Trump’s Stranglehold on the GOP Is a Vulnerability
Kamala Harris’ first couple of stump speeches as Presidential candidate included three parts:
- Set up of prosecutor versus felon contrast (“I know his type”)
- Tribute to Joe Biden
- Lay out promise for the future (“Not going back”)
Last night’s speech (at least until CSPAN’s feed crapped out) swapped the second part — the tribute to Biden — and replaced it with an attack on Trump’s role in tanking the border bill.
That swap came after the Vice President’s campaign released this ad, similarly targeting Trump for his role in killing the bill.
To be sure — this is the same approach Biden has taken: imputing from Trump’s deliberate tanking of the border bill opposition to fixing the border. It was undoubtedly one of the reasons Biden spent so much time negotiating the border bill, only to have Congress tank it.
But when Biden used that approach, he explained it. Harris turned it into an attack on Trump’s selfishness.
These ads will not deflate Republican efforts to turn Harris’ role in working with Central America to try to decrease the flow of migrants, which they’ve spun into being the border czar in charge of the entire border, into fear about her approach to the border. But it succinctly flips the script.
It holds Trump accountable for things he made other Republicans do at his behest.
The same is true of the departure of Paul Dans, the head of Project 2025, from Heritage Foundation.
Trump’s campaign managers — Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles — released a statement crowing after Dans’ departure.
Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.
And Dans booked, then no-showed, an appearance with Kaitlan Collins show.
But ultimately, if you’re making the personnel decisions, as it appears Trump’s campaign did on Dans’ departure, then you own it. It only serves to reaffirm Trump’s role in the project.
And none too soon. Multiple outlets are publishing the forward that JD Vance did for Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, including his adoption of Roberts’ call to “circle the wagons and load the muskets” to take out government.
Vance has deep ties to the Heritage Foundation, and in particular to Kevin Roberts, who has been president of the right-wing think tank since 2021 and is the architect of Project 2025. Vance has praised Roberts for helping to turn the organization “into the de facto institutional home of Trumpism” and has endorsed elements of Project 2025. Vance is also the author of the foreword to Roberts’s upcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light, which The New Republic has obtained in full even though the book’s publisher, HarperCollins’s Broadside Books, has apparently tried to suppress it amid the scrutiny of Project 2025 and Vance’s ties to Roberts.
The subtitle and cover of Roberts’s book were softened as scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s ties to Project 2025 grew. The book was originally announced with the subtitle “Burning Down Washington to Save America” and featured a match on the center of its cover. The subtitle is now “Taking Back Washington to Save America,” and the match is nowhere to be seen. Promotional language invoking conservatives on the “warpath” to “burn down … institutions” like the FBI, the Department of Justice, and universities has also been removed or toned down, though it is still present in some sales pages.
But the inspiration for that extreme language can be found in Vance’s foreword, which ends with a call for followers to “circle the wagons and load the muskets,” and describes Roberts’s ideas as an “essential weapon” in the “fights that lay [sic] ahead.” (The New Republic downloaded Dawn’s Early Light earlier this month from NetGalley, which provides advance copies of books to reviewers and booksellers. Copies were removed from the platform earlier this month.)
Trump might yet replace Vance — though he has only a few weeks before ballot finalization would make that far more difficult.
But he can’t disown the hundreds of top Trump aides associated with this project.
Because of Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, Kamala Harris is in a sweet spot: She can claim credit for Joe Biden’s successful policies. But she can also treat Trump as a near-incumbent, holding him accountable for all the things Republicans have been doing to help Trump beat Joe Biden for the last two years.
That may turn out to be a serious vulnerability for Trump going forward.
Update: Roger Sollenberger confirms that LaCivita pushed Dans out.
The Trump campaign forced the architect of the ultraconservative Project 2025 manifesto out of his job on Tuesday as it sought political cover from a controversy dogging Republicans, the Daily Beast can report exclusively.
Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita “put the screws” to mastermind Paul Dans in an effort to force him out and shut down the right-wing shop behind Proejct 2025, a sprawling blueprint that sought to overhaul the federal government and implement an array of far-right policies for a potential second Trump administration, a well-placed source told the Daily Beast.
Yes to all of this.
Moreover the fact that Trump-MAGA feel the need to re-jig personnel and issue warnings of further excommunication for unspecified heresies, shows how worried they are about the accurate attacks on the weird anti-democratic programs they have hitherto promoted. Attacks which have clearly resonated with voters, and in particular are causing swing voters to reject Trumpism.
