Trump is back to election denial. He just named Stephen Miller his chief of staff. He waves away his crypto grift and the conflicts of interest that enrich him. He keeps talking about the ballroom and the arch.What does it take for Republican politicians to wise up, read the room, and stop committing political suicide?
President Trump has “truthed” that the election was rigged. Aren’t Republicans sick and tired of this? Don’t they understand how bad it looks when their leader says any election he didn’t win is corrupt?
I am watching the news. Is a single Republican officeholder or recent candidate saying one word of objection or correction? Oregon votes by mail and counts its ballots by machine, the very things Trump says are crooked. Christine Drazan was the GOP’s candidate for governor, backed by her party’s money. She has the standing to lead Oregon Republicans on this, and she has a political reputation to protect. Does she agree with Trump? Was she the victim of election fraud? Or is this more sore-loser Trump narcissism of the kind the public resoundingly rejected?
I monitor Oregon’s political media. I hear nothing from Republicans. Not from U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz. Not from anyone claiming to speak for the state’s GOP. They are letting Trump poison the political environment. The country is worse for that. So are their own political fortunes.
One would think they would be motivated to do something.
The same goes for local Republican officeholders and candidates. One lost: Brad Hicks. Some won: state Rep. Kim Wallan and County Commissioners Rick Dyer and Colleen Roberts. Our nonpartisan county clerk, Chris Walker, a Republican, runs our elections. I am not hearing Hicks, Wallan, Dyer or Roberts say a peep against Trump. Nor do I hear one word in defense of the election that just took place. If they think Trump is right, they should call for an investigation and an audit of our election. If instead Trump is a dishonest, whining, sore-losing party leader, maybe they should speak up for our elections.
Every observer of Oregon politics knew Governor Tina Kotek had problems. There is voter fatigue with Democratic leadership in Salem. Some of the frustration with the status quo that hurt Trump also hurt Kotek. She was expected to run behind the Democratic ticket, and she did. Every Democratic governor running for reelection this year outperformed Kamala Harris’s 2024 vote in their state except one: Tina Kotek.
Yet the candidates stayed silent and Trump-compliant throughout their campaigns. They claimed independence, and Trump’s scandals offered them easy ways to prove it. Was it too much to say it is corrupt and morally wrong for a president to sell valueless meme coins to a mix of gullible suckers and billionaire favor-seekers, and pocket more than $600 million? Isn’t it troubling that his sons invest in drone companies, those companies win government contracts worth hundreds of millions, and then the White House slaps a tariff on imported drones? Is there any Trump enrichment scheme disgusting enough that a Republican officeholder would object to it?
Apparently not.
Like Sergeant Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes, they see nothing, they know nothing, they say nothing.
They claimed independence but didn’t show it, and still don’t. Voters noticed. The candidates wasted their time and their donors’ money.
Republicans shouldn’t complain about Democratic supermajorities in Salem. Voters looked at the choices, and if there was a competent Democratic alternative to the Trump-compliant Republican, they voted for the Democrat. The legislative supermajority got bigger! Republican campaigns were worse than useless. Their candidates lost because they did not dare be the independent person they claimed to be.
Republicans shouldn’t complain about Democratic supermajorities in Salem. Voters looked at the choices, and if there was a competent Democratic alternative to the Trump-compliant Republican, they voted for the Democrat. The legislative supermajority got bigger! Republican campaigns were worse than useless. Their candidates lost because they did not dare be the independent person they claimed to be.
Lindsey Graham, who died four months ago, posted on Twitter on May 3, 2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed . . . and we will deserve it.”
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4 comments:
Saying out loud that the person you have been following is corrupt and incompetent reflects negatively on you. Most politicians will go to great lengths to avoid making such a personal declaration. At this point, we can simply state that they are suffering from a mass hallucination.
Some inmates do a life sentence on the installment plan in and out of jail until they die because they stick with their criminal thinking and behavior. In the early stages they think the problem was getting caught not the behavior itself. What should a good republican do or say? They don’t know how to answer that question. So just keep doing what you have been doing even if there is consequences for not changing.
A local Republican troll, noteworthy locally for obscene utterances, asserted that I did not call out and condemn examples of self-dealing by Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. Neither Pelosi nor Trump should have traded stocks. I condemned Biden for tolerating his son selling paintings for high prices. It was a legal but corrupt way to game the system. Biden's son peddled influence and I said so. I think that behavior hurt Democrats, and I said so Trump's behavior is 1000 times greater and it hurts Republicans a thousand times more. Biden/Harris screwed up the immigration policy and Democrats (and the country) pay the price. Now it is the GOP's turn to pay the price. Why Drazan and Hicks chose to pay it is beyond me, but they did.
It seems we are under the illusion that normal rules of logic apply to people who seem to be under Trump’s spell. The blog and commenters often question the intelligence or moral character of politicians who act counterintuitively to their own best interests. Maybe their intelligence is their enemy.
I remember reading about studies that sought to understand why highly intelligent people are often the most prone to deception and cults- and sticking with them.
So with the fine help of Gemini I quickly found a number of studies, and it makes sense. You all can look them up too. Maybe being “highly intelligent” has its drawbacks.
Some key reasons:
• Rationalization: Smart people are very good at constructing complex, logical arguments to justify their choices. Once committed, they use their intellect to defend the group's beliefs rather than question.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: Intelligent individuals pride themselves on making good decisions. Admitting they were deceived threatens their self-image, making it harder to walk away after investing time, money, or reputation.
Now you might say - “that’s not me! I could never be deceived”
But that’s the third conclusion of these studies:
• The "Bias Blind Spot": Cognitive science studies show that people with higher cognitive ability are often more susceptible to the bias blind spot—the belief that they are too smart to be manipulated. Because they trust their own judgment implicitly, they fail to recognize subtle emotional grooming until they are deeply invested.
Or as theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once quipped:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Careful all you smart people!
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