IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE - AND THEN A LOT WORSE

“In autocracies, ruling parties become personal tools of the leader, and loyalty to the head of state, rather than expertise, is the most prized political quality,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote last year in the Los Angeles Times.

Trump’s speech speech Saturday night at CPAC changed everything.

Even his recent replay of the “kill drug dealers in 24 hours” shit - albeit insane- didn’t have the zing it used to.

But never mind - this speech was different. The venom is not only back, but is spewing at 11. The quest for vengeance by the MAGAts only rivals his own.

If you want a preview of what’s coming this next 18 months, look at the vocabulary used at CPAC, including Trump’s promise of retribution, obliteration, and war.

“Retribution”

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

In case anyone missed it the first time he said it, speaking softly, Trump repeated the phrase: “I am your retribution”.

This was the strongest line of his speech; the threat was intentionally unsubtle and unmistakable. And more threatening for being said softly rather than bellowed. He will “totally obliterate the ‘deep state,” and wreak vengeance on the sinister scum who opposed him. He declared war on “all RINOs” and said they were never going back to the party of Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney.

Ronald Reagan told the world “It’s Morning in America”; Trump declared, I am Nemesis.

This is not normal political rhetoric, at least in the English language. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who knows a thing or two about fascists and the rise of fascism came right out and called all of it “overtly fascist.” Godwin’s Law can be put in the trash can.

The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson writes:

“For much of the speech, Trump’s voice took on more of a soft and haggard whisper than the booming, throaty scream that characterized his campaign rallies. His language, by contrast, was bellicose.

“Tonight’s address was among the darkest speeches he has given since his “American carnage” inaugural address. Trump warned that the United States is becoming “a nation in decline” and a “crime-ridden, filthy communist nightmare.”

“He spoke of an “epic battle” against “sinister forces” on the left.

“He repeatedly painted himself as a martyr, a tragic hero still hoping for redemption. “They’re not coming after me; they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in their way,” Trump told the room. He pulled out his best, half-hearted Patton: “We are going to finish what we started. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory.”

“He was heavy on adjectives, devastating with nouns. “We will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all,” he said…”

Most im;portantly, he is all-in on the Insurrection. MAGA Republicans are all-in on the Insurrection, and all the “moderate” Republicans who do not oppose MAGA are complicit in promoting the Insurrection.

They. Are. All. Traitors.

There. Are. Now. No. “Good.” Republicans.

Joe Walsh, who I used to think was an idiot when he first popped up in the public awareness, has proven me wrong. He “gets it.”

“I get it. CPAC was, once again, a boiling cauldron of batshit-crazy stew. But we can’t let the laughter and the richly deserved mockery lead us to not take these people seriously, to dismiss them. To do so would be a mistake—the sort of mistake that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016 and almost kept him there in 2020.

“We have two major political parties in America. We’re stuck with them for the foreseeable future. And if it wasn’t clear long before CPAC this past weekend, it ought to be clear now—the voting base of one of our two major political parties is completely radicalized.”

With that in mind, here are two things to know about CPAC:

Number One:, the people who came to CPAC are not the “loony far-right fringe of the party.” They’re not a temporary populist spasm that will go away. They’re not economically aggrieved and “forgotten.”

CPAC attendees are the base of the Republican party. They are the party activists, the most committed, involved and engaged Republican voters. There was nothing “fringe” about lat weekend. That was today’s “mainstream GOP.”

Number Two: The stolen election lies, the vaccine paranoia, the fearmongering about a “deep state,” the obsession with Hunter Biden, the cruelty toward transgender people, the bowing down to Putin, the demand that Anthony Fauci be behind bars, the authoritarian impulse to punish private individuals and companies deemed too “woke”... all this is not the bullshit and baloney of the “loony right.” This is the agenda of the current Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Marjorie Traitor Goon is not the GOP fringe. She represents the GOP base voters, exactly as she says she does. She is arguably the most powerful Republican in Washington now. Kevin McCarthy is speaker because of her; Tucker Carlson was given all that January 6th surveillance footage because of her. “Fringe character” do have anything close to that kind of power within the party. McCarthy has declared he will never abandon her. Believe him.

What we see now is that the Republican Party voting base has been radicalized; it has happened in real time, in front of us, and is continuing to metastasize.

The base no longer believes in truth; facts are whatever they say they are now.

They have given up on democracy, they want to destroy their political opponents, and they want an authoritarian to give them back the America they long for.

