Garbage party

 Well, the Tom Emmer chapter of the House Republican dysfunction saga certainly didn't last long. It seems to have boiled down to that litmus test all Republican politicians must pass to experience any kind of career advancement: whether his or her loyalty to the Very Stable Genius is sufficient, according to the VSG's standard:

Just hours after Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) won the Republican Conference’s nomination to be House speaker on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to deride the congressman as “totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters” and a “Globalist RINO.”

He then got on the phone with members to express his aversion for Emmer and his bid for speaker.

By Tuesday afternoon Trump called one person close to him with the message, “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”

Just minutes later, Emmer officially dropped out of the race.

How did the killing take place?

. . . a CNN reporter caught up with the congressman and asked him on camera whether he supported Trump in the Republican primary for president.

Emmer dodged, saying only that he was “gonna concentrate” on the speaker’s race.

That was not the answer Trump was looking for. The former president was aghast — especially after the congressman spent the day making it look like the two were allies. Emmer, who thought he had neutralized Trump’s opposition, would soon find out how wrong he was.

Trump previewed his annoyance late Monday, when he shared a post on Truth Social from far-right activist Laura Loomer bashing Emmer as a “NEVER TRUMPER” and “COMMUNIST ENABLER” for his involvement in The National Popular Vote campaign, which supports electing a U.S. president by popular vote, over a decade ago.

“President Trump doesn’t support Tom Emmer and neither should you!” Loomer wrote. The next day, Trump blasted Emmer on Truth Social. And Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill began calling around to House GOP members to encourage them to oppose the Minnesota congressman, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

So how abut the new sacrificial lamb, who doesn't have any more of a chance in Hell of meeting th 217-vote threshold than Emmer, McCarthy or Jordan did? What's he made of?

Well before he secured the GOP nomination for House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., played a key role in efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the 2020 election.

Johnson, who currently serves as the GOP caucus vice chair and is an ally of Trump, led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states won by Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Did he really buy the notion that those results were questionable?

Hard to say. A lot of drool-besotted leg-humpers seem to have sort of convinced themselves, only to wake up to reality when offered plea deals in any of the court cases that have Squirrel-Hair at their center. 

Consider the fact that Mark Meadows is now saying that he told a blatant lie in the book he wrote two years ago:

Former President Donald Trump's final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith's team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being "dishonest" with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

"Obviously we didn't win," a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith's team in hindsight.

Trump has called Meadows, one of the former president's closest and highest-ranking aides in the White House, a "special friend" and "a great chief of staff -- as good as it gets."

 

The descriptions of what Meadows allegedly told investigators shed further light on the evidence Smith's team has amassed as it prosecutes Trump for allegedly trying to unlawfully retain power and "spread lies" about the 2020 election. The descriptions also expose how far Trump loyalists like Meadows have gone to support and defend Trump.

Sources told ABC News that Smith's investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office -- a book that promised to "correct the record" on Trump.

ABC News has identified several assertions in the book that appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.

According to Meadows' book, the election was "stolen" and "rigged" with help from "allies in the liberal media," who ignored "actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze."

But, as described to ABC News, Meadows privately told Smith's investigators that -- to this day -- he has yet to see any evidence of fraud that would have kept now-president Joe Biden from the White House, and he told them he agrees with a government assessment at the time that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in U.S. history.

Jenna Ellis is doing some fast growing up in public, particularly in the area of having enough of a moral compass to be able to judge the character of someone as obviously odious as the VSG:

At an unscheduled hearing in Atlanta, Ellis pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements, a felony stemming from the election lies that Ellis and other Donald Trump lawyers peddled to Georgia lawmakers in December 2020.

She was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

“As an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously and I endeavor to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings,” Ellis said. 
But after the 2020 election, “I failed to do my due diligence,” she said.

“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information … what I did not do, but should have done, your honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were, in fact, true,” Ellis said.

Still, the charlatan from Queens has the party in his vice grip:

Former President Donald Trump's support now stands at 59% among Republican voters nationwide in the 2024 presidential nomination race. His lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, still the second-place candidate in the race, is 46.3 points. Both Trump's support and the size of his lead are the biggest they have ever been.

After four indictments from federal and local prosecutors, plus an ongoing and widely reported trial in a lawsuit by the New York attorney general -- after all of that, Trump's lead is still inching higher. And that is affecting the thinking and decision-making going on in campaign offices all around the country, as well as on Capitol Hill.

The Republican majority in the House, of course, is still trying to elect a speaker. You don't have to be reminded that it is not going well. There were at least nine candidates for the job when Republicans began casting votes again Tuesday. Many critics pointed out that seven of the nine voted to decertify the results of the 2020 election from Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021. That's not likely to have a big effect on the speaker contest; on that day, 58% of House Republicans voted against certifying the Arizona results, and 66% voted against certifying the Pennsylvania tally.

What will have more influence on GOP thinking is what Trump says about the contest. 

Yes, a lot can happen between now and November 2024, but even if the seven-year-old-in-a-seventy-seven-year-old's body were to be taken out of the equation, the amount of soul-searching the entire party - from federal-level office holders down to precinct committee people and ordinary voters - would have to do to begin the rebuilding process would have to be ruthlessly thorough, lest his stain continue to determine the direction going forward. 

A tall order for a party that has no idea what conservatism is anymore.  

And my response to anyone reading this and saying, "Oh, so you're going to cast your lot with the Democrats and the Left" is "You're new here, aren't you?"

Anyone who's read LITD for any length of time knows that I have vociferously denounced the Bulwark / Principles First mindset that posits that the choice is binary. I wrote in presidential candidates in 2016 and 2020, and stayed home for the 2022 midterms. I plan to stay home next month, when local elections will determine my city's mayor and the makeup of the city council. A lot of good folks are running, but I'd have one question for any of them, "Will you vote for Donald Trump if he's the Republican presidential candidate in 2024?" 

I also foresee staying home in November 2024 as well. There is a third choice other than either cult worship or what the Democrats are offering (wealth redistribution, climate alarmism and militant identity politics), and it's the only moral choice.