Megyn Kelly made peace with His Hairness earlier this week.
She went to the Tower and no doubt sat across what must be
the epitome of the power desk. It’s so passé, but does anyone doubt that the chairs
that one occupies in that office, across from that desk, while luxuriant, also
requires you to sit on the edge lest you risk sinking into complete submission.
In other news Karl Rove is quietly speaking to donors,
telling them that Hairness can win, and gearing up his billion dollar
Super-PAC, American Crossroads to support the candidate.
Every political season sees old rivals, sometimes even
bitter ones, come together to defeat the candidate of the opposing Party. It
will happen eventually with Sanders and Clinton and their supporters, and it is
happening as we speak with the disreputable and repugnant Cruz and the long
line of “establishment” Republicans that endorsed him after dropping out
themselves.
For all the early fire of the massive slate of GOP
candidates, and the constant jostling to show themselves as independent and
anti-establishment, as the race as winnowed to just the three, the fourteen previous
losers have shown themselves to be exactly the type of craven whores many
Republican voters suspected they were all along. The endorsements by Christie,
Carson, Graham, Cruz, Jindal, and Bush have been completely lacking in any
principle beyond politics. Though he has literally no chance of the nomination
beyond the wildest Hail Mary in American political history, I say good for
Kasich. By staying until the end he gets to avoid- at least for the moment—an
endorsement of one or the other of the remaining truly repugnant politicians.
For now, Kasich gets to hold onto some small shred of his dignity.
It’s understandable that the average voter would look at
this surrender to form as politics as usual. Cynicism is completely baked into
the political calculations of even the most committed voter in either Party. It’s easy to overlook what a soulless maneuver
the armistice between His Hairness and Rove, FOX News-- and what is likely to
be a long line of Conservative apparatchiks— actually is.
For starters there is no reason to pretend that the Never-Trump
conservatives ever had an ounce of soul or principled political morality. The
Republican Party has a record with a through line that runs back to Richard
Nixon and Ronald Reagan of cynical coalition building which used sizable chunks
of whatever “ism” fit the electorate at the moment. Racism as an organizing
tool is not a foreign idea to this crew, and as late as the Bush Presidency
National campaigns were built at least in part on using homophobia as a wedge
issue. Bush’s brain, Karl Rove, developed that one all by himself.
Now, like Captain Renault, the GOP establishment is shocked,
shocked to find their bitter and divisive tactics being deployed so effectively
by His Hairness. Their challenge? Hairness is a policy windsock using their “ism’ tactics to overturn their
chosen political order. Revulsion is the language that almost all of his GOP
opponents choose, but in most quarters the protests are not a matter of
revulsion, so much as having their cover be completely blown. Hairness has
scorched so much fertile political soil that tactics Republicans have deployed
for decades now have the stench of hate attached to them. In a super charged
social media environment where the electorate is already undergoing dramatic
demographic transformation, direct nods to hate speech are going to be hard to
mold into national coalitions that can win elections. Hairness has gone so far that
many of them fear that he’s wrecked the game.
Even worse, as I mentioned from a policy perspective His
Hairness is a windsock. His hate tactics are being deployed in ways almost
guaranteed to destroy foundations and principles on which the Conservative
movement was built. This appears to be the last straw for his most vociferous conservative
opponents. He shares few, if any, of their core guiding principles of small
government, low taxes, and a strong National Defense. His foolish anti-abortion
rhetoric to the contrary, many fear that he’ll completely destroy the coalition
of big money types and social conservatives that has formed the governing coalition
of Republicans. Who really believes the
Bible is his favorite book?
He’d be good for most conservatives on Tax Policy, but he’s
already indicated his willingness to break with Norquist’s ultra-orthodoxy. He
exhibited completely unmoored principles in foreign and military policy,
setting a course that seems to blend isolationism with a buildup in military
forces unprecedented since WW II. He’s thrown red meat to conservatives on
Obamacare, but indicated he’ll replace it with something better, because we
can’t have people “dying in the streets”. Conservatives don’t want something
better than the ACA they want Government out of Healthcare completely. The most
doctrinaire want to get rid of both Medicare and Medicaid.
I still believe a majority of Americans will not stand for
his election. But between his policy positions and his tactics his election would
almost certainly be the end of the modern Republican Party. Many of those
railing against the candidate seem to think that even his nomination could
destroy the party.
All of this brings us back to this moment of Megyn Kelly
going to Trump Tower to make peace, and Karl Rove back-grounding with people on
how he can engage American Crossroads and its billionaire supporters to get
Hairness elected. Kelly’s calculation is complex, but relatively straight
forward. Press reports have said she’s getting death threats (as have GOP
officials in Colorado). What in the world does she need that for? Make peace,
get him on the show, watch your ratings skyrocket, and parlay that all into
afternoons at 4 on ABC and interviews with J-Lo or assorted groups of the
Kardashians. All she has to do his to maintain some shred of journalistic and
personal integrity. Ask a few more semi-tough questions and move on.
Rove’s and his tribes, really all of those who feed at the
trough of conservative billionaires are another matter. These organizations employ thousands, 365 a
year, 24-7. Coulter and Hannity and Limbaugh have already made their peace.
What will Rove and his peeps do? The money they raise and deploy for
Conservative candidates is also the money they live on and on which they feed
their families. If they stop raising and spending what is their reason for
being? Who’ll buy their dumb books? What do they live on? What choice do they
have but to horn in on the party?
The question becomes does the candidate, the policy
windsock, have the moral core to turn down the money? Even if he does turn it down will the Rove
tribes sit it out and furlough thousands. With all due respect to their
principles and their outrage, no way. They will horn in on the campaign in
whatever way they can. They have to. There’s much been made about how Hairness
has run a self-funding campaign, but the truth is he’s spent very little money so
far. He didn’t have to. Joe, Mika, Chris, Wolf, and Ailes, have taken his calls
and put him up live. They’ve played hours of rallies where he’s clowned like
Mussolini and preened for the cameras, then it was back to the studios where
the all laughed like jackals and had a good time. Hairness won’t get away with
that in a national election with the Clinton machine which has faced cannon
fire before and will not be easily cowed as Bush and Rubio were. Is he willing
to put a billion on the table if he comes out of the convention ten points down
in the polls? What about fifteen points down? Doubtful. Even now his business
is licensing, not building. He lost a fortune when his own money was on the
table. He risks other people’s money now, and here comes the tribes of Karl
Rove.
This election was supposed to be about tossing the money
changers from the Temple. That is certainly what the Sanders campaign has been
about. Hairness has used the word “establishment” in such a negative light for
so long many Americans could be excused for thinking he intends to do the same.
If in the end all the money just flows
to a different type of candidate, even a windsock like Trump, especially a
windsock like Trump, than all of the bitter anger of this campaign will just be
reinforced in its cynicism. For what we are seeing now is a pristine image of
why the average American voter is so cynical: none of these people give a shit
about them. Rove and his tribes need to get paid. The billions that feed them
need to continue to flow, sewing confusion about why power and wealth continues
to be centralized in fewer and fewer hands. The books need to continue to find
an audience and the radio dials need to stay where they are. People got to get
paid. This is the principle that now drives the rapprochement between his
Hairness, Fox News, and Karl Rove: Greed. Greed for money or power or both. Simple
fucking Greed.
