Republicans can't win without Trump supporters

It may not have been the dumbest thing on the Internet last week, but it was the dumbest thing I read. Nick Fuentes visited Mar-a-Lago as a guest of Kanye West. The media describes Fuentes as a Holocaust Denier and White Supremacist. The two ate with Donald Trump, who was unaware of who this Fuentes dude is. I am clueless about Fuentes as well. But the media manufactured another scandal out of the incident. Conservative poseurs obediently are clutching their pearls over this like the little country club Republicans they are.

No president did more for Israel than Trump. No president had a daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren who were Jewish. No president has been smeared more by the media and members of his own party.

Which brings me to the biggest online stupidity that I read last week.

Ed Morrissey wrote, “Here’s the big question: Will Republicans want to spend the next couple of years attempting to explain this away, or will they just prefer to opt for a candidate with better judgment? Breitbart is asking that question now, at least implicitly.”

Republicans never stood up for President Trump before. Why would they start now? In the 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican Party Establishment went out of its way to find some noble reason to knife their party’s nominee because they would rather lose the White House than lose their hold over the Republican Party. Witness Ronna Romney McDaniel continuing as chairwoman of the RNC despite losing the House in 2018, the Senate in 2020 and the opportunity to clobber Democrats in 2022.

They hate Trump. Always have. Always will.

NBC reported on February 29, 2016, “Meet the Republicans speaking out against Trump. Where do the GOP lawmakers, strategists and commentators who have said they won't support the presumptive GOP nominee go from here?”

The story said, “As opposition to the billionaire front-runner began boiling over months ago, especially after Trump's initial refusal to denounce former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke in an interview, a growing list of GOP elected officials and top strategists stepped forward to declare their opposition to Trump's candidacy. Some threatened to vote for his Democratic rival instead come November.”

Actually, Donald Trump had denounced David Duke — not that facts matter.

Let me introduce you to the New York Times’s Quotation of the Day for February 14, 2000. It was Donald Trump explaining why he would not run for president under the Reform Party.

Trump said, “So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.”

But as I said, facts do not matter when you are seeking or clinging to power. Republicans lie just as Democrats do. The only difference is Democrats own the media and seldom have their lies challenged.

Trump’s opponents within the party were impotent in 2016. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley could not stop The Donald from winning her state’s primary.

The futility of the Republican Establishment was matched only by it pernicious persistence. In particular, the wastrels in Washington never wasted an opportunity to declare they were parting company with the party’s nominee. Some of them did so several times.

After the convention, Politico reported on August 11, 2016, “More than 70 Republicans have signed an open letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus urging him to stop spending any money to help Donald Trump win in November and shift those contributions to Senate and House races.

“The letter comes as a number of Republican senators and high-profile GOP national security officials have come forward saying they cannot vote for Trump.”

So much for Morrissey’s Myth of Republicans toting water for President Trump. They didn’t then. They aren’t now. They won’t tomorrow.

Hillary’s October Surprise was Donald Trump using the word pussy in a private conversation with Billy Bush 11 years earlier. The exchange:

Trump: “Yeah that’s her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Bush: “Whatever you want.”

Trump: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Feminists were so offended by the word pussy that when he was elected, they took to wearing pink knit caps and calling them pussyhats. But the long forgotten locker room talk gave Never Trumpers another opportunity to denounce their party’s nominee. It was so bad, the RNC had to borrow fainting couches from nearby colleges to handle all those offended.

NBC reported on October 8, 2016, “These Republican Leaders Say Trump Should Not Be President.”

The story said, “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to lose support among Republicans in the aftermath of a leaked video where he's caught making vulgar remarks about women. The most recent is former Secretary of State Colin Powell who said, two weeks before Election Day, that he is voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“The ongoing condemnation from across the Republican Party by elected officials has resulted in 50 Republicans who have demanded he drop out or won't vote for him, according to NBC News' count.”

General Powell had voted for Obama twice so calling him a Republican in 2016 was a bit of a stretch.

Once Donald Trump won the presidency, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went out of their way to block him. Despite Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the wall went unfunded. Republicans in DC treated Trump like dirt, just as they did with the Tea Party.

Mitt Romney voted to remove him from office — twice. Romney received no reprimand from the party. Likewise, the party was OK initially with Liz Cheney voting to impeach their own president. She remained No. 3 in the House when Trump supporters called for a vote on her. It was only after a second vote a month later that Republicans finally kicked her to the curb.

