It is hard to overstate the degree of subjugation and cultish lunacy that has transformed the Republican Party from a principled, optimistic-for-the-future, conservative entity into one man’s hate-fueled, grievance-filled, legal defense slush fund. There have been so many instances over the last nine years when previously sane individuals in the GOP have abandoned all reason, gotten in line, and followed Donald Trump right over the cliff. So many times when they could have said enough is enough. So many times when you would think dignity and faithfulness to the principles of right and wrong would have led most to diverge paths from a narcissistic demagogue. But time and time again, Republican elected leaders, especially in Congress, have failed to rise to the occasion. Instead of leading people to a better place, they have taken their cues to act or not act from the dark, conspiracy-soaked corners of their base and from the angry, addled, 91-count indicted, sexually assaulting fraud.
You don’t have to be a left-wing Democrat to see all this strange behavior as disturbing and a real concern. Lord knows that most moderates and independents and a good number of registered Republicans have known for a long time that Trump and his groveling sycophants are batshit crazy. I myself am an independent, law-abiding gun owner, live in a wonderful gated golf course community, regularly attend church, and have several Republican friends who are awesome people. Regardless of your political affiliations, it should be easy to identify weird and unusual behavior, right?
Just when you think the antics and outbursts can’t get any more bizarre, they do. Two recent examples could not encapsulate any more the degree of conspiracy-obsessed madness of the far-right media complex and also the complete subjugation of formerly self-respecting senators and congressmen and women who have devolved into craven, mumbling minions in the service of their master, Donald Trump. The first and most hysterically absurd situation is the MAGA Meltdown over Taylor Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs All-Star tight end Travis Kelce. The second is the rejection of the strong bi-partisan crafted border security bill at Trump’s direction because he wants to maintain the border problems as an issue to run on.
Back to Swift and Kelce. The Right Wing Conspiracy Machine went into overdrive immediately following Taylor’s embrace and kiss at center field at the end of the Chief’s AFC Championship victory over the Ravens. MAGA heads exploded, and the meltdown proceeded swiftly, let’s say. In a nutshell, the conspiracy goes something like this. Taylor Swift, who previously endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, is a deep-state operative intentionally planted into a relationship with future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce in order to swing the upcoming election to Biden. And that the NFL is in cahoots with the whole scheme, of course. Stay with me here. So, sometime around the beginning of the season, Taylor Swift inserts herself into Kelce’s orbit and initiates a relationship. Forget that she was in practically every American’s orbit already and forget that Kelce mentioned her on his podcast first, sparking things off. And not that she is busy or anything, but nonetheless, she has plenty of time for this little master-minded evil government scheme. But Travis is probably in on the brilliant scheme, too, so it all makes sense. So the plan goes that Swift would increase her presence at NFL games, supposedly to support her new boyfriend, but really, it is designed to raise her status among football fans and undecided voters. Now, the Kansas City Chiefs, last year’s winner, have been to three of the last four Super Bowls and won two. But football fans know, no team is a shoo-in to win again. They were struggling to start the season, and we all know that last year’s champ can quickly become this year’s chump. BUT, this was all part of a grand design to thrust the mega pop, not MAGA pop, star onto the national stage and elevate her status throughout the season, more than she already was amongst her tens of millions of fans. THEN, the Kansas City Chiefs would win the rigged Super Bowl, Travis Kelce gets the MVP, they embrace and kiss at midfield again, and Kelce proposes to Swift on national television. Maybe that proposal part isn’t integral to the MAGA-fueled conspiracy, but nonetheless, it fits the script.
The climax of the whole devious-brilliant-Biden-campaign-plan is that following the Chief’s win, Taylor Swift, either at the game or soon after, will of course, endorse Joe Biden again, decry Donald Trump for all of his shortcomings and transgressions, which will not be hard, and Joe Biden will roll onto victory in November thanks to the Swift endorsement.
Now, let’s break all of this down. Can we take a moment first and just say that if Joe Biden and his team orchestrated all of this to happen and it does unfold exactly to plan, then kudos to Biden, and it certainly goes a long way to dispelling the myth that Joe Biden is a bumbling, clueless old man. Secondly, this whole scenario – the whole sequence of events themselves – could indeed play out like this in reality, because none of the individual details in this story are themselves implausible. It’s all completely possible to imagine a scenario where a football star and a pop music star begin a romance that plays out in the public eye. Then said football player’s team which has been hugely successful over the last four years, goes all the way and wins the Super Bowl again. Then said pop star, who has already dipped her toe into the waters of political endorsement before, goes ahead and endorses a sitting President who echos her beliefs and policy priorities and who stands in stark contrast to his divisive, dehumanizing opponent. An opponent – Trump – who happens to possess no redeeming qualities other than self-obsession and self-preservation and, through word and deed, has demonstrated himself to be a loathsome, delusional, lying, insurrectionist who fauns over murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin. So, for Taylor Swift, endorsing Biden is a layup. Yes, all of this could actually unfold.
