This is not your grandfather's GOP
The single biggest threat to our republic, isn't Trump, it's his party of enablers
TAT readers,
I hope that your Monday was better than our headlines. We all know that it will be a rough ride until we can rid ourselves of the current administration and their party. That party, the Republican Party, is the focus of today’s topic, and from a couple of different perspectives. My regular criticism of the MAGA GOP, is not partisan in any way. It couldn’t be because that would mean that I have a party preference, which I don’t.
Background
My political beliefs are simple, keep policy and actions, between our constitutional guardrails. In the Trump/ MAGA era, that means that there isn’t anything in Project 2025, the administration’s ideology, that could be supported. By default , if we simply follow the pre-Trump era rulings of our SCOTUS, as they relate to our constitution, there is only one party to vote for and it is certainly not the GOP. My standard quote about this is below.
"Follow the intent of our most prestigious founders, as expressed in our founding documents, and the politics will automatically sort themselves out." - Cobaugh - 2016
There are plenty of reasons that I take this approach, but one of the most important reasons, is that our first and only independent POTUS, George Washington, despised them as a serious threat to our then, nascent republic. There are numerous Washington quotes that clearly express his feelings on the issue of “factions,” a popular term for political parties at our founding, however below, are just a couple from Washington’s Farewell Address.
Now, let’s get back to why today’s GOP is not a political party, but an unconstitutional far-right, domestic extremist movement. This is precisely why no one with a hint of morality, should support, vote for or enable this violent extremist movement. As for violent extremist movements, I know a thing or two about them, since most of my Army career was in CT/ Counterterrorism, radicalization and operating against such movements, at home and in combat zones.
First and foremost, I explain in great detail via one of my essays, the difference between the 1956 political platform of America’s most prestigious principled conservative, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the 2022 Texas Republican Party’s Midterm Platform. As a spoiler alert and so you don’t need to read the essay at the embedded link, Eisenhower’s platform looked a lot like Joe Biden’s. When I wrote this essay, the National GOP had not created a platform since they anointed Trump king, back in 2016. Only during last year’s election cycle did the RNC create a new platform, but that one is mostly just a stylized version of Project 2025 and devoid of our constitutional values, rights and restrictions. In fact, Project 2025’s 180 Day Transition Playbook, is a coup strategy, nothing more, nothing less. Like January 6th, Project 2025 is a coup attempt.
The bottom line here is, neither Texas or the National Republican Party, are conservative, and their agendas are not only unconstitutional, but racist and generally cruel to our most disadvantaged Americans.
Three strikes for today’s GOP
Strike one
Principled conservatives, don’t plan and execute coups. The current party, has overtly committed two, January 6th and the ongoing coup attempt underpinned by Project 2025. Congressional leadership was involved in the planning and execution of the January armed assault on our capital. Trump along with traitors like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn (the operational commander) other oligarchs, armed militias and lied to rank and file Republicans to execute the assault, that they had planned.
Now, the newer and more disgraceful party, including all of the leadership and every sitting Republican in a GOP-led congress, sat on their hands when the administration pardoned every single person arrested for attacking and murdering law enforcement, desecrating the people’s Capital Building and theft of government property.
Propaganda channel-in-chief, FOX News, paid nearly a billion dollars in a fine for lying about the not stolen election, yet where is the criminal accountability for a pro-Russian, exceptionally dishonest propaganda outlet like Rupert Murdoch’s? Like Musk, Murdoch is a white immigrant living and profiting off of America, while working to dismantle our constitutional form of government.
The bottom line for strike one, is that, every sitting Republican in Congress or the administration, is in my lay opinion, complicit in the charges levied against the actual law breakers from January 6th and this Project 2025 GOP platform. To make matters worse, the Republicans continue to hand over their co-equal legislative branch to Trump and the Executive branch. This is blatantly unconstitutional, but with a dishonest AG in Pam Bondi and a worthless dishonest FBI director, nothing can be done about this without the Republicans in congress, growing a spine.
Strike two
Around the clock, nearly all right-wing media, works to disseminate pro-Putin, anti-American values content, designed to create violent disturbances between the social strata of our American society. This is exactly what the Soviets have done since before WW II. During the Cold War especially, Soviet influence operations called Active Measures, doubled down on what their Bolshevik and Marxist forefathers started. The goal was to create so much chaos in the US and NATO, that we could not unify to fight off Communism. Putin, a former mid-level KGB officer with little promise, has expanded such programs and also coopted the Republican Party slowly, over the decades. DNI (Director of National Intelligence) Tulsi Gabbard and Senator Ron Johnson are just two of the high-profile sellouts.
