Let The ShitShow Begin! — America, Get Ready To Vomiiittt!

August 22nd 2020

I mentioned on Facebook that the lineup of speakers for this week’s Republican National Convention would consist of Republicans who had made bail, weren’t institutionalized, or hadn’t endorsed the Biden/Harris ticket. That, at least, would keep the proceedings brief, which is another way of saying it would give Trump more time to rant at us about how we’re all a bunch of ungrateful swine who don’t keep our forests raked.

At this point, I think more Republicans have endorsed Biden than have endorsed Trump. No, really. There are thousands of never-Trumper Republicans involved in the Lincoln Project and the Meidas Touch and on and on. Several progressives I know noted sourly that the Democratic National Convention had more Republicans endorsing Biden than they did lefties.

Now they point out that a lot of these Republicans, bright enough to realize that Trump is too much of a good thing and while fascism is good for business, Nazism is catastrophic, have simply jumped ship and hope to have influence over Biden and continue many of the same policies that led to Trump. Others recognize Trump and his crowd as an existential threat to America and are actually motivated by a sense of patriotism and decency. And of course, most are an admixture of either. But one statement applies to all of them: they are Republicans who realize that Trump was a horrible mistake.

The Democratic Convention was a marvel of concision and planning, two hours each night, nary a glitch, capped by a home-run by Biden, who eliminated any doubts about his vitality and mental acumen with a roaring, heart-felt acceptance speech.

The Republican Convention? Well, nobody quite knows where Donald is going to give his acceptance speech. He was planning to speak all four nights, but rumor has it they got him to back down to three cameos and then the acceptance speech. Maybe. Donald’s ego probably isn’t happy about that.

Other speakers: Vogue described it this way: “Melanie Trump, the first lady, will speak on Tuesday night, perhaps from the revamped Rose Garden that she recently announced was her latest project. And though the days and times have not been confirmed, all three of Trump’s adult children from his first marriage – Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka – are expected to speak, as may Tiffany Trump, the president’s daughter with Marla Maples, wife number two. And don’t be surprised if speaking slots also go to Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband, who reportedly has taken over much of the convention planning in recent days; Lara Trump, wife of Eric and a frequent commentator on Fox News; and Kimberley Guilfoyle, Donald Jr.’s girlfriend, a former Fox News host and now the national chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee 2020.”

What, no Mary Trump? Gosh, and her book about the family was the best seller of the year. Good book, too. You would think Donald would love the attention.

Just imagine how much damage one federal marshal with a fist full of arrest warrants could do. He could wipe out the whole bloody nest of Trumps in one evening.

Virtually nobody in the higher echelons of the party will be there. None of the Bushs. None of the Cheneys. No Ryan. No Romney. No McCains. (Cindy, John’s widow, did speak at the DNC convention).

All three of Trump’s 2016 campaign managers are either in jail, pardoned, or indicted, so they won’t be there. Several of the more noisome hacks from the House will be there, all eying a potential nomination in 2024 assuming the GOP even still exists then. None of them will be there because they love Trump. Nobody loves Trump. But they want to lay political groundwork either to advance their careers or avoid being shipped to the Gulag. McConnell was finally persuaded to give a brief pre-recorded speech.

Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the disheveled clowns who pointed their guns at peaceful demonstrators in St. Louis, will be there, presumably to protect Trump from any marauding Negroes who might be delivering mail or walking their dogs or similar nefarious activities. Nick Sandmann, the kid who caught flack, probably unfairly, for seemingly mocking a tribal elder will be there, probably to orate about the fake media. The usual collection of no-choice fundie nuts will be there. If there’s anyone from the NRA not in prison or at least under orders from lawyers not to talk in public, they’ll be there.

Beyond that, just 55 hours before the convention starts, it’s all chaos. Nobody knows who speaks when, or even who speaks period. There are reports Ted Nugent is on the speakers list. They better hit him with a trank dart first, or he’s liable to go in front of the cameras with a loaded fully-automatic rifle and offer to rape Kamala Harris with it. The My Pillow Guy is supposed to be there. Will he still be flogging Oleandrin, a supposed cure for Covid-19 and well-known toxin?

Will Vladimir Putin put in an appearance on Donald’s behalf? I hear his English is quite good, and he will be offering free tea to all Democrats.

Between Donald’s gift for shooting himself in the foot, and his gift for shooting everyone else’s feet, this might be the first convention since 1968 to actually cost the party votes. It will be fascinating to watch, in the same way the Hindenberg and the Challenger were fascinating to watch. Happier outcome, though.

