I could never bring myself to link up with the Grand Old Party. I am just an old school Regular Democrat, I guess. Ever since Chuck Percy was the alabaster Illinois Face of the Republican Party, the GOP was as comfortable a fit for me as spun-glass skivvies.
Right up to and through the last GOP Illinois Senator, Marque Kirque, the GOP is the Party that blows off it's own toes, on demand, at the behest of wily Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan, or the offish Sen. Dick Durbin.
I voted for three Republicans in my life: Nixon 1972, McCain 2008, Romney 2012. I voted for Donald Trump, but I do not believe that he is a Republican. In fact, he may be, like me, a a disgusted Regular Democrat who understands that the national game is rigged between the Progressive 1972 Democrat loonies and GOP dweebs, like any contest between the Globetrotters and the Generals.
President Trump is one wild card in deck full of jokers. Against Old Maids like Reince Preibus and Lindsey Graham he is the trump. Against Aces like McCain, Collins, Schumer, and the media masters, he's a push at best.
He is a ball of confusion; that's what the world is today. Hey, hey.
- North Korea
- Trans GI's
- Tweet du jour
- CNN silly
- Russian Intrigue
- Sessions Up; Sessions Down
- Leakers - pissing out of the Big Tent
- Foul Mouthed Mooches
- White House staff shuffles
- EU weepers
But, the best rattle and hum comes from the GOP.
One of the only Washington writers who makes any sense whatsoever is A. B. Stoddard. Ms. Stoddard is the sole of integrity and does care if CNN, Fox, of the clowns at MSNBC want to hear what she has to say. Ms. Stoddard offers up this today,
Trump can write this all off to his plan to disrupt the GOP establishment in Congress and do things his way, but some have warned his plate-breaking might eventually cut into his base of support. Conservative writer and commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote that not only had Trump revealed “a deeply repellent vindictiveness in the service of a pathological need to display dominance,” but that his assault on Sessions “suggests to those conservatives how cynically expedient was Trump’s adoption of Sessions’s ideas in the first place.”Trump must be some Machiavelli, there Neighbor.
I think of him as a seedy, aging and cagey Prince Hal. Young Prince Hal, the scapegrace Prince of Wales who hung around with disreputable outsiders in Henry IV Parts I & II emerged as the uniter in chief and hero of Agincourt of Shakespeare's Henry V.
Prince Hal, like Trump loves to keep his enemies close and his friends comfortably numb.
Read this and think of the Swamp:
King Henry IV, Part II see Falstaff as the GOP leadership, elected and behind the scenes, ready to lead Donald Hal up the garden path for a fleecing from the Progressives - the keepers of policy.
ACT I SCENE II London. An apartment of the Prince's.
[Enter the PRINCE OF WALES and FALSTAFF]
FALSTAFF Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
PRINCE HENRY Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack
and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. 5
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no 10
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.
FALSTAFF Indeed, you come near me now, Hal; for we that take
purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not
by Phoebus, he,'that wandering knight so fair.' And, 15
I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as, God
save thy grace,--majesty I should say, for grace
thou wilt have none,--
PRINCE HENRY What, none?
FALSTAFF No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to 20
prologue to an egg and butter.
PRINCE HENRY Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly.
FALSTAFF Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let notus that are squires of the night's body be calledthieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's 25foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of themoon; and let men say we be men of good government,being governed, as the sea is, by our noble andchaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.PRINCE HENRY Thou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the 30
fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and
flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is,
by the moon. As, for proof, now: a purse of goldmost resolutely snatched on Monday night and mostdissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with 35swearing 'Lay by' and spent with crying 'Bring in;'now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladderand by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.(emphases my own)
Yet, Hal offers warnings in his honeyed words to Fat Jack of the Swamp. He must go before the real work begins. In Shakespeare's propaganda plays, virtue remains hidden in the likes of Mark Antony, The Bastard and Prince Hal. These nimble players keep every one off balance.
Until the moment comes when even the most shameless and cynical rogues, like the Leader of the Senate and the three Mavericks, finally get it.
FALSTAFFI hope that the firing of Preibus and appointment of General Kelly signals that Trump despises the the dream of the GOP being anything but a partner in the Swamp.
God save thee, my sweet boy!
KING HENRY IV
My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.
Lord Chief-Justice Have you your wits? know you what 'tis to speak?
FALSTAFF
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING HENRY IV
I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on.
That would unite the nation.
I could do without an Agincourt.
