Trump's support begins melting like a snowball in hell
Donald Trump's influence is melting like a snowball left on the kitchen table.
In a special election to replace a Texas congressman who died, voters rejected Donald Trump's chosen candidate, the widow Susan Wright.
Instead, Texas voters in the Sixth Congressional District located southeast of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area picked Jake Ellzey, a conservative state representative. Ellzey got 53.3% of the vote; Wright 46.7%, out of fewer than 40,000 ballots cast.
Unlike the widow, who ran what can barely be called a campaign and proved weak at raising money, Ellzey proved to be an effective campaigner and political fundraiser.
Ellzey never criticized Trump. Had he done that and then won, I'd tell you that snowball was melting on a hot stove.
But Ellzey did have to contend with opposition by the perfidious junior senator from the Lone Star state, Ted Cruz, and the Club for Growth, which claims to be conservative but which exists to ensure that little people are more heavily taxed than the already rich. That Cruz, a servile Trumper, backed the wrong candidate suggests that his never strong standing with Texas voters is also dwindling.
This week's election results show yet again what a terrible choice Republican leaders made after Trump's failed coup in January. The insurrection, a clown show attempted coup, gave them the option to denounce Trump, to walk away from the crazy old man from Mar-a-Lago who tried to overthrow our government.
The Republican leaders are akin to the fools who received stock options during the dot con era at the turn of the century but failed to exercise them because they foolishly believed their options would become even more valuable but instead turned to dross.
Politics, it's often noted, is the art of the possible. The current Republican leadership has pretty much made it impossible to separate itself from Trump, a decaying albatross they chose to hang around their collective necks.
True believers continue to think of Trump as a demigod, lost in denial of his delusions, lies, and incompetence in accomplishing what he promised voters in his first campaign.
At a multi-racial ice cream social on Sunday, a friend told me that one of his sisters, who has an advanced degree, says Trump is literally a god.
It was far from the first time I heard such nonsense – blasphemous to any religious believer – but it was the first time anyone told me that a person with a first-rate education embraces such craziness. That shows how much this is about emotions, not rational thinking.
Sadly, few people know that while Trump claims to be a staunch Christian who reads the Bible more than anyone, his words show that he holds Christians in utter contempt. He went on for page after page in his Think Big book, denouncing those who accept Jesus's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount as "fools," "idiots," and "schmucks."
Unless you believe most Americans are damn fools, support for Trump will continue to dwindle.
That's a good thing for democracy in America. Our Constitution embraces Enlightenment principles of freedom rooted in rationality and reason, not cultish devotion to a wannabe dictator, especially one as incompetent as Trump and his gang.
As Trump continues his descent into madness and frets about his pending indictments, we should hope that the Republican leaders hold fast in their foolish embrace of Trump. Sticking by their awful decision after the Jan. 6 insurrection establishes they are knowingly evil in submitting to Trump and his anti-American desire to become our dictator. That submissiveness should reduce their numbers in Congress.
Let us hope that actual Republicans with some principles arise to defeat the faux Republicans who put Trump ahead of their oath to defend our Constitution. Otherwise, we will continue to suffer from those who, like Cruz and the Senate and House minority leaders, show allegiance to the criminal mind of Donald J. Trump.