And Team Trump remain incredibly vulnerable to these attacks , because they only imply that Project 2025 people “have gone too far” without elucidating what Trumpers are rejecting, nor giving any plausible explanation for their predicament, and what their program is. What policy proposals are they scraping off the wall? What messaging are they rejecting? It looks like their strategy amounts to no more than
‘ heads have rolled; let’s move on; fuggetaboudit. The MAGA program is : keep the faith Trust in Trump’
And this paragraph from the above cited Sollenberger piece derserves emphasis
“The source told the Beast that the rift between the Trump campaign and the Heritage Foundation was not ideological, but rather was about power and who will ultimately control Trump World and make staffing decisions in a possible second Trump administration”
Back in the early Trump days there was a fair amount of speculation that his, ummm, antics would eventually cause the GOP to begin rejecting him, as the cost of having him began to outweigh the benefits he brought. It didn’t play out that way, of course.
But I wonder if we’re finally seeing that process begin to play out among non-MAGA GOPers who hope their silent acquiescence to Trump in times past will be forgotten–and that everything will be back to normal soon enough.
If that’s the case, the ascendancy of Harris and the change in strategy she has enabled will deserve much of the credit for that recognition.
If she continues being so effective I’d expect a number of GOPers to forcefully reject Trump and MAGA toward the end of the campaign, as they realize just how much she’s broken through with their constituents.
Dems need to begin tying every GOPer to Trump, whether through their acquiescence or their full-throated support. That’s an area of messaging I haven’t seen from Dems, I suspect due to Biden’s laudable but inappropriate-for-the-moment bipartisanship chops.
But we know who the handful of principled GOPers are: the rest need to be thrown out of office, for a lack of courage and integrity if nothing else.
Who are these “principled GOPers” of whom you speak? If you’re still calling yourself a Republican after nine years of cray-cray, you’re not “principled”. You’re a vacillating weasel clinging to a job you love more than your country.
As a Grand Rapids native, I’ve watched the weasels run off two of my representatives for daring to vote that the emperor’s naked. I might not have agreed with Amash or Meijer on many things, but at least I could respect them as having principles.
ANY GOPer “repudiating” Trumpism at this point is weathervaning, not acting out of principle.
I suppose ex-GOPers would have been more precise.
I don’t think anyone here would suggest that the bulk of the current GOP deserves to remain in public service, no matter how much they doth protest.
Though this is all broadly good news, it’s deeply depressing that the campaign has launched with efforts by both sides to claim the mantle of being more draconian on immigration. Is Harris going to put out any ads showing that the “migrant crime wave” narrative is utterly false?
It needs to be a common sense ad. An ad that tells the truth about how many immigrants “get the job done.”
A series of ad-length videos distilling the essence of A Day Without A Mexican (2004) but with better delivery.
Careful there. It would feed into the complaints by low-income native workers that they are, too, willing to do those tough jobs that are going to immigrants. I believe it’s happening in the campaign already.
Yeah, *right*. We aren’t seeing them doing those jobs, are we?
Those are Donnie’s “black” jobs: field hands, bus boys, cooks, cleaners, trash collectors, gardeners, housekeepers.
I suspect that a Democratic PAC, or even a ‘never trumper’ PAC could simply montage the Republican primary campaigns:
“Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) described Trump as “disgusting” to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, adding that “what he’s doing is dog-whistling to Americans who feel absolutely under stress and strain from the economy and from the conflicts around the world. And he’s dog-whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us.”
[snip]
The former governor of New Jersey also accused Republicans of enabling Trump, pointing fingers at members of congress and fellow primary candidate Nikki Haley.
“You’re telling me that someone who says that immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country,” Christie asked. “Someone who says Vladimir Putin is a character witness is fit to be president of the United States, was the right president at the right time?”
Kelby Vera
Huff Post
December 17, 2023
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chris-christie-donald-trump-disgusting-immigrants-poisoning-country_n_657f25cee4b08e9b410ada91?ncid=NEWSSTAND0001
“Nikki Haley blames ‘unhinged’ Donald Trump for blocking bipartisan US border deal
Republican presidential candidate ratchets up her attacks on former president in visit to Texas
Myles McCormick and Lauren Fedor
FT
March 4, 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/542dfc8b-9368-4b3e-9961-ba254244ebae
Pushing Dans out does not change Trump’s delight in stating in campaign speeches, “Christians, get out and vote! It will be the last time you vote!”