The problem with a cowering, spineless Republican-led congress, is that every move Trump and company make that benefits Putin, is fine with them. We no longer operate against Russia, by order of the commander-in-chief. Just today, Trump announced from Saudi Arabia today, that he had dropped sanctions on Syria and will be meeting former Syrian terrorist, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, who is also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani. He previously served as the country's de facto leader from December 2024 until his appointment as president. Since his ascendency to the presidency, the US has dropped the large bounty placed on him as a violent Islamic extremist, high value target.
This move, greatly benefits Putin and allows him to retain his military base in the Eastern Mediterranean. Not a peep from our GOP congress. Nor was there any real complaint by them when Trump gave up concessions to Putin preemptively, before attempting a peace deal with Ukraine. He has turned off intelligence to Ukraine and empowered Russia’s allies against Ukraine in the meantime. Trump’s bizarre demands regarding Greenland and Canada, also benefit Russian and in this case, also China.
To make matters worse, now Russia and China both, have substantial investments in Central and South America, and President Milei, the chainsaw-wielding Trump character of Argentina, acts as if he’s empowered to mistreat the people of Argentina even more than he has since taking office. Well over one third of the working people of Argentina, live in poverty, and this is in no way different from what Musk and his DOGE idiocy are doing to US workers. The unemployment rate there is nearly double ours and even those who still have jobs, are forced to barely eat and keep a roof over their heads making a paltry $474 USD per month. This level of poverty, is predicted to exist through 2030.
The bottom line to strike two, is that Putin is now in control of Trump and has more power now, than he did before humiliating himself and Russia’s military, in Ukraine. When Putin wins, so does Xi and Modi. Still, not a peep from the Republican Congress.
Strike three, zombie Republican voters
Strike three has plenty of people to blame, and one of the worst failures in US military and national security history, is that our impotent, incompetent and arrogantly useless national security community responsible for influence, has failed to protect US citizens from foreign influence, for the last four decades. Instead of listening to actual operators, fraudulent defense contractors continue to sell absolute nonsense to a nepotistic national security community and which, congress has utterly failed to provide their required oversight of. Yes again, that the Republicans in Congress have not only profited from this nepotism but also shut down programs in the Trump era that allowed Russia to cooperatively work with immoral operators like Brad Parscale, that conned a couple of generations of Republican voters into believing in nothing but absolute conspiracy theories.
This is a long explanation but I have written a couple of deep essays about what they have done to our nation, how it worked psychologically and in conjunction with Russian influence operations. At this point, those who voted for Trump this time around, had zero ability to do otherwise. In lay terms, they have been brainwashed. In Russian influence terms, it simply means that Russia has achieved Reflexive Control over Republican voters. Just like violent extremists of any ideology, once voters are this far gone, most will never recover from this “brainwashing.” This is a painful truth learned from my career in CT.
Here’s the thing my friends and fellow citizens who are fed up with our current fascist administration, nothing can be done about them without branding the GOP and every sitting Republican Politician, just as much as we brand Trump, Musk, Hegseth, Gabbard, Bondi, Witikoff, Bessent, McMahon and the rest. Memes, tweets, posts and newspaper headlines that put the letters G O P right next to Trump and the rest, will go a long way towards vacating the offices of the cowardly GOP politicians. It is they, far more than the high-profile leaders, that keep this coup going. All they have to do is follow the constitution and this administration would be gone, but they are fully and intentionally, complicit.
We know what to do, so let’s brand them every day, in every district and over every single cruel, unconstitutional and illegal act they enable or refuse to address. I’m sorry, but the DNC is as impotent as our national security community for influence. Don’t look for help from them, unless they completely change their long failed approaches in the next month or so. It will not happen. As one who has strategized, planned, executed and assessed influence campaigns, I can assure you that the DNC is about as useless as they get. All they can possibly offer, is their war chest and media network connections. Then again, most of our mainstream media is cowardly these days as well.
Summary
As dour as all of this sounds, recovery only requires a few small changes in the voting public.
Stop making this about party. It’s a losing preposition
Get off the couch and take your voice to the street as well as on social media
Target every sitting republican politician in America
Target the oligarchs that pay to play with this administration. They are the ones robbing the rest of us
Target all media, especially your local media. Make them report truth and all of it
Stop believing that keyboard warfare is enough. In domestic campaigns, I estimate that social media is less than a third of what is required to make the changes that will alter this Republican catastrophe. Every day, we have less freedom and more suppression in social media. I guarantee that if a loud, honest crowd shows up regularly in front of your local congressman’s office and the state offices of your Republican sellout senators, things will change.
Finally, stop leading with relatively unpopular progressive issues. Saving the republic cannot be achieved by only supporting your pet special interests. First things first and that means to remove a few Republicans from office. That will shut down most of any gains that the GOP is making against us and the republic.
That’s it for today my fellow citizens. Let’s roll and get this done.
Back later in the week,
Paul