Partying in the Dark — GOP dives back under its rocks

August 1st 2020

Frank Lockwood, reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, had a lede that was eye-popping, even by the lunatic standards of America in 2020. He wrote, “WASHINGTON — When Republicans renominate Donald Trump for president in Charlotte, N.C., on Aug. 24, journalists won’t be on hand to witness it, a convention spokesperson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this week. Reporters also will be kept from the room when the Republican National Committee meets to conduct official party business. The spokesperson couldn’t say whether C-SPAN, the nonprofit public service network, would be allowed to air the proceedings.”

Granted, conventions have become snooze-fests over the past few decades, carefully planned political kabuki that, it’s hoped, are four day infomercials for each of the parties. From the days when the major networks provided gavel-to-gavel coverage, coverage is pretty much limited to C-SPAN and intermittent coverage from the cable news, limited to the acceptance speeches and perhaps a few minutes of speeches from the rising stars of each party. The party bosses wanted good optics, but they forgot people watched conventions for the conflict, not the choreography. The plummeting coverage reflected the growing public apathy. The parties turned vigorous national debate and friction into a pro wrestling match, one in which no wrestler dissed any other wrestler. Even party loyalists stopped watching.

But as political ads, the conventions still had value. The party candidate could count on a 4 to 8 point “convention bounce.” It might only last a week, but it usually informed an undercurrent of political exposure where, if pressed, an average voter might come up with a specific-sounding reason to support one candidate over the other.

The coronavirus caused major dislocation and changes to the conventions just by itself. Trump turned the Republican convention into a complete clusterfuck by demanding that North Carolina have an open and maskless convention, and when NC refused, citing public health concerns, he moved the pageantry part of the convention to Jacksonville, Florida. The party was obligated to have the formal party business meeting in North Carolina, so Trump ordered the committees, including the one tasked to devise the party platform, to open, rubber-stamp whatever it was they did in 2016, and adjourn, so nobody might distract from the showy parts of the convention.

The result was unexpectedly hilarious. The official party platform condemns the sitting president as being a major disappointment, corrupt, and incapable, along with a long list of complaints about how he has failed his country, the world, and all the puppies and kittens. Parties don’t like to ever mention their opponents by name, so it’s just “the sitting president” they hate. That would be a fellow named Donald J. Trump, and not the fellow they were spitting at in 2016.

OK, it’s probably more accurate now, but even the folks over at the Lincoln Project will admit that party vitriol wasn’t meant to be aimed at Trump, no matter how deserving he may be.

Quite aside from the raging pandemic and the peculiar climate Florida enjoys in August, there was the truly horrific notion of leasing a large cruise ship to house all the delegates and others. We all know how great cruise ships are when infectious diseases show up.

The GOP are going to have a convention in NC as originally planned since the Florida idea fell through, but it’s going to be ‘way toned down. Only 336 delegates instead of the 2550 or so originally planned, no alternate delegates, and they’ll see a big reduction in vendors and other hangers-on. Despite the idiotic unofficial party disapproval of masks, I expect they will be worn, in the wake of the death of Herman Cain from coronavirus (most likely caught at Trump’s Tulsa rally), and the infection of party clown Louis Gohmert. Trump will hate that, since it’s an admission that he punted the response to the coronavirus, and remind people that at least some of that lethal non-response was calculated, partisan, and deliberate.

The Democratic convention will be mostly virtual, limited to about 300 people in total, and the DNC has been carefully eliminating any dissident voices to Biden. It’s going to be boring as hell, but it won’t be as embarrassing, given that the Democrats have always leveled with people about what the appropriate response to the pandemic is, and have led the way in trying to get the public to respond in a similar, common-sense way.

The GOP are embarrassed by their convention because it shows the idiocy of their failed policies toward the pandemic, and the idiocy of their failed followers. The Democrats can appear on Zoom and have a slightly self-satisfied air, knowing that they never put lives at risk, or let Americans die for partisan gain. They are the party of responsibility and regard for the common good.

The GOP reminds me so much of the communist party in Russia during the Stalin era. The secrecy, the ideology, the paranoia and the cruelty are all there. But even the Soviets didn’t try to ban house media along with actual journalists. I wonder if Trump will permit “reporters” from OANN and Sinclair to defend the party from attacks by the liberal/leftist Fox News.

In normal circumstances, I would be absolutely appalled at a party trying to hide its convention from public view. Now I find I don’t give a damn. Republicans quit pretending to hold any American values years ago, and if they did broadcast the show, all they would do would be to gaslight us, lie to us, and just generally blow smoke up our butts.

So screw them. Let them huddle under their rock and make their little fascist schemes. They’re no longer a part of the general American political process.

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