption of out political process is complete. And it has been super-charged since the Great Recession years of 2008, when proper, Federal budgeting was abandoned by slush fund multi-thousand page bills, spending trillions of dollars up to three times a year— why, no wonder plane maker Boeing has moved HQ to DC — because that where the money comes from for this leading “Defense” contractor, and therefore EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS is decided by secret Congressional Cabal that regurgitates these lobbyist’s bovine excrement, and the Party Leaders tell Congressmen to vote for it.
THIS IS THE ENEMY OF THE PROPLE. And why our government is corrupt and unredeemable. And why anarchy thru war is the only way out.
I have a different read on Trump 2016. I still think there’s a lot of information packed into how he conducted things after his win, and those things indicate that he had no real plan, no real idea of what he faced in DC.
Why that is would be unimportant. It just is. It’s something to look at when evaluating him and his performance, along with his likely success should he win a second term.
Trump did a lot of really stupid things during the transition. Firstly, he trusted the establishment Republicans, who knifed him in the back from day one. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General? Huge f*cking mistake; Sessions is complicit with everything that happened. The Attorney General should have been someone who was not going to roll, was not going to allow the captured elements of the Justice Department to prevail over the will of the electorate, and should have been a fighter that came out of the starting blocks dealing blows on the establishment freakdom that runs the Justice Department right from the beginning. The FBI should have had its entire headquarters sacked, the building torn down, and the site sowed with salt.
Instead, Sessions played delaying games with Trump, and allowed all that crap to get going. Why? Who cares? The fact is, he did it.
End of the day, the real thing to look at here with Trump running in 2024 is whether or not he’s got a better plan going in, along with an actual team ready to go to blows with the entrenched assholes right from day one of his administration. Half of DC belongs under the f*cking jails, not just in them. If he doesn’t have a plan and a team identified before he even starts his real campaign, then he has no business distracting the country for the next four years, which is all his second administration would amount to… A distraction while the creatures like Fauci f*ck America in the ass. In the end, that’s all Trump really accomplished in terms of stopping the long-term slide into decadent dysfunction.
I don’t go by what these pricks tell me; anyone can mouth pretty words. The real question is, what do they do? Trump did a lot of what he promised, which was a political first in my lifetime. The problem is, a lot of the baggage that he brought in with him and allowed to go on during his transition and early administration became toxic distractions. If he doesn’t take steps to deal with that fact, well… Yeah. What’s the point of a second term listening to another faked-up line of bullshit, with another Mueller appointed?
I still don’t get that one. At. All. Trump should have fired Sessions the minute he even began to voice an idea like recusing himself or initiating a special prosecutor to look into BS charges that he had to have known were BS.
Also, do remember that John McCain was key and essential to spreading the “Russian Collusion” idea, with all the BS generated by Hillary and the FBI. The man should have his Republican Party credentials pulled posthumously, along with everything else, because he aided and abetted what amounted to a de-facto coup against a duly elected President. And, isn’t that what we’re prosecuting all those January 6 people for?
First thing I’d do if I were Trump and got elected in 2024? Start up the same sort of Star Chamber bullshit for all the parties involved in the supposed Russian Collusion conspiracy. Make them start running from day one, and then I’d suspect Trump might succeed.
I don’t think he’s gonna do that, though. Why? Because this whole thing is like the WWF–Fixed. The guys we all root for? They’re not actually on the other side; this is just theater for the rubes.
And, frankly? I’m done with them. I am tired of so-called “Republican opposition” that talks all kinds of sh*t about rolling back Democratic programs, and then when they accidentally find themselves in a position to do something about it, they renege on all their promises. Just like McCain did. They’re not actually opposition to the Democrats; they’re a distraction for the rest of us, and are on the other side as active participants in the destruction of the Republic. It’s about time we recognize that fact, and start doing something about it.
The funniest thing about all this? I’m starting to find common ground with this idea with a lot of doctrinaire Democrats I know. They’re tired of the fraud, as well, because ain’t none of this extreme crap the sort of thing they’d have voted for… If anyone had bothered asking them. Which they didn’t. Just like the Republican leadership didn’t ask us, either.
Strikes me as odd, you know… I’ve yet to experience a politician that actually sought out my opinion, on anything. They all just assume they know what I want, what I believe in, and that they’re the ones to give it to me. Well… I’m tired of being “given it” up the ass. A pox on all their houses.
An unwillingness to actual fight for conservative values is automatically disqualifying
This. 1000x this.
If you aren’t fighting to rein in the left wing Big Tech, then you’re dead to me.
If you’re getting suckered by left wing hoaxes (Bubba Wallace, etc), you’re dead to me.
So long as DeSantis continues willing to screw over Disney, I’m in his camp.
Trump failed 2020. From not firing Fauci, not promoting Atlas, and not suing to block all the Democrat voting changes, Trump dropped the ball.
He simply doesn’t have the ability to beat left wing institutions, and DeSantis does.
So so long as DeSantis keeps on acting like he’s willing to go after the Left, I’m on his team
I’m with you on that, but I also look at DeSantis as having some questionable connections.
It’s all f*cking theater, to be blunt. I’m still halfway convinced that Trump was a stalking horse for Hillary from the beginning, and then they used him as a distraction during his term in order to sneak through all kinds of other things under the radar. The fact that Milley was never replaced, never even called on the carpet? WTF, man? That guy out-and-out admitted to treason against a sitting President, and Trump didn’t ever even call him on it. The other stuff in all the other agencies? Again, he’s either complicit, or he’s too stupid to be in that job in the first place. And, I don’t think Trump is stupid, either.
