Last weekend, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson asserted in a radio interview that the Republican Party has changed in many ways for the better over the past decade – chiefly in becoming a party that is more focused on mirroring the president's views on core issues – but that these changes are not happening fast enough, in his opinion.
Citing a report that 43% of Republicans who served in the U.S. House of Representatives have left office since Donald Trump's inauguration, Carlson's take-away was that big-state, establishment Republicans were leaving elected office via attrition – retiring, losing elections and so forth – but that a lot of this is tied to the political landscape and the party changing for the better.
As much as I'd like to believe this, I just don't think it's true.
Are there Republican lawmakers who retired in the wake of Trump's election due to the specter of Republican voters becoming more discerning (i.e., aware of certain GOP lawmakers' status as Deep State apparatchiks)? Sure. Are there likely to be more who exit politics as a result of this factor? Probably.
But do I think this amounts to a fundamental transformation coming about in the GOP? Not for a second.
In order to understand my reasoning here, we need to look at the last four years in the context of the previous eight years; this in light of what occurred during the Obama administration – or more importantly, what didn't occur.
I'm not going to enumerate the serial treason and high crimes of Barack Hussein Obama, his cabinet and his surrogates; there's replete reference to all of this in my archive here and through other parties on reliable venues. As I've articulated many times, Democratic lawmakers were never going to prosecute one of their own, particularly when he was very effectively delivering on advancing the socialist agenda and expanding the administrative state.
Most Republican lawmakers were quite happy with Obama in this regard as well; equally invested in the rise of a megalithic federal state, they simply rested on the pretext that they couldn't hold Obama accountable over fears of being labeled as racists as an excuse for their lack of action.
The recent House proceedings against President Trump served to illustrate how dangerously lawless and corrupt our federal government has become. While one president was excused for hanging offenses, another (Trump) was impeached for – if we heed what leading House Democrats have asserted – "putting his needs above those of the nation" and "abusing his power."
On a par with not liking how the president parts his hair, these charges mean essentially nothing, of course. As we witnessed during the proceedings, none of the foregoing were clarified, nor were any high crimes or misdemeanors allegedly committed by the president ever articulated. The ongoing blathering of leading Democrats vis-Ã -vis the now stalled impeachment process and the president's alleged crimes reflect a second-grader's understanding of the law.
As Trump's impeachment moves into the Senate for trial – assuming a trial ever does take place – it is probable that this will result in further embarrassment for Democrats and an acquittal for the president. There are no guarantees, however; consider that many of those running the show in the Senate – including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – are manifestly corrupt, establishment types who grudgingly support Trump for no reason other than his popularity.
Congressional Democrats and establishment Republicans in Washington do not hate Donald Trump so much because he thwarted the system, so to speak, and got elected as an outsider. They don't even hate him because he eschews decorum and speaks frankly about their abysmal character and subterfuge.
They hate and desperately fear Trump because he ran on dismantling the establishment in Washington (i.e., "The Swamp" or "Deep State"), from which all of these corruptocrats derive their power, and because Donald Trump has been very effective in everything he's ever pursued.
Submitted for your consideration: John McCain, the late GOP presidential candidate and U.S. senator, once allowed to pass as a conservative by altogether too many Republican voters, proved to be as much of an establishment hack as one could be in his enabling of President Obama's crimes, particularly relating to his Middle East foreign policy and the rise of ISIS. Recently, we learned via the inspector general's report attendant to the impeachment proceedings that McCain was instrumental in circulating the bogus Trump-Russia dossier, including handing it off to then-FBI Director James Comey.
Rest assured that most Republican lawmakers and Washington GOP operatives cannot wait for Trump to be gone one way or the other, even if they hold that the House impeachment process was a farce and intend to treat it as such during the trial. They, like congressional Democrats, simply want affairs to go back to the way they were.
And what will "the way we were" look like in a post-Trump America? Once again, I admonish the reader to consider this in light of the Obama and Trump presidencies. Imagine how untenable life could become in America with anyone among the current 2020 Democratic presidential contenders in the Oval Office, or anyone of that caliber becoming president in 2021 or 2025, for that matter. For my part, I see full-blown civil war as a likely result, a war that would be well-merited.
Some of us are well aware that we are already in the midst of a "cold" civil war; we would simply prefer to keep it in the realm of a "no shots fired" proposition as we work toward a constructive resolution.