WHO is your household-named Russian tool blowhard running in 2028?

Actually, JD Vance would be one of my top picks, yeah. Eyeliner included. Others: O'Keefe, Hawley, Cotton, Mike Lee, Kristi Noem, and Stefanik. I have seem them all talk. Am I impressed? Fuck no, but probably not too many actual analysts thought DeSantis would get as far as he did when he took his stab. Guy's obviously a psychopath. I mean look, Sununu thought he would give the party a way back to the moderate path, and Tim Scott probably still thinks he's in the running for VP. Nikki Haley thinks the same, but she knows she still has to pretend like slavery was about state's rights. None of them seem to have a pulse on what the party really wants. I will concede that it's encouraging to see Haley clearly stating that Trump lost the election and not losing all of her support.

You once said, fairly recently, that people want to get back to boring politics. Reasonable folks, yes, but I feel like the MAGAs passionately want to keep doing politics as sport (the sport is vengeance/grievance) and entertainment. For the entertainment part, it's going to be particularly difficult to fill Trump's clown shoes. He just has "it". The clowning spirit. Almost no one else does, though they may try. Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, Comer, everyone I listed earlier, I think the showmanship and likeability is a massive hurdle that they haven't yet figured out who has the best chance of clearing. Charlie Kirk can't even let himself full-on smile much, for Chrissakes. Not even trying to be mean, just realistic. (stealing this diss format from Trump) If I was trying to be mean, I'd call him Gumsey McKirken, but we're not mean, are we folks?

It was called "January 6" and they lost. Everything else has been a contentious free-for-all to figure out how the fuck to move on.

If we had moved on, the prosecutions would be over, Trump wouldn't still be lying about it, and the GOP wouldn't be helping him do it. Ideally, yep, he'd be cellmates with Navarro. He won't let the GOP move on because 2020 is also about 2024. The familiarity of "they cheated Trump again!" is powerful, and he's the master of repetition-based MaNiFeStiNg. At least he figured out that he can't slander voting machine companies though, courtesy of Murdoch. Lawsuits with heavy monetary penalties are the only language he understands "NO" in, confirmed by E. Jean Carroll.

Your understanding of history fucking sucks because you haven't listened to a word I've said in eight goddamn years.

I promise that I listen. You do convince me of some things, but I think you have to concede that if I'd asked you two or three years ago if Trump would be the GOP's guy again in 2024, you'd have said no, right?

A populist who eats his retinue is a despot.

We agree that Trump has done this repeatedly, burned almost every bridge, but he's somehow still got new up-and-comers who'll happily let him ruin them. Everyone who crosses him is a RINO. He wouldn't still be the undisputed singular embodiment of the party if this strategy wasn't somehow still working for him. No, it doesn't make sense to me either.

we fucking voted Trump out of office.

We did. Barely. The 8 million popular vote disparity that the libs love to trot out isn't as relevant as only about 70k people spread between three swing states for the margin of loss in the electoral college. I'm pretty sure that if covid never came along, he'd still be president.

But I also find this "and then Mike Johnson just doesn't seat Democrats and we all sit on our hands and go merrily to hell" bullshit extremely tiresome.

The only question is whether we all sit on our hands, because Johnson will try anything. Which is why I'm here, now, saying "hey there's a really good chance we're gonna have to stop sitting on our hands soon". I'm obviously less sanguine about trusting the dems to come out swingin'. Some will, I know. The squad, Goldman, Frost, Ro Khanna. Maybe Bernie. I'm hoping Jeffries, Pelosi, and Schumer have it in them.

carving doomer fanfic into your gray matter.

I dunno man, the doomerism predictions have been going pretty well for me. And then if I'm wrong, it's a pleasant surprise when things don't deteriorate as bad as they possibly could have. I think you feel like teh doomz are something I derive joy from(?). I do not. And I am sorry to keep re-hashing this out with you. You're never required to respond, it's just that most people are so far removed from discussing any of this in depth with a holistic perspective that you're a massive resource. I can assure you that I take no pleasure in disagreeing on some of these details time and time again, because we really do largely agree, especially when it comes to actionable shit.