This radicalization was on full display this past weekend. “Joe Biden is not the legitimate occupant of the White House;” “COVID was a hoax;” “Transgender Americans need to be eradicated.”

All the lies, all the disinformation, the misinformation, the attacks on our democracy, the cultish calls for an authoritarian, the utter cruelty for its own sake. It was all there.

This radicalism is not a bug; it is the core feature of today’s Republican Party.

It’s in control throughout the party. Those who are not radicals stand silent and vote for the ideas the radicals promote; they are complicit if not allied. The so-called “moderates,” the “non-Trumps” who want to run for president, none of them will criticize Trump, none of them will say where they differ with Trump. They all say they will vote for who the party nominates in 2024, regardless.

They are all MAGAt Trumpers, whether they admit it or not.

One of the two major political parties in this country is now radicalized and opposed t o the governing system we have used since the founding. That party controls the House of Representatives now, and has a decent chance of taking back control of the Senate in 2024.

It has a very real chance of taking back the White House in 2024.

And the man who is responsible for promoting and encouraging a violent attempt to overthrow an American election two years ago is today the clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024.

As Tom Nichols put it in the Atlantic on Monday: “We need to stop treating support for Trump as if it’s just another political choice and instead work to isolate his renewed threat to our democracy and our national security.”

Only willful denial can keep anyone from seeing clearly that the people who listened to Trump and applauded him on Saturday night don’t care about facts, or policy, or politics. They enjoyed the show the first season, and they want it renewed and back on TV for another four years.

This is a problem not with Trump but with the voters.

Forty years ago, when I would have lunch with my Republican opponents, or buy a round of drinks that evening at Frank Fat’s, or even share a social event with them on the weekend, we would talk about “the Kooks,” and they would laugh harder at “the Kooks” than I did. Back then, the worst thing they could do was put Ronald Reagan in office. I didn’t like Reagan, but I didn’t see him as an existential threat to the republic.

This weekend, the Kooks fully demonstrated that there is nothing about them to laugh at. If all we do is laugh at “the Kooks” and dismiss Republican voters as a circus sideshow, if we don’t take them seriously enough, there is a very good chance that Trump will get re-elected and spend another four years in the White House.

And when he’s done, none of us will recognize the country that exists in 2028.

Yes, Donald Trump is a big problem. But the 71 million-plus who support him are an even bigger problem.

And the millions who still say they don’t know how or why anyone could support Trump are the biggest problem. By the time he heard on the radio that January night in 1933 that Adolf Hitler had been called to meet President Hindenburg to be offered the Chancellorship of Germany, and packed everything he owned in a steamer trunk and left Berlin with a one-way ticket on the Paris Express, Billy Wilder was considered by his friends a “crank” on the topic of the Nazis, who they all believed were incompetent clowns. Wilder remembered returning in 1945: “All my friends who told me the Nazis were clowns were dead. Killed bv the clowns.”

So don’t just laugh at CPAC. Don’t call them “Kooks.”

Pay serious attention to CPAC because they’re as seriou as a heart attack.

I said in 2016 that the Trump campaign was a test of character. As a friend in the Biz said way back when, “A character test is to see if you have any.”

Don’t ask, “Who is worse, Trump or DeSantis?”

Because when the Republican base has a choice between the Reaganite conservatism of the last 50 years and an illiberal attempt to overthrow the foundations of our governing compact, they gave chosen the illiberalism.

That’s the the real danger, regardless of who wins the nomination.

Chris Whipple, the author of “The Fight of His Life,” the account of Joe Biden’s first two years in office, has recently written that he learned from the president that the thing he found he was most wrong about was his belief that if Trump lost the election, things would return to normal and the people who voted for Trump would respond to progress in solving the country’s problems and making things better. Joe Biden now understands that it wasn’t the election of 2020 that could solve our problem, and it’s not just the election of 2024 that will see things resolved.

This fight is until the fever is beaten out of MAGA. We have to win every election. They only have to win once.

Take them seriously. They’ve told us who they all are - the cheering morons, the obfuscating spineless “moderates” who go along to get along, the white supremacists, the unreconstructed Confederates, the militia terrorists. Each and every one of them are all that, because they allow all that to continue.

It’s going to get worse, and it can get a lot worse.

It wasn’t just Trump who told the world who he was Saturday night. It was the crowd watching the TV.

You can support That’ Another Fine Mess with a paid subscription for only $7/month or $70/year, saving $14.

Comments are for paid subscribers.