“We’ve been watching a national American figure be forged… It’s funny how small the election feels – the Wyoming election – because she feels bigger than it now.”

Well yes, but a gentleman tries to avoid disparaging a woman’s figure.!!!

‘Tis the week for misogyny here at No Minister – because that’s so much worse than arrogant, back-handed dismissals of the people who voted for you just two years ago.

So let’s start with the fail – the Yuuuuggggee fail – of Dick Cheney’s appointed political heir, his daughter Liz, courtesy of the Babylon Bee:

Producers Confirm Liz Cheney Will Not Be Back For Season 2 Of January 6 Hearings

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After a critically acclaimed first season that was allegedly watched by some people, the producers of the January 6th Hearings have sadly confirmed that their star Liz Cheney will not be returning for season 2.

Yeah. I’ll stick with Better Call Saul, which has just completed its sixth and final season, and is already being acclaimed as equal to the show that birthed it, Breaking Bad (acclaimed as the greatest TV show of all time – which I agree with).

Not the Jan 6 commission hearings in other words.

Liz got pounded even worse than the polling had indicated, where she showed as 20-30 points behind her Republican Primary opponent.

Paraphrasing what people said after the Springboks destroyed Scotland 44-0 during their 1951 tour of Great Britain, she was lucky to get 28.9% – and that apparently was due to all those Democrats who re-registered as Republicans to try and save her ass.

Still, she’s on Easy Street even with the loss:

Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) net worth ballooned from an estimated $7 million when she first took office in 2017 to possibly more than $44 million in 2020, according to analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics and her most recent financial disclosure forms.

A 600% increase in wealth in just a few years. That’s especially impressive considering her $200k annual salary as a member of Congress. She should be advising Nancy Pelosi – and probably soon will be. This does not include a special fund as her special play toy:

Liz Cheney’s defeat ended with one silver lining: a $7.5 million unspent campaign warchest — much of it from outside Wyoming — that positions her well to run for president in 2024 if she chooses.

Yes, they’re serious. Yes, you can – and should – laugh heartily.

A brief word from former National Review contributor and cosplaying Republican, David French, who takes this opportunity to speak of virtue, and also – by a complete coincidence – is here to instruct us that he is fully possessed of the virtues he praises:

Loyalty and honor are two concepts the Trump right is turning inside-out and upside-down. What does it mean to be “loyal” when an institution betrays its fundamental principles? True loyalty holds it to a higher standard.

Uh huh. The thing is that loyalty is a two-way street, and all too many Republican politicians have shown that it’s a one-way street. A decade before the Age of Trump there were examples like Dede Scozzafava in New York, Charlie Crist in Florida (Governor), Senator Arlen Specter, and Senator Lisa Murkowski. In all four cases they rode Republican support to power, and despite the doubts often expressed about them by GOP voters the latter were told to suck it up and accept that they couldn’t get 100% perfect candidates – and those voters did.

Yet when the voters had finally had enough and ejected these candidates in later primary campaigns the arguments and appeals turned out not to run the other way. All four refused to suck it up, be loyal and accept Republicans who were less than perfect in their eyes. No, they ignored the primaries and began supporting Democrats: Crist and Specter actually became Democrats and repudiated every single Right Wing ideological and political position they had sworn they believed in. Meanwhile Murkowski, who’d been gifted her Alaskan Senate seat by her dear old Dad when he quit the seat and became Governor (how’s that for nepotism), went for a write-in campaign in the general election and won. She pulled other stunts in the campaigns of 2016 and 2022, based largely around getting Democrats to vote for her – like getting the voting system changed to a ranked-choice model.

So you see, the Liz Cheney’s and the Mitt Romney’s are not new or unusual. As I have often said, Trump is merely a symbol of a civil war that has been ongoing inside the Republican Party since 2009 between the Gentry Class of the GOP and the Lower Orders, or Deplorables (also inside the Democrat Party). The Precious Midpoint, with this quote from Great Britain:

But worst of all is that this transmogrified middle-class party views its old working-class constituency not simply with incomprehension but with contempt. “Yep”, Liddle quotes a “Starmer superfan” as tweeting about the result, “as expected the working class love a bit of nationalism and racism. Well done Hartlepool, you turkeys. I’ve never been and I never will”.