Trump’s promise is a Project 2025 promise.
No one should be fooled by the shell game Team Trump and the GOP are playing with Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. Trump’s subsumed much of Project 2025 as his own agenda — Agenda47.
h/t John D’oh at https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/112877516292407817
More on Agenda 47: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47
It’s literally part of Trump’s campaign website, complete with videos of him presenting each agenda item: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47
Also, it appears that this whole thing is a sleight of hand by the Heritage Foundation, hoping to continue working on Project 2025 while allowing Trump to say it’s “not connected to him”:
https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1818365566710956443
I called it a “shell game,” did I not?
Do you know what a shell game is?
I’ve also said Trump’s Agenda47 = Project 2025 with plausible deniability.
Also, the Heritage Foundation’s work is done on Project 2025. The plan is written and sitting on the shelf, waiting for a Republican in the White House. It doesn’t matter if Dans was forced out; he’s already placed the land mine in our country’s path.
It’s up to voters to deny Republicans the chance to implement the plan.
By some reports Dans wasn’t forced out but moved to the next stage, implementation, now that the policy is fully formed. So most of the coverage has been wrong about it all, ie duped by the spin. Vought ain’t going nowhere.
Heh.
Vote for Kamala and you will never have to think about Donald Trump ever again. fore the rest of your life”
As much as I appreciate the joke, … no.
The last two digits are a placeholder. It could just as easily be Project 2029 or Project 2033. The existence of this “plan” and its embrace by the GOP means that the current GOP can not be allowed power again, until enough changes are made to prevent its implementation. Is that even possible?
On the one hand, they’ve handed Democrats a cudgel that can be used against them for multiple election cycles; on the other, it’s forced every subsequent election to be an exhausting existential crisis.
None of this is good news for the country as a whole. It appears that we are stuck in a primitive mindset of disinheriting groups/types of people. We are still an apartheid nation. Our future seems grim- as apparently no leader has the courage to discuss, plan, implement, promulgate, or advocate for an end to the apartheid. What an utter waste of humanity: the Democrats see the weakness of the Republicans struggle for who gets to continue the rhetoric of apartheid.
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“We are still an apartheid nation.”
Explain this apartheid — who is on which side of the divide, apart from politics?
I’m always amazed how many GOPers that Trump has bullied out of his way turn around and become his sycophants; could that be Stockholm syndrome on a mass scale?
My theory: it’s three things combined:
1. Stockholm syndrome
2. Craven desires for power and influence
3. Kompromat.
I can’t prove it, but I also can’t explain it otherwise.
Sounds like disorganized attachment to me:
https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/disorganized-attachment/
At this time, I’m guessing Trump is wishing weird, shady JD’s mother had been a childless cat lady.
Kamala has far more charisma than Donald. And she’s a lot more fun (not to mention smarter.) So it’s a no-brainer who we should want to see and listen to for another 4 years. Good business for the news outlets, as well.
People are already talking about the possibility that deep red states may flip. Love the energy. Yes!
That’s the rub. Trump can’t stand not being the center of attention, the phenomenon. He is upset because someone shinier and more relevant came along.
It is just salt in his wounds it is a woman and POC
Thanks for the salient analysis.
It’s not for nothin’ that the second compare-and-contrast Trump pic in the Harris ad is of he and Bill Barr.
I noticed that too. Subtle but effective.
In other news of Trump flailing, I’ve read a few places that he is fuming that Harris and Vance are taking away press coverage from him. So think about the schedule for the next 50 days or so and that the spotlight will be on Harris or negative coverage of Trump most likely.
* Harris selects VP next week around the 7th
* DNC convention begins August 19th
* Scheduled debate September 10th (will he or won’t he coverage or negative coverage if he drops out)
* Trump sentenced September 18th
It’s incredibly fortuitous and may well give Trump a cardiac event or his narcissistic, demented brain will explode bigly making coverage of his mental issues by msm unavoidable. Harris has proven she’s in it to win it and I think her team can juice the opportunities of that schedule.
And good luck with him trying to wash his hands of Project 2025- that stink will never come off, especially with Vance as his VP pick.
I close my eyes and dreamily see Judge Chutkan and SC Jack Smith intervening in a news cycle or two over the next sixty days.
Project 2025 is a two-part deal.
Part one was to compile and set forth a collection of policy proposals. This was completed, and wonder of wonders, was not received well outside of rightwing GOP circles.
