Erick Erickson is executing a frantic dance – during his vacation, no less – to keep the right-wing base together. As he, or the powers-that-want-to-be, see it, the former President is an anchor dragging them into the depths:
The national calamity we are in is because a man with no impulse control lacked impulse control, banged the porn star, and when the Christian Right gravitated to him, he had to shut her up with hush money because he was afraid they’d turn on him right before the 2016 election.
Them’s the facts, y’all.
I know a few remaining hardcore true believers will deny it because Trump denies it, but we’ve got the paper trail, the lawyer, the porn star, and the only one who says no is the one who talked about grabbing women by their vaginal parts.
This isn’t so important as it sounds; the point Erickson wants to elide is that Trump was, at the very best, an incompetent, boastful boob lacking a moral system, whose attraction of the evangelical element of the electorate is not only an embarrassment to themselves, but to everyone else as well. At worst, suspected but unproven, is a treasonous loyalty to President Vladimir Putin, and a disrespect for democracy suggested by the January 6th Insurrection.
But as much as Erickson wants him gone, he remembers Trump is the Republican Party-chosen boob, which is to say Trump is the reflection in the mirror the Republican Party held up to tidy its curls in 2016, 2018, and 2020, and to acknowledge his unforgivable errors, policies, and view of the world is to condemn the Party members themselves.
That includes pastors and congregations who embraced Trump using Biblical language, much like the Fire-Eaters in the American Civil War used the Bible to justify continuing the unjust institution of slavery. These “faithful” desired to maintain a privileged position in society and government, rather than accede to the requirements of democracy; that God is four-square behind them, or so they believe, makes the suggestion that Trump was a mistake unpalatable.
So Erickson must find a path between fatally insulting the right-wing base, and keeping Trump in power; thus, the lack of impulse control, which sounds like something outside of Trump’s responsibilities.
And now to save his own ass:
To be sure, a county district attorney in New York prosecuting Trump for paying his mistress hush money is a heavy-handed political stunt. Sure, if you or I got caught ordering our companies to do it, and they did, we might get prosecuted. But it’s doubtful we’d get caught, not that I recommend it.
What, are only federal prosecutors permitted to engage with Trump? Word is that most crimes are defined and prosecuted at the local level, not the federal, so it make sense that local prosecutions will take place. And then he degenerates into good-feeling bibble babble, and, unable to help himself, he just has to devolve into the usual insults:
Yes, in fact, sometimes it is better not to prosecute if it risks the nation itself. There is discretion with justice. But this is a Soros-backed progressive prosecutor. He’d rather prosecute Trump than a cop killer. The left has weaponized prosecutions.
Have they? Have they weaponized juries? It’s one of those remarks designed to inspire paranoia: Keep the herd together! But on examination, the remark degenerates into meaningless static. If Alvin Bragg, the New York County D.A., has abused his office to “get Trump”, the jury will, at worst, be hung, and at best find Trump Not Guilty and even reprimand Bragg, thus ending his political career. Would Bragg risk that?
But if this is a legit prosecution, the jury may very well find Trump guilty. Not that Erickson would dare endorse such a finding, as that would endanger his current lofty position in the right-wing punditry, but that’s how it works out.
Finally, Erickson has a history of getting the American mood wrong, from predicting left-wing riots over the confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett (in order to blame the late, even then, Justice Ginsburg for not resigning when Obama was President, ignoring the Judge Garland incident, not to mention Ginsburg’s right to stay on the bench until death or incompetence) (the riots didn’t happen), to predicting the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, would have little effect on the 2022 election, while the post-mortem analysis credits Dobbs with Democratic gains in the Senate and exceptionally minimal losses in the House, confounding most professional pundits. So this made me laugh:
Who exactly do an indictment and arrest bring to Trump that wasn’t with him in 2020? Republicans, you do know if you go with literally anyone else, you can get eight years in the White House, right, and half or less of the soap opera?
Uh, no. Like I said, the Republicans selected their image in Trump, and that has simply worsened. It means most of their candidates, national and local, are like Trump, whether they have a safe seat, like Rep Greene (R-GA), or they’re wailing, unjustifiably, that they were cheated, such as Kari Lake (R-AZ) losing the governor’s seat in Arizona. A self-centered, often money-worshiping, lot, they continue to push anti-abortion measures which infuriate the all-important independents, and likely many Republicans who’ve not become convinced they know what’s passing through God’s mind these days.
See, Trump is a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself. Get rid of him, and you’re still stuck with candidates who think the world revolves around them, and by-fucking-god, god hates abortion and everyone agrees with them.
It’s not how the world works. So long as the Republicans continue to field Lake, Pastriano, Oz, and dozens of other such candidates, they’ll be dancing on the edge of an abyss of oblivion. And Erickson just doesn’t get it.