“The Labour Party we knew is gone,” Liddle concludes, “gone for good. Those votes are not coming back”. Stirring stuff and written from the depths of a Social Democrat’s soul.

To that end the following rant by one Amy Curtis is on point.

I’m gonna go off because I’m just that fed up.

For years, the GOP pundit class pushed weak, ineffective candidates. Guys who talked about taxes while letting the left steamroll education, culture, news media, social media.

Those candidates lost. Repeatedly. 2012 was a very WINNABLE election. And what did Romney do when they accused him of giving a woman cancer and other horrible, not-true things? He shrugged. He didn’t fight. He just took it. “Dignity.” Fighting back was beneath him. Or something.

Every Republican, for as long as I can remember, has been the reincarnation of Hitler every election cycle. The left HATED Dick Cheney from 2000-2008. And now? He’s their hero for speaking out against Trump. But when he sheds this mortal coil, they’ll dance and spit on his grave.

Every single member of the Washington Generals of Punditry has betrayed every principle they claimed to have. On abortion. On taxes. On foreign policy. Every last one. And why? Because hating Trump is more important and lucrative than those principles.

They have literally endorsed Democrats — including the barely sentient vegetable currently occupying the Oval Office — because of their unhinged hatred of Trump. And his voters.

And instead of trying to figure out how they got Trump in the first place — because they had a HUGE HAND in it — they double down on calling voters stupid and deplorable & a slew of other pejoratives because it gets them head pats from the media/left. Who still hate them anyway.

Because while they were fawning over absolutely milquetoast candidates the left was making headway in schools and culture. Now? Your white kid is likely to learn he’s a horrible racist simply because of his skin color. Your daughter could be brainwashed into thinking she’s a boy because her teacher told her so. Good luck trying to be a white, cis, hetero person trying to break into publishing these days. Good luck trying to find kids books that don’t show fellatio or other woke garbage.

Parents were labeled terrorists — TERRORISTS — for speaking out at school board meetings. By the federal government. While Antifa and BLM and Jane’s Revenge burn your cities to the ground.

If you had your business shut down, couldn’t visit your dying loved ones, couldn’t have a funeral while you watch George Floyd get multiple ones, and BLM/Antifa march through the streets during COVID, thank the GOP pundit class. Who did NOTHING to defend your rights.

Like every other social/cultural issue, they expected you to bend over and take it. And when someone tries to stand up to the nonsense — DeSantis — they whine about dictators and the breakdown of norms.

When what they mean by norms is “doing things our way, even if it sucks.”

And when a candidate like DeSantis comes along, who is an alternative to Trump — they say he’s just like Trump because they want to go back to the McCains and Romneys and Jebs.

News flash: we aren’t.

So if you want to get rid of Trump, stop obsessing over your hatred of him. Start endorsing Republican candidates who aren’t Trump. Instead of, you know, Democrats.

And for the love of God, spend ten minutes reflecting on how we got here today, and how you played a big part in it. Maybe talk to normal people outside the Beltway about life and politics

And as with many things American, this war is not confined to the USA. It is now being waged across Europe, Canada, Australia – and here in New Zealand. Advice from the peanut gallery:

The result of this style of accommodationist politics, as my colleague Keith Joseph complained, was that post-war politics became a ‘socialist ratchet’ — Labour moved Britain towards more statism; the Tories stood pat; and the next Labour Government moved the country a little further left. The Tories loosened the corset of socialism; they never removed it.

This sounds familiar

Maybe they cut taxes; bring back the Mexico City policy; junk a regulation that Democrats created but didn’t manage to implement; but that’s about it. When was the last time Republicans passed a huge law — one that changed America forever the way Democrats do every time they hold serve in American politics? You don’t see it.

So you see a repeating pattern to American politics: There isn’t a true back-and-forth. Instead, Democrats change the country a lot while they’re in power. Then Republicans hold power and push the pause button. There’s no rollback that a new executive order can’t undo.