The Matt Gaetz-Pam Bondi Switch

November 22, 2024 Hunter Wallace Conservatism, Politics, Populists 12

UPDATE:

This long Twitter thread explains why I am not upset about Gaetz going down. He screwed himself by associating with these people and it was too late to pull up from his nosedive.

It sucks.

I learned my lesson years ago on this.

Throughout the whole 2024 election cycle, I repeatedly said on X that activists focus too much on Trump and the presidency and neglect Senate races. No matter who is the president it is always the margins in the House and the Senate that determine whether anything gets done.

Here are some recent examples:

  • Obamacare passing on a party line vote in the Senate
  • Kelly Ayotte losing her Senate race in 2016 giving the incoming Trump administration a thin Senate majority controlled by Mitch McConnell to work with
  • John McCain singlehandedly torpedoing Trump’s attempt to repeal Obamacare in 2017
  • Years of grandstanding by people like Jeff Flake
  • Trump governing in a coalition with Senate Republicans and neutering his agenda to appease them because of the threat of impeachment from the Mueller probe
  • The first Trump administration only delivered the First Step Act and the Trump tax cuts because it was the only two things Senate Republicans could agree on
  • The chaos that ensued when Republicans bungled away a key Senate seat to the Democrats here in Alabama when Roy Moore lost to Doug Jones in late 2017. By early 2018, the Trump legislative agenda was dead in the Senate and completely dead after the 2018 midterms
  • In the Georgia runoffs after the 2020 election, Democrats won two key Senate races. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock enabled Democrats to pass the American Rescue Plan which spiked inflation which ultimately destroyed the Biden presidency
  • Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema saved the filibuster
  • The Senate is where most of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda died because of Republicans using the filibuster and opposition from Manchin and Sinema

In Trump’s second term, we can expect the Senate to play its customary role as the place where Trump’s agenda will be blocked. We knew going into the 2024 election that the tighter the margin in the Senate the harder it would be for anything to pass through Congress because it would empower the likes of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to play the moderate spoiler which happened with Matt Gaetz.

In 2020, I made two mistakes. I was so angry about Jeff Sessions that I refused to vote for Tommy Tuberville who has proven to be one of the better senators. Then I foolishly endorsed Ossoff and Warnock because I was so angry about with the deficit hawks who were ultimately proved right about inflation.

By the 2022 midterms, I had changed course. Anticipating this problem and reeling from Biden’s inflation, I was willing to support the likes of Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, Kari Lake and Joe O’Dea in Colorado just to give Trump enough yes men to push through his agenda. In 2024, Republicans dropped four key Senate races in Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan and nearly lost in Pennsylvania by a margin of 1% or so because a small percentage of Trump voters failed to vote for Senate candidates. In the process, they bungled away an forfeited an enormous amount of power to Mitch McConnell over Trump’s agenda.

Activists, of course, spent the whole election cycle trying to defeat Trump and all the Senate candidates who would have confirmed his appointments. Now, they will whine about Pam Bondi replacing Matt Gaetz who is out as AG because he is short of ONE VOTE in the Senate. Their whole political program is self sabotage.

12 Comments

  1. Gaetz was six or seven votes shy in the Senate, not one. The only opportunity was for Trump to do a recess appointment, which he definitely could have done, but he decided he didn’t want Gaetz in that position. It had nothing to do with your personal beef with people you call activists. You should drop that. Whose fault was C’ville? I was set to go, but then I was able to understand that the whole thing was a Trump/FBI setup to destroy the Alt Right. You were not able to understand that and fell into the trap. That was a bad break, but it was your fault.

    The Senate seats in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada were stolen. The Jews are trying to blame it on voters, such as the Jews at Citizen Free Press. That is a lie. Those seats were stolen.

    Why can’t you just tell the truth, that Trump simply decided he didn’t want Gaetz? Are you writing your own scripts down there any more?

    Reply

    • There were four no votes. He could have afforded to lose three. He lost by one vote … McConnell.

      This happened solely because 1.) a fraction of people chose not to vote or 2.) just voted for Trump. For a whole year, a chorus of “anti-Zionists” and other people like Forever DeSantis supporters and abolitionists told people not vote. This is the result. It wasn’t enough to sink Trump, but they were successful in empowering McConnell and Thune in the Senate

      Reply

  2. The Democrats stole the Senate seats as they generally do in those states.

    It’s clear now, from the bellwethers and the absence of coattails that the whole federal government conspired to rig the 2020 election.

    Democrats cheat in every election, and our whole political system is centered on allowing Democrats to continue to rig elections in urban areas, the permanent government in DC is premised on a de facto one party state, and Trump is part of that.

    Reply

  3. All one really needs to know about this:

    Remaining hard feelings among Capitol Hill Republicans that Gaetz toppled Kevin McCarthy. Which provoked a staredown contest between Trump and Mitch McConnell, which the latter won. That’s how Trump can be had, now I can see. Old as he is, he’s still a relative babe in the woods in the political arena. And types like McConnell, pat you on the back with one hand and stab you with the other, are his kryptonite.

    And that politics haven’t gone away, political division hasn’t gone away, the homeostatic equilibrium always reasserts itself. For the next two years, we can see where the homeostatic equilibrium will be: In between the White House and McConnell-allied Senate Republicans. Not any kind of IRL King Lear. Hell, the next two years may be much more like Richard III.

    Note: Don’t buy that the act of nominating Gaetz with the knowledge that he would be rejected was some deliberately planned long track 4D chess. Trump truly wanted Gaetz. Because, and this is supposed to be a paraphrase of a direct quote on those who were vetting AG candidates:

    “None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz,” … “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bull—-. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ f—— heads.’”

    Reply

  4. ” In Trump’s second term, we can expect the Senate to play it’s customary role as the place where Trump’s agenda will be blocked ” no doubt, we the electorate are very reliable, about going back to sleep, soon as the election is over, to many in the Senate and Congress, suffer from the same arrogance and sense of entitlement, that you find in the media and among the tenured in academia, we should keep the spotlight on these crooked, whorishly, fake politicians indefinitely, we ought to be looking over their shoulders, same as they do us, IMHO, …… We have to stay serious, if we expect them to take us seriously ……

    Reply

  5. If your core team consists of Chief of Staff Suzy Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, then mass deportations simply will not happen.

    If Marco Rubio is your Secretary of State, you won’t be ending any wars.

    Reply

  7. As a Huey Long populist, you should support universal healthcare without being able to reject someone for a pre-existing condition. While Medicare for all is better, Obamacare is still better than nothing.

    Or did you decide screw Andrew Yang and Huey Long because you’re a Trumper now?

    Populists may like Trump’s stance on immigration, but they should oppose Trump on healthcare.

    I, however, identify myself as a Vangaurdist (but not a Jew obsessive), not a Populist.

    Reply

    • I was only describing the pivotal role played by the Senate in the outcome of really all major legislation going back to Obamacare. The point is that margins in the Senate have been make or break and Gaetz going down is the latest example of this

      Reply

  9. meanwhile… across the pond

    “Switzerland: 67% Of Prisoners Are Foreigners”
    https://www.renegadetribune.com/switzerland-67-of-prisoners-are-foreigners/

    I would implement a concentration camp detention/labor system for all European countries. If you get busted you will pay for your incarceration and also contribute to society, and we will use your labor to accomplish that. The penalty would be much more lengthy if you are a non-White person in a White country. You’d also be deported, after your sentence was filled.

    Reply

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