I So Late

It’s all about the base. As long as his evangelical constituents, laced with outlier conspiracy theorists, stand by him, Donald Trump cannot be removed from office by a Senate trial following an impeachment. It would be pure suicide for GOP Senators from solidly red states to contemplate voting against the darling of that base. While Trump’s foray into self-aggrandizing rallies solidifies his “relationship with his people,” such events have not moved the needle to grow his unquestioning and most ardent support-group. But there’s a breeze blowing that threatens to achieve gale force: staying in “whatever Trump wants” camp might actually lead to a different, near-term form of political suicide for ardent Republicans. The mid-term Blue Wave in the House was a harsh reminder.

Even as some polls show Trump with 46% support for his policies, the signs of erosion are everywhere. Fox polls show a vast majority of voters believing that Trump puts his own business interests ahead of national priorities. Republicans, knowing that the country is becoming a majority of non-lily-white minorities, are struggling with Trump’s deeply xenophobic, anti-Latino immigration policies as they seek inroads to a voter-critical, ethnically-Hispanic U.S. citizen constituency. The stark reality: you cannot embrace Trump’s wall and immigration beliefs and grow your Hispanic vote. Pick one; they are mutually exclusive. And without new Hispanic voters, particularly the disenchantment reflected in younger voters of all ethnicities, bye bye GOP.

You can sense GOP desperation as they do everything in their power to disenfranchise Democratic elected officials and voters. Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin lame duck legislatures/governors have voted to disempower their Democrat replacements before the latter take power in January. The GOP has embraced gerrymandering, voter exclusion, Census distortion, recalls and election barriers to marginalize anyone who might possibly vote Democratic. A party secure in its cause, representative of a real and growing constituency, would never have to resort to any of these tactics.

But there is a real conundrum. A growing number of elected Republicans, casting wary eyes at Trump’s essential base, are beginning to realize that sooner or later, they are going to have to create some pretty solid lines to separate themselves from most things Trump. Even the greedy, who have wallowed in deregulation and unwarranted tax cuts that benefit only the rich, are wavering at Trump’s self-declared role as Tariff Man. His trade wars fly in the face of the most basic, pro-business (and actually pro-consumer), economic theory that contradicts virtually every assumption behind Trump’s woefully inaccurate policy.

The White House revolving door is finding fewer and fewer potential replacement candidates, remotely qualified, willing to step into a rat’s nest of intrigue, back-stabbing, judicial scrutiny and Presidential vacillation and inconsistency – one which requires blind loyalty even at the risk of criminal prosecution (knowing the President will try to escape blame and throw even his most ardent staffers under the bus) – to fill a roiling litany of vacancies. A press spokesperson is our new U.N. Ambassador. A budget director is moved into a temporary position as “acting” Chief of Staff. Embarrassed cabinet members, accused of improprieties, skulk out of their appointed roles, creating new vacancies. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is just the latest departure.

With an incoming Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, including new committee chairpeople with subpoena powers and a yen for Trump’s most guarded secrets, Trump is in for the roughest ride of his presidency. Though he will fight to keep his tax returns secret, in the end he will be embarrassed whatever the result. America may be as isolated from the rest of the world as it has ever been for over a century, but a retreating president, cornered by lifetime of believing he is above the law, is also finding both subtle and unsubtle evidence of is own increasing isolation from his own party… ultimately knowing that even his base might no longer justify their blind loyalty.

“Just in case….” many of the President’s insiders are beginning to hedge their bets. “Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was spotted in Bahrain trying to drum up business for his private security company even as the incoming state attorney general in New York vowed to investigate Trump’s family business empire.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III continues to investigate Russia’s role in Trump’s election and whether the president sought to obstruct justice by trying to end the inquiry.

‘I don’t think he’s ever in his life been in this position,’ said Barbara Res, who worked for years for the Trump Organization, the president’s private family-run business. ‘He’s always had all the power and nobody else does.’

“Trump already is struggling to exert his influence. Few Republicans have endorsed his threats to force a government shutdown over Christmas if Congress doesn’t approve $5 billion for a proposed border wall.

“On Thursday [12/13], the Republican-controlled Senate took a direct slap at the White House, voting unanimously by voice vote to condemn Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the brutal slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has publicly backed the crown prince despite U.S. intelligence findings that he masterminded the killing.

“Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who visited the White House on Wednesday, said Trump is digging in for trench warfare with his political and legal enemies… ‘All this stuff is painful, but he’s a guy who’s been in lots of fights,’ he said. ‘He sort of wishes it would go away and is prepared to fight it out if he has to.’

“Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer of Trump’s 1987 bestselling book, ‘The Art of the Deal,’ said the reckoning Trump faces follows decades of operating under a belief that he was above the law… ‘He got away with so much, for so long, that he came to believe he was untouchable and invincible,’ Schwartz said.

“He said Trump followed the tactics he learned from his late mentor, the hard-knuckled New York lawyer Roy Cohn — ‘Lie about everything, attack back twice as hard as you’ve been hit, keep at it relentlessly until people finally give up and [they] stop arguing with your fabricated reality.’… ‘Trump is still living in that reality, but the world isn’t going along with him anymore,’ he added.” Los Angeles Times, December 15^th.

So what’s Mr. Trump to do? He could just keep trying to “lie and attack,” but the forces gathering against him seem immune to those onslaughts. There are so many criminal convictions of Trump insiders that either Trump himself is guilty as sin or he has evidenced the worst judgment in the history of business and political leadership, clearly unacceptable for a president of the United States. One has to believe that both weaknesses are playing hard in Trump’s yard. His thousands of lawsuits, dozens of regulatory enforcement settlements and Trump-entity bankruptcies, his “pussy-grabbing” statement and his heavy cash settlements (his and attributed to him) by reason of purported but obvious sexual indiscretions have been ignored by his base… but there just might be a limit as criminal allegations become undeniable.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and if Mr. Trump were actually smart, he might just need to have a conversation with Mike Pence for the latter to agree to pardon Trump and his cronies in exchange for a resignation that would make Pence President of the United States of America.