th<\/sup> 2024<\/i><\/p>\nThe small group of voters known as \u201cundecideds\u201d break down into two categories. First, there\u2019s the \u201cWhat? There\u2019s a election?\u201d crowd. They tend to have an exaggerated impact in polls because they rarely actually vote. They need to know to register, and when, where and how to vote.<\/p>\n
The others are the Olive Oyls. They\u2019re the ones who are like the old Popeye cartoons character, the weak-willed and ever-vacillating female who can never decide between her two suitors, no matter how stark and obvious the difference between the two might be.<\/p>\n
The reasoning might go something like this: \u201cOK, Trump hates Taylor Swift, but Vance tells me Harris eats live kittens!\u201d They can\u2019t tell truth from falsehood, and aren\u2019t ethically equipped to distinguish between normal and abhorrent behavior.<\/p>\n
In a nation split almost exactly evenly by the power of propaganda, it\u2019s horrifying to realize that these morons were likely to be the tipping point.<\/p>\n
But the good news is that there is a new tipping point, and it lies with a group large enough to send the undecideds to the obscurity they deserve: this group is the Responsible Republicans.<\/p>\n
They are a lot larger than most people realize. I started getting an inkling of their presence when I noticed that even in primaries where Nikki Haley wasn\u2019t on the ballot, between 10 and 30 percent of Republican voters were NOT voting for Trump.<\/p>\n
I looked at this, and I reasoned that as long as Biden held it together and didn\u2019t do something utterly senile like declare hatred for Taylor Swift or childless cat ladies, and Trump went right on being Trump, these disaffected voters would become a significant factor in the election.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s withdrawal and the subsequent rise of Kamala Harris put Trump\u2019s deficiencies in a glaring light. People immediately saw it as the Prosecutor vs. the Felon. Not Kennedy vs. Nixon, but more like Perry Mason vs. Tony Soprano. Only this \u201cTony\u201d has stripped his mental gears and confuses Mason with Ironsides and mocks him for being in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n
The exodus of Republicans choosing country over party didn\u2019t begin with Liz Cheney and her father Dick endorsing Harris, but changed from a trickle to a landslide since. The latest round was announced by the Harris\/Walz campaign today, when \u201cmore than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials who served in senior roles in multiple presidential administrations and in Congress are endorsing Vice President Harris for President.\u201d This is in addition to the hundreds of ranking Republicans\u2014former Presidents and Vice-Presidents, former Congressionals, former members of the Trump administration, hundreds more from both Bush and Reagan administrations, who have either endorsed Harris or refused to endorse Trump.<\/p>\n
And now we are starting to see the polls shift. And it isn\u2019t a big increase for Harris (1 percentage point) but a significant decrease for Trump (3 percentage points). He\u2019s bleeding support.<\/p>\n
For Responsible Republicans, the message is clear: if you can\u2019t bring yourself to vote for Harris, at least don\u2019t vote for Trump. The country can survive Harris; it won\u2019t survive Trump. They may believe the propaganda on Fox News that Biden has ruined the economy and turned the country into a Taco Stand run by the cartels, but they can see that things are actually pretty good in their town. And because things ARE actually pretty good all around the country, a lot of Republicans are noticing that.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re just about at the point in the campaign where Bluto has pulled a dirty trick so egregious that Olive is starting to look even more confused, and Popeye is muttering \u201cThat\u2019s alls I can stands, I can\u2019t stands no more\u201d and you know the loud music is about to start.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s \u201cassassination attempt\u201d at the golf course shows just how desperate the Trump campaign has become. The previous attempt in Bethel, Pennsylvania, which was very real, didn\u2019t result in a boost in the polls, but it did earn Trump a certain amount of good will and he might have enjoyed a \u2018honeymoon\u2019 period after that, had he not started immediately grifting from it.<\/p>\n
This one\u2019s credibility didn\u2019t even last overnight. Trump himself blew the believability of it out of the water by saying that his decision to go golfing that day was a \u201clast minute decision\u201d which, combined with police claims the guy with the gun was parked outside the golf course for twelve hours, added to a huge \u201cthis doesn\u2019t add up\u201d from everyone. Not only did the grifting begin almost immediately, but JD Vance and others instantly demanded that Democrats\u2014commies, pet-eaters and baby-killers all\u2014immediately tone down the \u201cinflammatory rhetoric.\u201d If Ashli Babbitt was the MAGA movement\u2019s Horst Wessel, then Ryan Routh, the golf course guy, was Marinus van der Lubbe, the half-wit executed for supposedly starting the Reichstag fire.<\/p>\n
This won\u2019t be lost on the remaining responsible Republicans who hadn\u2019t quite decided to break the bond with Trump. What was a trickle of Republicans abandoning him will become a flood.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t translate to down-ticket votes necessarily, although candidates firmly aligned with Trump will suffer from it. If you\u2019re a sane Republican in North Carolina, you not only won\u2019t vote for Trump, but you won\u2019t vote for that nutball Mark Robinson, either.<\/p>\n
Republicans in the House especially may find themselves vulnerable.<\/p>\n
But a lot of those Republicans who see the dangers of Trump may decide Harris is nearly as bad, and vote Republican down ticket to keep the country paralyzed. This could still happen.<\/p>\n
Less than seven weeks to go, now. Stay focused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bryan Zepp Jamieson September 18th 2024 The small group of voters known as \u201cundecideds\u201d break down into two categories. First, there\u2019s the \u201cWhat? There\u2019s a election?\u201d crowd. They tend to have an exaggerated impact in polls because they rarely actually vote. They need to know to register, and when, where and how to vote. The … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “\u201cOh Popeye! Oh Bluto!\u201d — Fortunately, morons won\u2019t decide the election now”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,60,385],"tags":[325,2049,2048,197,906,1394,2045,2046,2047,2044],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-psyche","category-politics","category-trump-impeachment","tag-assassination","tag-defectors","tag-dick-cheney","tag-donald-trump","tag-kamala-harris","tag-liz-cheney","tag-marinus-van-der-lubbe","tag-reichstag-fire","tag-repsonsible-republicans","tag-ryan-routh"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cOh Popeye! Oh Bluto!\u201d -- Fortunately, morons won\u2019t decide the election now · Zepp's Commentaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1651\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cOh Popeye! Oh Bluto!\u201d -- Fortunately, morons won\u2019t decide the election now · Zepp's Commentaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bryan Zepp Jamieson September 18th 2024 The small group of voters known as \u201cundecideds\u201d break down into two categories. First, there\u2019s the \u201cWhat? There\u2019s a election?\u201d crowd. They tend to have an exaggerated impact in polls because they rarely actually vote. They need to know to register, and when, where and how to vote. 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