{"id":32989,"date":"2021-05-16T13:10:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T18:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=32989"},"modified":"2021-05-16T13:10:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T18:10:15","slug":"i-shouldnt-be-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/05\/16\/i-shouldnt-be-surprised\/","title":{"rendered":"I Shouldn&#8217;t Be Surprised"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Gallup-2021-Party-Identification.jpg\" width=\"177\" height=\"107\" \/>But perhaps I am. For years I&#8217;ve been saying the <strong>RINO<\/strong> effect would eventually leave the Republican Party with three members &#8211; and two would be on probation. Well, the Party continues to shrink, as recent <strong><em>Gallup<\/em><\/strong> polling shows, but the ideological direction appears to be taking a turn &#8211; left, right, down, up, take your pick &#8211; as <strong><em>Daily Kos<\/em><\/strong>&#8216; Kerry Eleveld <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2021\/5\/15\/2030564\/-McCarthy-desperately-wanted-to-silence-Cheney-He-failed?pm_source=story_sidebar&amp;pm_medium=web&amp;pm_campaign=most-shared\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhat they\u2019re going to open the door to is a situation where nobody\u2019s Trumpy enough,\u201d said former GOP Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, who lost her suburban Virginia seat in 2018 in the blue wave of anti-Trump sentiment that swept the nation. \u201cIt\u2019s a problem for everybody.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What I should have recognized is that there&#8217;s a limit to how far right one can go. It&#8217;s just an ideological certainty. But now it&#8217;s Trumpism that&#8217;s the goal, and that necessitates a change in ideological direction because there&#8217;s a fundamental difference between <em>allegiance to principles <\/em>and<em> allegiance to personality<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the latter is a lot like an absolute monarchy. The kind for which we held a Revolution, and it wasn&#8217;t a celebratory Revolution.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-32990 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=266%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"266\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?w=1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=150%2C113&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Get-out-of-jail-free-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=200%2C150&amp;ssl=1 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 266px) 100vw, 266px\" \/><\/a>Trumpism is actually rather ill-defined, being characterized by a xenophobia &#8211; except when Trump likes your autocratic leader &#8211; and a provincialism, except when Trump thinks he can make money &#8211; and an allegiance to the latest in evangelical theology, such as an emphasis on prophecy &#8211; no apologies to those readers offended by the statement &#8211; and an even more important emphasis on Biblical verses involving Cyrus, a Persian king <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/jan\/11\/donald-trump-evangelical-christians-cyrus-king\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">who accidentally delivered the Christians from Babylon<\/a>, and functions as a <em>Get Out Of Jail Free<\/em> card for sanctifying evil.<\/p>\n<p>So the new membership requirement of the <strong><em>GOP<\/em><\/strong> is a certain flexibility, and a concurrent willingness to accept that occasionally their beloved Leader will spit on them and prefer someone else, <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/06\/05\/charge-of-the-rinos-ctd-3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">based on the treatment<\/a> of former Rep Roby (R-AL). This will become a smaller and smaller segment of the electorate, as it&#8217;ll be emotionally taxing to live in that sort of atmosphere &#8211; and it leads to actions by the leaders that are absolutely at odds with reality, <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/05\/13\/earl-landgrebe-award-nominee-18\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">such as this dude<\/a>, who has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/05\/16\/politics\/fred-upton-capitol-riot-commission-cnntv\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">puzzled his own <strong><em>GOP<\/em><\/strong> colleague<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Right at the moment I&#8217;m foreseeing that in the next five years the Republican Party shrinking into irrelevance as people such as Amanda Chase (R-VA) <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/05\/13\/how-it-all-falls-apart\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">destroy it from within<\/a>. The noteworthy part will be the puzzlement of those involved. They&#8217;ll cry out that they had been Godly, that God had spoken to them, that they had done the right things.<\/p>\n<p>And everyone else was evil.<\/p>\n<p>And thus we&#8217;ll see the mistake of dragging dubious divinities into the project of wise governance.<\/p>\n<p>The trick will be for the American electorate to see it for what it is, and to not permit single issue voters, the unsung weapon of the GOP &#8211; think gun control and abortion &#8211; to derail the country from selecting wise governance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But perhaps I am. For years I&#8217;ve been saying the RINO effect would eventually leave the Republican Party with three members &#8211; and two would be on probation. Well, the Party continues to shrink, as recent Gallup polling shows, but the ideological direction appears to be taking a turn &#8211; \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/05\/16\/i-shouldnt-be-surprised\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32991,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32989\/revisions\/32991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}