Remember Joe the Plumber? I may be wrong, but he was the first person to begin appearing at political events who wasn’t running for public office but could be counted on to give a spiel to get the crowd thinking about why the GOP needed to shift away from the center of the political spectrum and move to the Right.
Joe showed up at an Obama rally in 2008, had a brief exchange with Barack over taxes and became the McCain-Palin voice of the forgotten middle class. He signed a contract with a company that booked him into various speaking gigs, appeared at several rallies with either Palin or McCain, then ran and lost a campaign for a Congressional seat from Ohio, and the last heard from he was voting for Trump in 2016.
Then we had Cliven ‘let me tell you about your Negro’ Bundy, who was briefly a personality for Fox News until even Sean Hannity was embarrassed by his stupidity and racism. But you may recall that it was the stand-off on his ranch property in 2014 which saw the first attempt by various militia groups to take a ‘stand’ against the government by running around with their AR-15’s.
Then there was Charlottesville in 2017, when a President of the United States went on national TV and said that some of those Nazis marching down the street wearing swastikas and shouting anti-Semitic chants were actually ‘good folks.’
As bad as she ran her campaign, didn’t we still elect this asshole President? Yep - we did. And what we got for that election was a whole bunch of Joe the Plumbers and Cliven Bundys – except they happen to be people who have run and won political campaigns.
What did Marjorie Taylor Greene say after she couldn’t remember anything she said or did on January 6th? She released a statement saying that the Catholic Church is controlled by Satan, which is why she no longer attends Mass.
Then we have her boyfriend, Matt Gaetz, who compared the lawsuit against Greene to be no better than what happened in Rwanda during that country’s civil war because nobody should ever be told they can’t run for political office in the United States.
Let’s not forget Lauren Boebert out of Colorado, who gives her children AR-15’s as Christmas presents and yesterday tweeted that the country was experiencing ‘negative economic growth’ under Joe.
Yesterday, both Gaetz and Greene voted against the bill to send more military aid to Ukraine (thanks Paula). Boebert voted for the measure but probably thought she was voting against it since she publicly heckled Joe when he mentioned the death of his son during his State of the Union speech.
The newest entrant into the GOP idiot sweepstakes is Teddy Daniels, a Pennsylvania resident who is taking time off from speaking at QAnon rallies to run for Lt. Governor in the Keystone State. Last week he claimed that allegations about domestic abuse were ‘politically motivated’ except it turned out that the accusations were made by – ready? – his wife. He’s now under court order to stay away from her and has been evicted from his home.
This guy isn’t serious about running for office. What he’s doing is exactly what Greene, Gaetz, Boebert and a couple of other MAGA-type elected officials like Thomas Massie or Madison Cawthorn are trying to do. Massie from Kentucky may be the dumbest of them all when he said that he’s opposed to ‘Medicare for all’ because more than 70% of the people who have died from Covid-19 were on Medicare when they died.
What they all have their sights set on doing is showing up at the MAGA rallies that Trump is holding and will continue to hold at least through 2024. He’s doing a rally in Nebraska tonight and vendors selling t-shirts and other crap are already set up. KellyAnne Conway is also speaking tonight and just this morning I received an email from her promoting her new book.
I suspect, by the way, that every MAGA politician who makes an appearance at a Trump rally has to split whatever cash comes in with Trump. But that’s no different from setting up a store and paying rent. Except you don’t have to worry about attracting potential customers because whom do you think will be standing on a line for a couple of hours today at the Greenwood Speedway waiting to get in?
And that’s what the GOP has become – a collection of petty-ante entrepreneurs trying to make a buck by promoting their resistance to the Deep State.