We're going to win so much, you're going to get tired of winning, You’re going to say: "Please, Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don't win so much. This is getting terrible." And I'm going to say, "No, we have to make America great again." You're gonna say, "Please." I said: "Nope, nope. We're gonna keep winning."
—Candidate Donald Trump, February 2016, in what would now be a speech that could have been delivered by Joseph Goebbels during the Stalingrad offensive
Trump has never been a true winner. But when it comes to spectacular scamming, he's always been the real article. In fact, none truer. And he continued his latest con last night at a Strange rally. "Maybe we’re going to do it now — it’s a little tougher without McCain’s vote, I’ll be honest," he said, using "little" as an honest substitute for "Himalayan."
According to a NY Times piece, Trump's party executed its latest attempt at repeal and replace largely in a bid to simply appease donors. To Republicans the devastation of a sixth of the economy and the stripping of health care from millions are mere hiccups when compared to the splendid sighs that come from raking in the boodle. Sen. Cory Gardner, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, unveiled the bleak news last week at a closed party session.
"Gardner of Colorado painted a dire picture for his colleagues. Campaign fund-raising was drying up, he said, because of widespread disappointment among donors over the inability of the Republican Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act or do much of anything else…. 'Donors are furious,' one person knowledgeable about the private meeting quoted Mr. Gardner as saying. 'We haven’t kept our promise.'"
Sen. Pat Roberts, in a Grassley-like remark about his party's singular objective of raw power over thoughtful governance, said "If we do nothing, it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections, and whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel." The massively traumatic consequences to the republic of doing worse than "nothing" would be at most a minor annoyance to a party wholly consumed by winning by any means — Trumpian Sociopathy 101.
I suspect, however, the boodle may yet flow into Republican coffers. Next up on their agenda are tax cuts, and their donors possess a kind of Christian forgiveness as long as they're lavished with more pelf. And Trump? His task will be what he excels at: scamming the base. He'll bamboozle them with more flapdoddle about the mother lode of plutocratic tax cuts actually going to the little guy.
Now that's the sort of thing the party can rally around, and always wins at — no matter how much of a terrible headache it inflicts on the nation's fiscal stability.