The Republicans are entering the frantic thrashing phase of their amateur hour moment, as Erick Erickson explains:
That is why Republican leaders in Washington really need to shut the hell up on gun issues right now. Here is the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia on Fox News yesterday.
[X post omitted, but here’s the text as transcribed by, or for, Aaron Rupar]
Pirro: “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law abiding law owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail and hope you get the gun back. And that makes all the difference.”
This comes a week after Alex Pretti’s death, when the President and others in his Administration also attacked Second Amendment rights.
I cannot think of a strategy better able to alienate Second Amendment voters from showing up in the midterms.
On top of that, the Trump Administration has been alienating pro-life voters. They have refused to roll back the expansion of the abortion drug. The President has sought to gut the Hyde Amendment.
This is all just bad politics.
But he won’t take the next step, and that would be recognizing Trump, Pirro, and all these invaders as know-it-all amateurs; or even painting them with the next air-brush in the rack.
Grifters.
Erickson isn’t discussing, and maybe doesn’t understand, that the prioritization of ideological stances, such as abortion, gun rights, etc, over such considerations as experience, merit, ability to compromise has made the Republican Party unacceptably vulnerable to the depredations of the grifters. If this doesn’t make sense, consider these:
- If experience is required, a grifter, whose essential nature is dedicated to collecting the wealth and power of others with minimal investment on their part, will not consider it an opportunity.
- The same reasoning applies to merit, as applicable merit requires experience.
- Compromise dilutes profit and prestige, and discourages the grifter.
- But ideological positions that require little more than shouting support for them on stage? Even a little lying? This is when the grifter, discovering an opportunity, shines. The investment is minimal and the opportunity is magnificent.
I do not claim the grifters set this up; I blame it on that fool Gingrich.
Both Parties are out of focus, I see.
But grifters are also amateurs, as they have no experience. So the head grifter himself has demanded control over the operations of elections, and, failing that, is trying to control the voter rolls, hoping to short-circuit the damage his inexperience, his lack of merit, and his minimal understanding of politics is causing. President Trump is little more than a showman, like any grifter. He bedazzled the voters twice, but when it comes to the daily grind of governance and politics, he has no knowledge, no experience.
And the voters are learning this on topics as diverse as the economy and civil rights. At this point, if Trump starts spewing claims based on the recent FBI raid on an elections office in Fulton County, GA, where Trump lost in 2020, will anyone outside of his current base even entertain them to be true?
Probably not.
Still, the Republicans are no worse than the Democrats in one way: Neither side is willing to admit to error and promise to correct. It’s the whole package or none of it.
Time for new Parties and wide spread use of ranked-choice voting.