We’re currently living out a tragicomedy. You can’t even describe the things that are going on as being ridiculous, because it goes right past that into straight-up surrealist performance art; stupidity for the point of merely being as stupid as possible.
I mean, seriously… How long has it been since the OPM breach? What countermeasures have they implemented, what solutions have they achieved? What are they doing about that whole thing, aside from complain in open-source media about how all our networks overseas are getting rolled up by the Chinese? Gee, I wonder how that happened, what with a Democrat-donor company farming out the work on the database to foreign nationals?
It’s really getting too damn bizarre for words. This is Clownworld, and we’re just the spectators who got overcharged for our tickets to the show. While our cars are being rifled through in the parking lot by the carnies…
I’m with you on that, but I also look at DeSantis as having some questionable connections.
Does DeSantis take money from people I don’t like?
Yes, he does.
Has this money caused him to govern or campaign in ways I don’t like?
No, it hasn’t.
If you have actual problems with what DeSantis has done, please, lay them out.
But I can see no sane reason to oppose a candidate who acts exactly how I want him to, while convincing people I don’t like to fund him.
in fact, I kind of like him taking money from the bad people (Jeb supporters et al) under those circumstances.
It’s certainly better than someone Jeb-like getting the money
The major problem with people using GOP Establishment “campaign consultants” is when it causes them to do things that we in the GOP base hate, but they in the GOPe love.
What I saw DeSantis do last year was fight the Establishment, support candidates who would fight the Establishment (parents for School Boards), and bring those candidates to victory.
Which Trump utterly failed to do where it mattered.
If your position is “I won’t support anyone who can get non-populists to support him”, then what you are demanding is failure.
Because just like the GOPe can’t win without populist voters, populists can’t win without non-populist voters.
Do you want to beat teh Democrats? Or do you just want to “feel pure”?
I’ve got NO problem with rejecting a candidate who sucks up to the GOPe. I’ve got a great deal of a problem with rejecting a candidate who USES the GOPe, to accomplish my goals.
So far, all I’ve seen is DeSantis do that latter. And I’m ok with that
Look, the reason I distrust DeSantis is because he’s taking money from those clowns, and is thus beholden to them. He’s also vulnerable to being held accountable for whatever they do, because he took money from them.
Not saying I wouldn’t vote for him, just that there are reasons to do so while keeping an eye on what he actually does.
I’m pretty much done with trusting any of these bastards, to be quite honest. I like a lot of what DeSantis has done in Florida, but at the same time…? I’ve got some questions. I also can see a lot of what may cause him trouble taking his ideas national.
At the same time… I’m pretty damn sure that the there is a “freshness date” on all the wokery. At some point, the fact that they’re delivering nothing but misery and sorrow, while actively destroying those good things in American society will come to the fore, and people will dump them and their ideas. How long that’s going to take? No damn idea; even the Russians tired of Communism after 70 years of broken promises and obvious self-serving corruption on the part of the Communists.
Look, the reason I distrust DeSantis is because he’s taking money from those clowns, and is thus beholden to them
No, he isn’t.
There is no bill of sale. If they try to impose any conditions on him, they they’re guilty of attempted bribery.
They HOPE he will feel beholden to him. But they’ve been giving him money for years.
how beholden to them has he been up to now? What bad things has he done because he took their money?
Nothing?
But when he’s President, not just Governor, THEN he’ll bow to their wishes, when he has so much more power relative to them?
Do we need to hold his feet to the fire? Of course we do!
But “he’s conned the GOPe into giving him money when he’s done nothing for them” is not a mark against him
If nothing else, they can blackmail him because they’ve got the receipts.
All I’m saying is that while I would vote for DeSantis if he makes it to the Presidential campaign, I will do so as I did with regards to Trump; I knew from the outset of his campaign that he was likely a stalking horse for Hillary. I still voted for his ass, but without much in the way of expectations.
None of these assholes are worth worshipping or setting on a pedestal the way people have done it. It’s about damn time we start looking at the political class as being exactly what they are: Hirelings, who’re supposed to do what we want, not what the oligarchy wants. The attitude that there’s this “man on a horse” out there who’s going to save us? That’s precisely how we got where we are; these assholes need to be held accountable, one and all, and precisely none of them have or deserve unquestioned fealty.
Frankly, the current situation in the US today strikes me as analogous to an exercise I was once on in Korea. We’d been detached to support our S-3 running a river crossing site. The three days we worked that site were a misery of micromanagement and sheer hubristic incompetence from that individual. The morning of the river crossing, we’re out working on the bridge site, and ROKA Special Forces showed up in their Zodiacs. We weren’t their targets, according to our KATUSAs: The Major was. Hearing that, all and sundry just pointed up the hill at the tent he’d had us set up for him, and then we got to watch him get bundled up and hauled off as a POW. I think the theory was that if they removed the command-and-control, we’d all be wandering around lost. As it was, pulling him out of the equation enabled me and my platoon sergeant to take things over and run a very successful river crossing site.
Whenever I look at Washington, DC? I feel a lot like I did that morning along the riverbank, in the dark. “The guy in charge? He’s up there; have fun, don’t bother bringing him back…”
[…] (H/T: Lawrence Person’s BattleSwarm Blog) […]
Maybe Mike Pompeo meant to say “pipefitter”? Still funny though.