Thirdly, now back to reality here: just for the record, none of this was devised at the inception of the NFL football season, Taylor Swift is not a PSYOP for the Biden administration, and there is no brilliant scheme that roped the NFL and all of the Chiefs opposing teams into losing particular games in order to elevate Swift beyond the stratosphere she already occupied before getting together with Kelce. Whoooo, that was a lot, sorry, let me catch my breath. None of this Earth-1, normal logic has stopped Vivek Ramaswamy, Fox News’s Jesse Waters, and other MAGA trolls from diving head-first into the sludgey depths of the far-right conspiracy fever swamp. It could, however, be a very shrewd, calculated effort by Trumpers to discourage and get ahead of an impending Taylor Swift endorsement of Biden. That would be right out of Donald’s playbook that so many of his trolling acolytes have mastered at this point. If MAGA-World could create enough of a backlash against the power couple, then maybe she’ll just sit this one out, they hope, and not endorse. We’ll see. But what it lays bare more than anything is just how stupid, small, petty, thin-skinned, paranoid, kooky, misogynistic, jealous, hateful, and just bonkers -looney-tunes the far-right media circus has become. You can smell the insecurity, and it’s foul.
Next item. On a more serious governing/policy front, MAGA extremists in the House of Representatives led by training-wheels-Speaker-of-the-House-Mike Johnson effectively tanked hopes of passing a monumental border security bill. Far-right extremists in the House, going back to last year, had declared they were going to hold further Ukraine military aid hostage until the border issue was dealt with. They didn’t think a serious package could get done. They were wrong, of course.
A bipartisan group of well-meaning Senators led by conservative James Lankford of Oklahoma got to work crafting a strong border security bill that increased funding for border patrols, beefed up screening for fentanyl smuggling, and the bill also expanded detention capacity. It had almost no Democratic priorities and lacked any sort of Pathway to Citizenship or Dreamers provisions. It was a solid bill, it was tough, and it was the best opportunity to fix the problem at the border, which requires a bipartisan legislative compromise.
But, unsurprisingly, MAGA extremists snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Donald Trump, who has never cared about solving any of America’s problems, just exploiting them for his own benefit, criticized the bill without knowing any details so he could, of course, keep it as an issue for the election. Most Republicans in the House and Senate quickly got in line behind Dear Leader. They immediately began trashing it despite not seeing the bill’s text either. We all know if Trump had declared they should vote for it, they would all have been crawling over each other to get in line and vote for it unanimously. It was one of the most conservative pieces of border legislation drafted in decades. Mitch McConnell himself drafted Lankford to write it and ended up voting against it himself. Multiple Republican Senators’ staffers worked tirelessly with Lankford, Independent Kyrsten Sinema, and Democrat Chris Murphy over three months to draft the legislation. And remember, Congress is not set up so that you get everything you want. News flash: That’s how it works; you compromise and get as much as you can!!! But it was all for nothing. Conservatives got most of what they wanted in this piece and Democrats less so, and the cynical idiots still rejected it because of Donald Trump’s orders. Cowardly GOP senators and representatives would rather help a desperate sore loser than help the American people. What kind of system and incentive structure is that?
It’s pathetic, it’s disgusting. It also lays bare to the whole country what the priorities of the far-right extremists in Congress are and the feckless, frightened “moderate” Republicans that go along with it. They are the do-nothing Republicans. Let’s let things get worse for politics sake instead of doing our jobs and fixing the problem. They are the we-hope-the-economy-crashes-before-the-election Party of Trump.
And now Trump is, of course, trashing a respected, decent, hard-working, well-meaning conservative like James Lankford from the reddest of states, Oklahoma. Insulting him and throwing him under the bus. Of course, Trump’s army of right-wing media attack dogs got right to work on Lankford. One of them said he would destroy Lankford for advancing this legislation. For what, reaching across the aisle and trying to get things done? WTF? How much longer are Republicans going to put up with this kind of bullshit before they rid themselves of this mentally-diseased toxic, whining, sociopath at the head of their party. How many more friends and colleagues do they need to see get thrown under the bus and treated with utter disdain before they gather the courage to stand together and say enough is enough? How many more lawmakers and private citizens have to receive death threats or even be attacked or killed for “crossing” Donald Trump before they fight back? How much more abuse and fear will they live with? I, for one, have given up on seeing any collective courage emerging soon. It’s just gross to watch the devolution of the Party of Lincoln, Reagan, and McCain. You would think, when given the choice to get behind someone like Nikki Haley instead of Trump, that it would be an easy decision. As easy and fluid as Patrick Mahomes dumping a little pass in the flat to a wide open Travis Kelce for the touchdown. By all metrics, it would be smarter, right? Sadly, it seems like a long shot at this point, I think.
Unfortunately, for all of us, the GOP’s inability to police themselves and demand a higher standard of conduct for their leadership could spell prolonged pain and suffering for the whole country. The fascist, cult-of-personality turn by the Party is frightening. If, God forbid, Trump evades conviction for trying to subvert and overturn a free and fair election and somehow slips into a second term, we will not recognize the America he unleashes. If Nikki can’t save us, then Maybe Joe Cool, Travis, and Taylor’s brilliantly-master-minded PSYOP conspiracy can. Fingers crossed, and prayers up, people.