1/ Fam, we'll see if y'all are still here in the morrow, but I've got a flight to London tomorrow (a trip that just jumped up a notch) and I'm going to get some sleep.
Before I go, since it may be the last, I have five assertions for assertions for you.
2/
ITEM 1: Everything Trump Touches Dies is an inexorable and inevitable law of the universe. #ETTD
ITEM 2: America was always great. Imperfect but great and worth fighting for.
3/
ITEM 3: Diet Pepsi tastes like yak urine filtered through a Soviet-era diesel engine.
ITEM 4: Small teams of serious people do 99% of the work.
4/ ITEM 5: This is the most lovely fragment of poetry in the English language, Old, Middle or Modern:
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.
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1/ For once, the shoe is on the other foot. Today, it's the GOP wailing and screeching about their failure of messaging. The GOP's message discipline was central to its success for decades.
You could wake candidates up out of a sound sleep and they'd rattle off the MOTD.
2/ They tested and polished and tweaked and worked it on hitting the right tone and messages. It's an art form.
It's also dead.
Trump killed it. Now, the persuasion doesn't matter, only the lib-pwning. They're bound and locked into profoundly stupid ideas like...
3/ election denial, January 6th defenses, and shouting about the catalog of imaginary demons. (Caravans! Antifa! Chynese fentanyl! Drag queen story hour cannibalism!)
They delivered those messages with volume and efficiency from a well-tuned machine.
The Florida GOP is the single best Republican party in the country, hands down. It has infinite money, a deep bench of consultants and operatives, and *wins.*
2/ It’s Alabama football vs the Middle Missouri Girls’ Preparatory Academy Field Hockey team.
The FL Dems? Tough love time: they can’t organize a two-car motorcade, I’ve got more money in my glove compartment, and their skilled operators could fit around a Waffle House table.
3/ And here’s the REAL tough love: they’re too fucking far to the left for a RED STATE. Florida is and has been and is become more of a red state by the day. The idea that DeSantis and Rubio “turned Florida red” is absurd, an almost hilariously bad take.
1/ So here it is. He's back, and people are finally realizing that no amount of "He's the Former Guy" wishcasting was going to work.
No amount of "He CAN'T run if he's under indictment" copium is changing the grim reality of our world now.
Will it be tonight at 8pm?
2/ Lucy, football. Or maybe he'll cry havoc and let slip to mooks of war. Nothing -- save a shark attack, a meteor strike, or a medical crisis was ever going to stop his return.
Already, the replay of 2016 is in full flood. The Good Republicans, that vanishing tribe...
3/ ...are convinced the GOP is ready to move one. Ready to leave Trump behind. Ready for Ron or Glenn or someone, ANYONE else but the gibbering umber golem.
It's only demonstrates how profoundly they misread the MAGA takeover then, and now.
1/ Washington's media culture really likes Kevin McCarthy. He's an affable, back-slapping dude. He's easy to have a beer with. He plays the role of the reasonable guy who smirks in private at the MAGA clownshow.
We have it from THREE events in the last year that Kevin's pitch...
2/ ...to major donors was "Hey, help me get my people through the primary so we have numbers against the crazies."
But for all that private reasonableness and bonhomie, Kevin's majority -- and yes, folks, redistricting and math means he'll have one -- ...
3/ ...will be majority MAGA. Trump's inevitable re-entry into the 2024 race (are you not paying attention?) will mean the MAGA majority of the GOP caucus will weaponize the House. There have been other previews, but this one is mine:
1/ Let me cover for a moment a 2024-ish matter, now that the last of LP's ads are rolling out.
Last night, Donald Trump road-tested his first open attacks on Tater DeSantis.
I absolutely LOVE the reaction by the Gentry Conservative Cruise Line Media Wing of the GOP and...
2/ ...the reaction by Fox and the MAGA media apparat. "Ron De Sanctimonious" wasn't Trump's A-Game, but here's what struck me most powerfully.
My first thought was, "Holy hell...it's 2015-16 all over again." I can't tell you how many stories ran...
3/ ...in the mainstream media, the conservative gentry media, Fox, and even the MAGA media of voters saying, "How dare fraud Trump attack True Conservative X with a silly nickname. Our party is BETTER than that and TCX is a conservative ROCKSTAR with an amazing record of..."
1/ The President of the United States makes an important speech about the dangers posed to our constitutional republic and democratic system of government.
It is reasoned, passionate, truthful, and timely.
The reaction by the political and media class is largely...
2/ ..."Whatever, bro. Did you hear about the crime ads and muh red wave?"
I get it; democracy and a functioning republic is an abstraction, a luxury good, a distraction from the horserace and easy both-sidesism.
Every nerd kid who goes to DC to work in media or...
3/ ...politics (raises hand) learns the inside game is fascinating and fun.
We're not in that game any more. We're in a new territory where the stakes aren't "What will the highest marginal tax rate be?"
Now, it's a matter of "will we be a nation with the rule of law?"