Note To Republicans: Never Allow The Village Idiot To Lead The Parade

Note To Republicans: Never Allow The Village Idiot To Lead The Parade

– By Ed Kociela –

The marionettes have done their dance in Orlando, Florida and so we are on to round two of the Trump Follies.

The Conservative Political Action Conference, sponsored by the American Conservative Union, just rolled up its big top and the carnies loaded the trucks, bringing a close to a demonstration of just how far today’s Republican Party has drifted from its traditional course. It seems, during all of the hoo-hah and chest-thumping that this year’s meeting of the mindless was little more than right-wing karaoke, with all of the singers bleating out the Trump chorus of hate, anger, and misinformation as they followed the bouncing ball.

I would have loved to have a fact-check needle on the proceeding, but I fear it would have been sent off reeling beyond the Mars rover as a result of the senseless spin that was spun. It was a black hole that sucked up all reason and sensibility.

But, we sure know where we stand, as speaker after speaker took to the microphone doing their best Donald Trump impressions.

I think Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, probably won with his fire and brimstone delivery and humorless stabs at levity, including a rather inappropriate reference to his turnaround trip to Cancun while Texas was buried in the throes of a lethal winter storm.

With a cheerleading squad of QAnon cultists, we saw them worship at the feet of their golden boy – literally – image of the former president, complete with bad comb-over, that was made by an artist in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. They said it was a tribute to The Donald, but if that’s a tribute, please, I’ll take a pass. So will the many who took to social media to ridicule the stump of golden irony.

CPAC is done with those hoping to make a move in GOP politics, polishing their riffs, trying out their lines, on a friendly crowd.

It’s where Ronald Reagan, who spoke at the first CPAC tea party in 1974, stole a passage from John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with his “shining city on a hill speech.” No doubt, it was a good line, but vastly taken out of context. Winthrop, you see, wanted to restrict voting and other civil rights to a small group of religiously approved individuals and believed that unrestrained democracy is “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.”

Of course, Reagan wasn’t terribly bright when it came to his sources, especially when he started tagging Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In the USA,” which he thought, by virtue of its title, was a politically patriotic statement he could latch onto. Of course, Big Ron’s people were too old and unhip to understand who The Boss was and what he stood for at the time so it mattered little. They had the money, they had the influence, and they had the power, which they used brilliantly to turn the word “liberal” into a foul expletive.

The advent of Trumpism is way beyond that, of course, with diminutives so juvenile that third-graders on the playground would be embarrassed to use.

I would like to feel sorry for the traditional Republicans who would like to cling to the principles and ideology of a Grand Old Party that once had direction and was guided by a moral compass. I mean back then, when one of the party members spoke of God and morality, you could rest assured they knew what the inside of a church looked like and had actually turned a page or two of The Bible instead of just using one for a prop. Now? Not so much, unless they are trying to get out of a scandal involving a fling with a porn star.

The question is whether the party can be saved, or even deserves to be saved, at this point.

When guys like Cruz stand up in front of the party elders and, without shame, laugh about how they tried to make a getaway to Cancun to avoid lending whatever help they could to save fellow Texans who had no heat, no water, and no electricity in sub-freezing weather you know the axis has tilted. We saw this coming, without question, back when Sarah Palin and Joe The Plumber came to prominence and led the party down a rabbit hole it has yet to emerge from. Note to Republicans: Never allow the village idiot to lead the parade. That’s why people with good, solid Republican credentials like Bob Dole and Orrin Hatch would not be welcomed by today’s party.

In watching some of the CPAC speakers, I saw nothing but Trump wannabes. They spoke like him, gestured like him, were arrogant like him, crude like him, unhinged as him. They wanted to masquerade as the next-generation Trump, poised and prepared to step into the ring for 2024 should the opportunity present itself. There were also, I guarantee, some sharks among them sniffing for blood in the water because, well, their guy has been impeached not only once, but twice, and he could very well be facing criminal charges soon, so best to be prepared, right? So whether he is back on the campaign trail or sharing a prison cell with Rudy Giuliani, Trump will still have some kind of presence in the next election. A lot of water will pass under the bridge between now and then, but the Republicans, regardless, will use the Trump playbook next time around engaging the isolationists, the greedy, the racists who jumped on the Trump crazy train and are not about to give up their seat because that ticket, man, allows them to hate people of color, senselessly attack Asians who they will argue infected the world with COVID-19, and, generally, misbehave in outrageous proportion.

We cannot predict how long this will continue because, well, there have been at least a half dozen times or so during the last four years when we thought it had all bottomed out, only to find ourselves driven to even deeper depths of depravity. That’s a shame because we really need good, strong political discourse for this experiment in democracy to succeed. We need to have good, solid differences of opinion to iron out solutions and consider options to improve our standing in a world that has little trust in us at this very moment because of the hangover the last four years caused.

I saw little to give me hope over the weekend at CPAC where, it seemed, everybody came to kiss the ring and worship at the feet of The Donald.

But, I guess that’s what happens when you allow the village idiot to lead the parade.

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