Democrat congressmen do not act this way. They support their president no matter how vile he may be. They were all the way with LBJ even as his popularity crashed and burned in 1968. Likewise, they went down with the ship with Jimmy Carter. Not a single Democrat in the House voted to impeach Clinton.

It is called party discipline. Democrats have it. Republicans don’t. This is why Democrats get things done while Republicans get nothing done. The wall is still unfinished. Obamacare is still the law of the land. It’s like that old perfume commercial: “Promise her everything, but give her Arpège.” Except in this case it is promise them anything, but give them nothing.

After the election, the cry went out that Republicans cannot win with Trump. I fell for it. Then I considered who I was agreeing with. Yikes!

Never Trumper Paul Ryan, who abandoned Trump over that grab-them-by-the-pussy nonsense, told ABC, “I was not a Never Trumper, but I am a Never Again Trumper. Why? Because I want to win. And we lose with Trump.” We lost with Ryan too. Remember Romney/Ryan 2012?

Roger Stone asked the 6 questions that should determine the Republican presidential nomination in 2024:

• Does anyone really believe that anybody other than Donald Trump would take on those who profit mightily from our current open borders?

• Does anyone really think anybody other than Donald Trump will expose and correct the epic corruption in our intelligence agencies and law enforcement bureaus, such as the CIA and FBI?

• Does anyone think that anybody other than Donald Trump is prepared to confront and penalize the Red Chinese for manipulating our currency, stealing our intellectual property, and flooding our country with deadly fentanyl?

• Does anyone think that anybody other than Donald Trump will mount a national campaign for term limits for members of Congress?

• Does anyone think that anybody other than Donald Trump would impose a ban on former members of Congress, or the Executive Branch, from lobbying after leaving high government office?

• Does anyone think that anybody other than Donald Trump will challenge the two-party duopoly that is literally trying to erase our heritage, cancel our Constitution, and destroy the very freedoms that guarantee the American way of life?

The answers to those questions drive the Republican Establishment to lie, cheat and steal to stop President Trump from returning to power. Rupert Murdoch, who used the Republican Party to bend the rules to enable him to create Fox, has reined in the New York Post from supporting him.

Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal blasted Trump on Monday in an editorial, lying about Trump’s peaceful rally of 250,000 people at the National Mall. A few entered the Capitol. Liars call it an insurrection.

The Journal said, “Mr. Trump hasn’t admitted his mistake in hosting the men or distanced himself from the odious views of Mr. Fuentes. Instead Mr. Trump portrays himself as an innocent who was taken advantage of by Mr. West. This is also all-too-typical of Mr. Trump’s behavior as President. He usually ducked responsibility and never did manage to denounce the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, or others who have resorted to divisive racial politics, or even violence as on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Mr. Trump isn’t going to change, and the next two years will inevitably feature many more such damaging episodes. Republicans who continue to go along for the ride with Mr. Trump are teeing themselves up for disaster in 2024.”

Mr. Trump isn’t going to change. Thank goodness. He will put America first at great personal cost. He easily lost a billion dollars in his first term. Clinton, Obama and now Biden made out like bandits turning the presidency into a cash cow.

Disaster in 2024? They lost in 2008 and 2012 by nominating McCain and then Romney, who became the biggest anti-Trump rats in the Senate.

Republicans won in 2016 with Trump — despite Ryan abandoning the party’s ticket a month before the election. I don’t care if Republicans win or not because the party is run by liars who say one thing, do another and blame someone else. That is the triple crown of perfidy. Maybe Republicans cannot win with Trump. I do not know that. What I can guarantee you is Republicans cannot win without Trump supporters. If he does not win the nomination, we become free agents.

Maybe we will go with DeSantis.

But we also can sit on the sidelines like the Never Trumpers. However, we outnumber them about a million to one. 75 million people voted for Trump in 2020. How many Never Trumpers are there? 75? I mean, Bill Kristol and company get a lot of ink, but they do not represent a lot of people.

To paraphrase Ed Morrissey, “Here’s the big question: Will Trump supporters want to spend the next couple of years attempting to explain away Republican indifference, or will they just prefer to opt to stay home?”

I am asking this explicitly.

How can we move on from President Trump when Republicans have not let him accomplish what he was elected to do?