Sheesh. This is just plain silly, and an indictment of the Republicans all on its lonesome:
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is running for reelection in Kentucky. So why is he running TV ads in Florida?
Like most everything in Republican politics, the answer has to do with one person: President Donald Trump.
With Trump planning to go to his Mar-a-Lago club for Super Bowl weekend, Massie, a four-term Kentucky congressman, is purchasing TV advertising time in South Florida on the president’s favorite channel, Fox News. Massie’s goal: Communicate to the president that his Republican primary challenger, attorney Todd McMurtry, is a “Trump hater.”
The libertarian-minded Massie has broken with Trump on an array of key issues, which McMurtry has highlighted repeatedly since launching his campaign earlier this month. But Massie’s new commercial aims to turn the tables on McMurtry, who is branding himself as a staunch Trump ally in lockstep with the president ahead of the May 19 primary. [Politico]
Well, how bad is it?
Telling the truth is dangerous to one’s career, apparently. If you’re Republican.
But it really goes further. An elided point is that we’re now substituting fealty to Trump, as Politico puts it, for positions and competency. Just about any voter knows that candidates have positions, while long-time readers know that, in my view, competency in office is an important part of any candidate’s resume, a facet that is in danger of extinction within the toxic team politics of the Republican Party.
In other words, it hardly matters how much you’ve fouled up your life prior to your run for office. Swear fealty to Trump in sufficiently towering terms and that’s apparently good enough to get you into office, at least for the Republican Party base, just so long as you haven’t spat on Trump – or are really willing to, uh, abase yourself. Even if you’ve advocated for abortion rights, don’t despair: Trump was once in favor of abortion rights, and probably still is, if truth were to be told.
But truth hardly ever passes his lips, does it?
