The Cisco Kid

A few days have passed, and the whole “Iran war caused GOP losses” explanation is still being peddled as unquestionable gospel. Of course the war played a role. But pinning everything on it, however politically convenient that may be for various people, is going to do a lot more damage because it allows Republicans to ignore far more fundamental problems. And the biggest of those problems is the Republican Party itself. I mean, my goodness. Donald Trump pulled off the greatest comeback of all time. He nearly got killed in the process. He came back from what everyone said was an impossible position and handed the GOP the White House. And how did these feckless ingrates repay him? They immediately set about sabotaging his agenda, obstructing his appointments, and undermining everything he had fought so hard to achieve. It started with the Department of Justice, which, after everything that happened during Trump’s first term, everyone knew was the single most important place to get right. Matt Gaetz, whatever one thinks of his positions on this or that, would have been an absolute burn-it-all-down warrior at DOJ. So, naturally, the Republicans made sure that couldn't happen. Instead, we got Pam Bondi, who was hopelessly out of her depth, and a crucial year in which so much desperately needed to be done was lost. Or look at Ed Martin. I've never met a happier warrior than Ed, someone with the energy, determination, and understanding of what needed to be done. So, of course, they had to destroy his appointment as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the most important U.S. attorney position in the entire country. Can't have people like that in positions of power, apparently. Same story at the CDC, where Republicans derailed David Weldon's nomination because they didn't like what he was saying about vaccines. The list goes on and on. And that's just the personnel. There's also the SAVE Act, the blue slip rule, the filibuster, and countless other examples of Republicans standing in the way of their own president and his agenda. And as for the filibuster, does anyone seriously believe Democrats will now show the same reverence for it? Of course they won't. They'll demolish it without a second thought, while Republicans will congratulate themselves on having preserved some imaginary principle of Senate tradition. And that, right there, is the rotten core of the problem. Donald Trump did the impossible. He handed Republicans a historic opportunity, and starting the morning after his victory, they set about squandering it, sabotaging his agenda, and undermining all the people who might have made his second term a success. There are always many reasons why elections go the way they do, and I'm sure the Iran war was one of them. But if Republicans spend the next two years blaming the war while refusing to confront their own catastrophic failures, they will have learned absolutely nothing.