Trump's Ongoing Quest To Drive The Republican Party Into The Ground

Last week, when Blake Masters, a far right puppet of Trump-aligned billionaire, Peter Thiel leaked a story that he’s running for the Arizona Senate seat— despite having lost the other Arizona Senate seat disastrously last year— I got the feeling that Trump must’ve blabbed at lest a strong hint to Thiel that he’s serious about considering Kari Lake for his 2024 ticket. It would be suicidal for Masters to run against Lake. Last year she lost with 1,270,774 votes (49.67%) while he lost with 1,196,308 votes (46.5%). Both are in the same MAGA lane and both would depend on Trump’s endorsement to win.

Yesterday, Rolling Stone published Inside MTG and Kari Lake’s ‘Death Race’ To Become Trump’s VP, a look at the hilarious Trump “vetting process” by Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng for the person who would become president if he won the presidency and then ate one Big Mac too many and keeled over and died. They described the rivalry for Trump’s hand between Lake and Georgia crackpot Marjorie Traitor Greene as a “death race.” It’s a shame he can’t have two vice presidents. Behind the scenes,” wrote Ransley and Suebsaeng, “the two view one another with intense distrust and disdain, each seeing the other as direct competition for Trump’s political affections… [in] the lane of election-denying, shameless Trump diehard who has emerged as a conspiracy-theory-slinging star among the conservative base.”

Greene, in particular, has gone beyond simple attempts to raise her own profile in the ongoing Trump veepstakes. In recent weeks, she has moved behind the scenes to tear down Lake, garrulously trash-talking her to others in the MAGA elite, political circles, and conservative media, multiple sources tell Rolling Stone.

In an ironic twist, one of the bigger complaints coming from Greene— who years ago cemented her public image as a QAnon-promoting, school-shooting-survivor-mocking, Jewish-Space-Laser-fearing activist— lately is that Lake is not a “serious” enough person to be Trump’s second-in-command.

“MTG thinks she’s a scammer and not even a conservative,” says one of the sources who’s spoken to Greene about this. The source adds that Greene has privately said that “Lake is a grifter and [is] trying to keep riding Trump’s coattails because she lost [in Arizona], so she’s cozying up on the election-integrity messaging.”

Similarly, according to a different source who personally knows and likes both Lake and Greene, in a conversation with the MAGA congresswoman within the past several weeks, “Kari did come up, and the term ‘grifter’ was used to describe her more than just once…[MTG] thinks it’s complete nonsense that anyone would think it’s a good idea for Donald Trump to consider [Kari] for VP.”

This year, when embarrassing stories have appeared in the news about the Arizona Republican, Lake has at times voiced her suspicions that Greene has been leaking negative information about her to the press, another source familiar with the matter says.

…Trump has from time to time quizzed confidants on who they think the best possible VP picks could be. Lake and Greene are indeed among the names the former president has repeatedly discussed, when discussing pros and cons with certain allies and senior staffers.

Unfortunately for both Lake and Greene, numerous sources close to Trump and working on his reelection effort deem each of their Trump-VP chances as vanishingly low. Several of these people independently claimed that even Trump is not “stupid enough” to tap either as his running mate. Some of these sources say they’ve already advised the routinely indicted 2024 GOP frontrunner that someone like Greene or Lake would bring nothing of value to a ticket, and could easily hurt him with independent and moderate voters who he’d need to unseat President Joe Biden.

However, another person close to the former president says that in the past few months, Trump has made a point of repeatedly commending each of them for their frequent efforts— both publicly and behind the scenes with lawmakers and grassroots activists— to aid his 2024 campaign. Further, as Rolling Stone reported back in October, Trump has suggested to close associates that Greene would be “great” in some position of seniority in his potential second administration, whether in the cabinet, at an agency, or in the West Wing at his side. The ex-president even floated the idea of installing her at the Justice Department; this confused some in Trump’s orbit because, as a source bluntly put it: “I don’t think she’s a lawyer.”

Greene, for her part, is more than willing to publicly angle for the role of Trump’s vice presidential choice. “I’d have to think about it and consider it,” Greene said last month. “It’s talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me.” Last year, Greene told the New York Times she and Trump had even discussed the idea of the congresswoman being his VP pick, adding: “I would be honored,” but, “I think the last person that the [Republican National Committee] or the national party wants is me as his running mate.”

…Lake’s own rising profile among Republicans appears to be fueling Greene’s animus. Lake has made a number of trips to Iowa to campaign for Trump and one early poll in the state showed she was the top vice presidential pick among Republican voters in the state next to Gov. Nikki Haley.