Part two is to collect information about the people who would be interested in staffing a future Trump administration, to implement said policies.
The latter of these has gotten little attention, but it’s right there on the main page of Project 2025’s website (emphasis in the original):
If you click the “Personnel” button on the menu bar, it takes you to a place where you can upload your resume. At least at the moment, it open for business and not in the least bit shut down. Again, from their site:
Under “massive coalition of conservative organizations” is another link that goes to their Advisory Board page, that opens with this:
This is followed by icons of organization after organization who are part of this effort, including all manner of hard core conservative groups. Canning one guy is hardly shutting down a movement-wide effort. The “massive coalition” is indeed just that – a who’s who of conservative organizations pooling their energy. The transition to Trump’s 2016 administration was a mess, and the movement conservatives are NOT going to let that happen again.
Trump may want to downplay his links to Project 2025, but this is his Transition Team, who are vetting candidates to fill his administration from top to bottom. Kind of hard to disavow that.
Interestingly, The Federalist Society is not one of the organizations listed. I would assume that they are handling the vetting for DOJ and judicial positions, just as they did in 2016.
I wonder if the FedSoc finally realized they need to be more discreet about their approach to selecting nominees and corrupting jurists.
Or that Leonard Leo (and Kevin Roberts) are learning from their friends at Opus Dei to keep their mouths shut and their membership secret.
The DEI that worries me is Opus Dei.
Nothing like following the money, though.
“In our research of the [Heritage] foundation’s tax filings, we noticed names of other organizations also now associated with Project 2025’s many advisory board partners.
For example, the filings named The Claremont Institute; The Heartland Institute; Hillsdale College; Leadership Institute; Mackinac Center for Public Policy; and Media Research Center.
Additionally, the conservative organization The Federalist Society — which is not listed on Project 2025’s advisory board partners list — also appeared in the foundation’s [tax] filings.”
Jordan Liles
Snopes
July 13, 2024
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/project-2025-coors-walmart-exxonmobil/
I can’t help wonder how much of the data gathering has already been done, beginning back with Brad Parscale and Cambridge Analytica.
I suspect that would be more valuable to use to vet the folks who upload their resumes.
When you add this transition effort to the proposal to substantially weaken the civil service and make more govt employees subject to firing on political grounds, it is clear they are seeking to identify folks not just for the top jobs, but for all the little ones underneath who handle the day to day work.
Thanks for highlighting this, Peterr.
To wit:
“WASHINGTON (AP) — From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican Donald Trump, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that dovetails with broader conservative preparations for a new White House.”
[snip]
“The public list-making conjures for some the era of Joseph McCarthy, the senator who conducted grueling hearings into suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. The hearings were orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who became a confidant of a younger Trump.”
Lisa Mascaro
AP
June 24, 2024
https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-president-project-2025-33d3fc2999a74f4aa424f1128dca2d16
Thank you for posting this article. Now we have another thing to blame Nelson County for, besides crappy bourbon, goonish Louisville cops, and Stephen Foster bullshit.
Note: That piece was from AP.
News desks are highly attuned to the AP wire.
I saw no major news organization pick up the ball and run with it.
From Marcy’s latest piece, “AMERICA’S WHIMPERING DEMOCRACY IS TRUMP’S PAST, AS WELL AS FUTURE”: [caps original from my device’s view]
“We don’t have the luxury of waiting until after November to start defanging the right wing’s stochastic terrorism”
Also worth a read from The Guardian, imho:
“Washington insiders simulated a second Trump presidency. Can a role-play save democracy?”
Ed Pilkington and Kira Lerner
The Guardian
Tue 30 Jul 2024 09.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/washington-dc-role-play-second-trump-term
Reply to Clare Kelly
July 31, 2024 at 11:13 am
Yeah I’m probably going to forward the AP story to a few local media contacts here and ask them to do some more digging on this jackass in Bardstown. Again, thanks.
Distributed injustice, rather than distributive justice.
What was that Terminator movie, where the heroes thought they had killed the beast, only to find that the self-aware program had distributed itself to computers across the Internet?
Ken White [popehat] reposted this the other day:
https://bsky.app/profile/reportbywilson.bsky.social/post/3kyewjjsfh32q
Jul 28, 2024 at 7:29 PM
Links to Teddy Wilson:
Mapping Project 2025: Investigating the GOP’s Authoritarian Playbook
^^^ NOTE: This link is a fundraiser for the project.
