The corporate news media has spent the last three decades ensorcelled by the indefatigable “Dems in Disarray” trope. Calling it out as a trope is actually so commonplace now — because the practice itself is so commonplace — that it has almost become a trope itself. I feel sorry for journalists who are being held up to this beat, as the real show is down the hall. The banality of evil made flesh, Mitch McConnell has been revealed as running a huge behind-the scenes effort to remove Trump (himself a boorish, evil-made flesh, and irony is made flesh). If history holds, the two old curs will soon be at each other’s throats right out there in the campaign-year spotlight.
It’s hard not to wonder what it must have been like to be McConnell these day. The minority leader for a year now, McConnell’s power and influence seem only to have grown in the intervening time. He was aided in this, of course. The months-long policy debate within House Democratic circles consumed the summer and fall. McConnell seemed to have little else to do at that point except to strengthen his caucus, make occasional honeyed remarks for Trump, then wait to see what came out of the House. Every 16 hours or so, he’d send out another press release, like a grim bell tolling in the night: “We still say ‘no’ to everything… We still say ‘no’ to everything… We still sa– hey, is this thing on?” Tap, tap, tap.
Of course, McConnell had plenty to do. He stated that any legislation to fix the Voting Rights Act was doomed. He was a coward with the debt limit, and the deadline for government funding. He also made sure Joe Manchin knew that at least one person — Mitch — appreciated the West Virginia senator’s infinite enmity and impatienceFor President Biden’s domestic agenda.
“Something is broken in the Senate,” Peter Nicholas wrote for The AtlanticThat was the height of that long, hot summer. “McConnell’s sustained commitment to stopping Democratic priorities, whatever the cost, has deepened the dysfunction that makes many Republican voters doubt the efficacy of government in the first place. In most democracies, a stubborn minority party cannot stop the majority from debating the nation’s worst problems, much less solving them. McConnell is one reason the United States remains an exception.”
Beneath the surface of seemingly still Republican waters during that time, however, lurked a riptide that threatened to suck McConnell’s political boat far out to sea. Trump, the self-declared once-and-future-king, continued to make his ragged wares from Mar-a-Lago. He was surrounded with a motley assortment of legal hackers, politicians looking for his endorsement, misfit media type who see Satan in a vaccination syringe and former White House staffers, who have nowhere else to go, since nobody is hiring anyone at that White House. Would you? If so count the forks.
The drumbeat emanating from this seething coalition grows louder by the day: “Trump won the election… crime of the century… say it… say it and join us… say it or we will bury you.” Over the summer, most Republicans were content to either support Trump’s mayhem campaign and keep their seat safe, or just kept quiet and hoped the eye of Sauron did not fall upon them demanding a reckoning and an operatic oath of fidelity. They are the Trumpy party’s most powerful members. They believe it is their time.
It was a shock to witness the shocking news. New York Times headline pop on Sunday morning: “Inside McConnell’s Campaign to Take Back the Senate and Thwart Trump.”
McConnell had hoped to keep his anti Trump activities secret. TimesWith a meaty thud, we put an end to all of that. “As Mr. Trump works to retain his hold onThe Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, Mr. McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him,” reads the Times report. “The loose alliance, which was once thought of as the G.O.P. Establishment has been engaged in a long-running candidate recruitment campaign. It includes phone calls, meetings, polling memos, and promises of millions of money. It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.”
McConnell is a master at Iago, you have to give it to him. A stunt like this is like trying organize a huge surprise party where your worst enemy gets fired every time they walk through the doors. Sure, Mitch clapped back at Trump and the Republican National Committee over their description of the January 6 Capitol attack as “legitimate political discourse,” but he wasn’t straying terribly far with that; he called it a “a violent insurrection” on Monday, which is pretty much what he said the day it happened (though he’s been inconsistent in his condemnation, at other times). All the other days, however, the days where he carried gallons of post-election water for Trump while publicly avoiding any pointed critiques of the former president… that, as it turns out, was Mitch waiting in the tall grass.
At the end of things, it is robustly important to remember that the labors of McConnell in this endeavor are in like kind with those of David Frum, Colin Powell, and the other “Never Trump” Republicans who squeezed out a few good anti-Trump commercials back when there was a market for such tedious things. McConnell is your friend, they are not your friend. They agree with almost every Trump administration policy idea. This is because Trump’s only policy offering was road-bald radials starting in 1981 and continuing down the GOP line. They are happy with that, Mitch included. They don’t like Trump because they think he’s “bad for the brand.”
According to the Times article, McConnell’s efforts to recruit a murderer’s row of Trump-resistant congressional candidates is meeting with limited success. There is. daylightIt’s not enough to excite the establishment Republicans, but it is something to be excited about. The thing that may be most interesting is the trend that will never quit: Trump refuses any talk other than the election (and doesn’t stop talking). And implicit in his endorsement is his promise that his chosen candidates would follow his lead.
Although the base will accept it as usual, even the most optimistic forecasts show that that number is on the decline as voters shift their attention to issues like the pandemics and the economy. The GOP may not have any policy ideas but a growing number of them can recognize a dead socket. They are also all too familiar with what happens when the base picks their favorite daughters and sons to run in tight races. “Privately, [McConnell] has declared he won’t let unelectable ‘goofballs’ win Republican primaries,” reads the Times report.
Them’s fightin’ words, Mitch… but gadzooks, who do you root for in that brawl? Insurgent racists, sideways conspiracists, and others who are trying to be the face for Trumpian party members. Or the establishment Republicans like McConnell, desperate in their senescence, who have lost control of the party’s base even as they once created it. The prodigal son is back.
Now who’s in disarray again?