That popularity translated into whispers among certain Trumpworld luminaries that Lake’s name was added to a shortlist of possible running mates. In March, Axios reported that Lake was one of four women under consideration for the vice presidential nod alongside South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and South Dakota Gov. Krisi Noem.

Greene, of course, has been open about her vice presidential ambitions. Last month she also floated the idea of either a Georgia Senate run or a shot as a vice presidential pick. She asked the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s Cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?”

No one would be happier than Democrats. Trump is very transitional and more than anything, he would want to know what each would bring to the ticket. Both have huge MAGA and QAnon followings. Greene probably has a bigger following among overt anti-Semites and Southerners. She probably wouldn’t be able to swing Georgia to the GOP column but Lake might bring Arizona. On the other hand, Trump is extremely superficial and has said Lake is hot. So is Noem. Huckabee Sanders is unfortunate-looking and Greene is deteriorating rapidly.

Yesterday Thom Hartmann explained why these two degenerates are even under consideration. “The GOP,” he wrote, “is no longer a normal political party with a single governing philosophy: instead, it’s become a coalition of interest groups, each seeking its own ends.” The party isn’t the same one that Eisenhower wrote to his right-wing brother about in 1954:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

“What Eisenhower never anticipated,” wrote Hartmann, “was that 5 corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court would rule that billionaires buying off politicians was mere ‘free speech’ rather than political corruption and bribery. Had he lived to see it happen (he died in 1969), he would have been shocked to his core. Today those rightwing extremist billionaires have an outsized influence in the GOP. They’re pouring hundreds of millions into this fall’s elections, and every Republican politician must bow to them and their low-tax, no-regulation desires to gain or hold political office. Cross them and you’re toast in GOP politics. But billionaires aren’t enough to make a political party and win elections so, when the GOP put itself up for sale in 1978 after Lewis Powell wrote the decision in the Bellotti Supreme Court case allowing that, the Republicans around Reagan pulled together a coalition of voters large enough to win elections. They are:”

1. Southern white racists. This was, for the GOP, low-hanging fruit. A group identified in the 1960s by the Goldwater and Nixon campaigns, Kevin Phillips told the New York Times in 1970 how it would work:

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

2. Homophobes and misogynists. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s this group was actively courted by rightwing hate radio hosts like Limbaugh with his “Hillary Clinton Testicle Lockbox” and “Feminazi” slurs. There are enough men insecure about their own sexuality that hating on women and queer folk became a popular sport, particularly as the women’s and gay rights movements gained steam during that era.

3. Lower-middle-class working white people. This was the result of genius branding largely promoted by Lee Atwater back in the day. Exploit the brands of NASCAR, the NFL, and Country Music, which were reliably Democratic until the 1980s, causing working-class white people to think the GOP was their home.

4. Upper middle class white people. Ironically, this is the group that’s been most badly screwed by Republican tax policies, but they vote reliably Republican in any case. While billionaires pay only around 3% income taxes these days because of loopholes they paid Republicans to drill into law, people like surgeons making a few hundred thousand a year often pay 50% or more in taxes. Which, of course, makes them all the more vulnerable to the GOP’s tax-cut mantra, even if this group typically only gets a small slice of the cuts.

5. Authoritarian followers. This group has blossomed since the Trump campaign of 2016. These are people openly skeptical of democracy, instead wanting a strong father figure to lead them and tell them how to think, act, and vote. They make up the majority of the January 6th traitors (although there’s a lot of overlap with the racists), and are ready to follow the next authoritarian leader who replaces Trump (a position for which DeSantis, Hawley, Scott, Cotton, and Cruz are competing).

Hartmann reminded his readers that “Because the GOP has no unifying philosophy other than hate, fear, and kowtowing to billionaires and their giant corporations, the politicians who make up its governing class are similarly fractured,” leaving the GOP “rudderless… [O]ther than Senator Rick Scott’s proposals for ending Social Security and Medicare within 5 years and more calls for tax cuts, Republican politicians in state and federal office have been reduced to simply opposing everything Democrats do or want to do… This lack of a clear ideological foundation across the GOP has opened the door to: Predatory grifters (Mehmet Oz, Matt Gaetz, Rick Scott), Wannabee stars and fame-seekers (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz), and Putin-style autocrats (Blake Masters, Doug Mastriano, Ron DeSantis). Donald Trump, filling all three categories simultaneously, predictably became the ‘King of the Thieves’ in the GOP: those who aspire to replace him are discovering it’s a damn hard act to follow, making Republican voters even more vulnerable to each of those three GOP factions.”