For those who may be interested:
https://www.radicalreports.org/p/mapping-project-2025-the-network
In the shuffling madness
Of the MAGA voters’ breath
Runs the all-time loser
Orange, wet from sweat
Oh, he feels his grift is fading
Steam breaking on his brow
Kamala’s hard to handle
And the train it won’t stop going
No way to slow down
He sees his followers jumping off
At the stations one by one
His woman and his Veep pick
Embarrassing failsons
Oh, he’s crawling down the corridor
On his hands and knees
Now Kamala wears the mantle
And the train it won’t stop going
No way to slow down
He hears the silence howling
Pitching Christians as he falls
But the future winner
Has got him by the balls
He holds a self-branded bible
Open at page one
But he can’t even read it
And the train it won’t stop going
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
No way to slow down
Lovely.
If Kamala plays things right, soon he’ll be ‘feeling like a dead duck, spitting out pieces of his broken luck’ ;-)
Ian Anderson can really write a lyric! Glad you liked it, & hopefully I didn’t deface his work too badly.
Jethro!
Really don’t mind if you sit this one out—
Trump’s mind but a whisper, his deafness a shout (!)
Kamala may make him scared, but she can’t make him think
His sperm’s in Stormy Daniels, his grift’s in the sink
So he rides his golf cart on the greens
And he makes all his unseemly scenes
But Donald’s too senile to see he’s always been…
Thick as a brick.
Are they still taking resumes at Heritage? Have they ceased, and if pressed might they wipe the database? That, if not done, suggests not shrinking the beast, but enlarging the spoils, or can be characterized as such. The resume base is their heart, the people to put in place, and if that heart can be ripped out, the rest fails to impress.
[Moderator’s note: Letter. Case. Matters. In. Usernames. Third Request. Your established username is “Error Prone.” Fix this. /~Rayne]
[10:42 AM ET — your next two comments are on hold until you fix your username. /~Rayne]
At 9:43 AM Peterr wrote:
“If you click the “Personnel” button on the menu bar, it takes you to a place where you can upload your resume. At least at the moment, it open for business and not in the least bit shut down. “
Does anyone know how much trolling has happened on this link? I doubt we ever will, but it would be fun (if somewhat wasted effort) to see how far they could get.
Do NOT do it without adequate information security measures in place.
You don’t need a visit from Trump’s brown shirts in the future if he manages to pull off “winning” the election.
Ugh. Time spent on harassing that site could be better spent helping more voters prepare for November’s election – like ensuring people have ID, a ride to the polls, check their registration, re-register if necessary, so on.
I’ve been wondering whether a lot of us should flood them with applications.
Step one in the process is to give them your cell phone number, so they can send you a code to log in.
I suspect this is designed not only to keep bots out of the system, but also trolls.
Beware. Cellphones reveal abundant personal information. People rarely change them.
Susie Wiles has long realized the potential of and relied on data harvesting:
“She [Susie Wiles] said data allowed the campaign to tailor messages to specific groups.”
“The team integrated data into every mode of communication – digital, mail, texting, canvassing and phones,” she wrote.”
…..
“…Attendance at a rally, while free of charge, requires registration, which enables the campaign to determine a way to contact the attendee and allows that contact to include voter registration, if needed, and messaging for persuasion. There is no more effective tool to reach these voters and potential voters.”
https://news.wjct.org/first-coast/2020-11-06/trump-advisor-susie-wiles-points-to-data-voter-outreach-in-presidents-florida-win
And no more effective way to keep Democrats from attending a Trump rally and poisoning the mood.
Put the K-Pop Tik-Toc kids on the job?
Trump seems to be loosing it a bit, posting at his social thing:
“Why is FoxNews putting on Crazy Kamala Harris Rallies? Why do they allow the perverts at the failed and disgraced Lincoln Project to advertise on FoxNews? Even Mr. Kellyanne Conway, a man so badly hurt and humiliated by his wife (she must have done some really NASTY things to him, because he is CRAZY!), is advertising on FoxNews. We have to WIN WITHOUT FOX!
Jul 29, 2024, 2:58 PM”
That’s poking a stick at the Big Grizzly Bear in the woods. Nothing good will result for Trump. And the wording — immature and then some.
Yes.
Trump is all about “Identity Politics”.
His dog whistles are so loud that even my deceased canines have been hearing them since 2015.
I must admit, I don’t like to see any amplification of them.
Kamala Harris has been ‘othered’ her entire life.
She and her campaign are doing a fine job of responding, imho.
