The Big Fear Hits the GOP as They Realize the Corner They’ve Painted Themselves Into
John Pavlovitz has acute perceptions, and he’s seeing the same thing I am:
There is something different in the eyes of the GOP these days.
It is the white-hot fear that has overtaken them all.
They’re all in a scalding panic, because they understand that their brief moment in history to have their way and impose their will is quickly coming to a close. The landscape is being renovated, the climate is changing, and as a species they are dying—which is why they will do what all frightened animals do when they are backed into a corner and realize the level of the threat: they will grow more violent than ever before.
In the coming days, the Tweets will become more erratic, the legislative assaults grow more transparently desperate, the hate crimes more brazen, the sermons grow more alarmist and incendiary. These Jurassic, soon-to-be-amber-trapped relics, will act as if the very sky above them is falling, because in very real ways, it is. They will thrash and spit and bellow, in an effort to buy themselves a few more days and a bit more power and another Federal judge or two, but they cannot stave off their inevitable disappearance, as progress and civilization and time swallow them up.
So herewith, a prediction:
1. As the week drags on, the massive media dinosaur rouses itself because reporters - and more importantly, network chiefs - are finding themselves inconvenienced at airports
2. Enraged at being made to wait an extra 20 minutes to whisk themselves through first class onto the NY-LA flights, they start cranking out endless stories about the “real folks” being hurt by Trump’s shutdown
3. Fox gamely tries to shift the narrative to how hordes of Brown People will cut off white people’s heads without Wall
4. This whips the Trumpkins into their usual frothing rage, BUT
5. Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall, and Senators up for reelection in 2020 are eyeing the Latino turnout numbers and calculating how many more people will vote against them for overt racism
6. Trump, correctly seeing this as his Last Stand, unleashes an ever-more-deranged Tweetstream, causing Democrats to dig in even more
7. The media finds some narrative - probably around healthcare and how old folks won’t get their pills - that sticks in the minds of likely voters in Red States
8. The GOP is caught between satisfying the Fox News/Trumpkin base … or even further losing suburban white women voters …
This is already starting to play out.
..Senate Leeder Mitch McConnell LOVES MY Shutdown! He WON’T ALLOW the Senate to vote to end it! Great courage since 38 million won’t get food stamps & 100 million won’t get tax refunds! What are Americans going to do about it? Call his office at[no phone numbers allowed]? LOL!! #MondayMorning
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrFan) January 7, 2019