There is a strength that comes from being ‘othered’ that is more than impressive. Since trump has been othering his entire life it is time he meets his match. Go Karmala!
As a side note let me laud the new democratic approach to campaign advertising. I’ve waited so long to see this fire.
JD is the gift that keeps on giving. He and a few other Rs calling Simone Biles “weak.” That’s not gonna stick the landing. Poor little baby DT. Can’t wait for the cartoons.
Jon Stewart said to the effect: we are exited that our candidate Kamala is now in a statistical TIE with DJT. We have a long way to go. And at no point during this process are we going to fundamentally address any of the financial concerns of the bottom 90%.
There are only two issues that can cut through the right wing noise machine (including the main stream media) and those issues are abortion and marijuana legalization. If the Democrats stick to these, they have a chance at winning. For the masses, everything else is just a distraction.
As much as I really want Harris to prove to us that there is no way she will sell out the people to aid any kind of corporate interest I will vote for her regardless & I am in pretty dire straits economically. It may be my heart will be broken yet again but you speak the truth at least as far as I’m concerned.
Trump makes Paul Dans, head of Project 2025, resign but not the head of its immediate sponsor and patron, Kevin Roberts? Sounds like CYA to me, but not a change of plan.
“Trump might yet replace Vance — though he has only a few weeks before ballot finalization would make that far more difficult.”
The Achilles Heel of dictatorships is that “no one puts baby in the corner!”. I think it’s certain Trump will replace him, because that’s how he rolls.
Trump helped bring about his assassination attempt by his lack of concern over security arrangements, combined with his overriding concern over his rapidly dwindling war chest. In other words, he cheaped out. Switching locations and insisting on additional SS resources as a result of that decision can all be placed at the feet of Trump. A.K.A., “Your lack of planning does not constituted my emergency”…
Replying to Just Some Guy
July 31, 2024 at 11:46 am
Thank you!
“… describes Roberts’s ideas as an “essential weapon” in the “fights that lay [sic] ahead.” That last bit reminded me of seeing something a few years back about how the grammarians (remember eighth grade?) had finally given up on the distinction between “lie” and “lay”, which I don’t think I ever learned in the first place. Apparently, they conceded that it’s the common folk (the users) who, in the end, determine what’s right; what they want becomes the norm, the desirable, the good. Let us hope that such a thing happens in this election also – that huge numbers of ordinary folk tell the control freaks like Roberts and Vance to stay the heck out of their lives.
That confusion is boosted by the fact that “lay” is both the simple past tense of “lie” and a verb in its own right.
“Lie” does not take a direct object: “I lie in bed and wait for sleep.” “Lay” does: “Lay the book down there.”
Something that seems to be rarely mentioned is Harris just took a 4 yr class in governing from the center by the master of it. She’s different now than she was 4 yrs ago. Grad school.
What if Dans wasn’t “forced” out but just moved on from formulation to implementation?
Given the “kerfuffle” over Project 20205 leadership, the RNC, and Trump campaign I would love to see a smartly crafted set of initiatives designed to put MAGA (especially those up for re-election in Nov) and non MAGA Rs on the record about their support (or not) for Project 2025. Also try to put the RNC, Trump, and Vance. After all Vance wrote the foreword/intro so kinda hard for him to be on record disavowing out (I suppose).
I do not know how one goes about doing that. Maybe forums where candidates get ASKED by – God forbid – The Press?
Harris repeating it as part of her campaigning?
re NABJ shit show: is he in self-destruct mode? has he figured he doesn’t win in Nov so the hell with everyone else? does gop understand what’s happening? that they are as disposable as everyone, everything else that comes in this bum’s orbit?
Trump was not really talking to any of the journalists and associates in that room, he was speaking to his base in diatribal “news-clips” to serve as propaganda pieces for his effed-up campaign.
It is unfortunate to see his BS land on the front page of the WAPO when the headline should have been more like, “Trump insults hosts and humiliates himself at NABJ Convention.”
It doesn’t seem that the Project 2025 agenda is something that Republicans in down ballot races can embrace outside of the safe Gerrymandered districts. And Trump is not popular. Then I have to wonder how much will be available to help local Republicans? The Harris campaign seems to be creating an issue position and enough positive energy to allow local politicians to campaign.
I thought Ms. Wheeler was going to expound on that problem. The Republicans have nothing else to go on, other than the MAGA cult. And that cult appears to be leaking. What happens when the Rs either wake up to having nominated a loser, and he loses again?