Last week, Trump sent a cease and desist letter to the RNC, NRCC, and the NRSC, ordering these organizations to stop using his name in their fundraising campaigns.  His takeover, and ultimate destruction of the GOP is now unavoidable.  The Republican party that we came to know and disagree with no longer exists; in 2016, the party handed trump the keys to the kingdom and he’s now burned the whole thing down.  He’s coopted the entire organization with all of its members, and now has cut off the money they were using to perpetuate themselves.

Think about it – CPAC this year was nothing short of a Trump coronation.  Every single speaker worshiped him, and declared him the only brand the GOP had.  Hell, they even had a golden idol of Trump and everyone wanted to be photographed standing next to it.  No Republican will oppose him on any policy or even publicly disagree with him.  Trump has so amassed support for himself with a radical (and violent) base that he’s cowed the entire Republican delegation at the local, state, and federal level.  After handing the party over to Trump, he’s now cut off the money so he can take it all for himself.

After coopting the party, he’s now using the same tactics he’s always used in life – lawsuits.  Trump’s primary tool, besides prolific lying, is to use lawsuits as a bludgeon to force capitulation to his demands. That didn’t work as president, but it most certainly works in private life, and now he’s turned it on those who have handed him their party and their fundraising apparatus.  Trump’s plan is now crystal clear – when he announced at CPAC last week that he’s not starting a third party, what he meant was there was no need to, because he was taking over the GOP.  Now party leaders have a decision; start a new party to siphon people away from Trump, or just lay low, hoping that one of the criminal cases against Trump sticks enough to take him out of the limelight.

This will be interesting for those of us on the outside of this soap opera to watch.  I can only hope it continues to weaken the GOP and its really bad ideas.

Alabama has elected a moron to replace Doug Jones in the Senate, and let’s be frank; Jones only won Jeff Sessions’ seat because his GOP opponent was a documented pedophile.  Said moron is former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, known on the football field as “Tubs”.  Tubs may have been a good football coach, but apparently that’s all he knows.  Tubs thinks that the three branches of the US government are the Executive, House, and Senate.  That’s right, the new Senator from Alabama doesn’t understand how the government is even organized.  He also thinks that God creates climate change, that heroin is not an opioid, and that the healthcare system should be “capitalist” (rather than a protected monopoly).  In short, Tubs is a typical knee jerk, rock rib, GOP ignoramus.

It actually gets worse, if that’s even possible.  Tub’s considering as his first act to aid Trump in his planned coup attempt to steal the election from Biden and Harris.  Objections to any state’s electoral slate have to be sponsored by at least one Congressman and one Senator.  McConnell has already warned his caucus to not go there, but Tubs is apparently ignoring that.  The effort will fail, of course, but if Tubs actually does something so stupid, it will be the shortest political honeymoon in Senate history.  There will be some entertainment in that, though.

The takeover of the GOP is complete. The Republican Party capitulated to Trump in toto today, declining to even propose or vote on a platform, the first time in history.  While struggling to stay vertical with no spinal columns, the rules committee issued a statement, courageously stating –

The Narcissist in Chief (you know the name) just couldn’t stand it – four nights of national prime time television during the Trump National Convention?  Irresistible.  Trump has decided to speak all four nights of the prime time convention.  That’s right, every night.  Trump’s advisors are afraid that he’s over exposed, especially after he has resumed his nightly soliloquy’s masquerading as a COVID briefings, so Trump’s solution is MORE exposure.  Add this to nut jobs like the St. Louis gun toting couple and Scott Baio, combined with the banishment of the few Republicans left with a shred of credibility, and it should be a hell of a show.  I won’t be watching, of course, because I don’t want to put my shoe through the screen, but I can’t wait for the video of his gaffs and childish insults the following mornings.

In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours.  Why?  There are two primary reasons:

• Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas.  If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.
• In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems.  What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems.  Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.

Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them.  I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed.  It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that.  After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long.  A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there.  The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out.  When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs.  On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half.  Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.

It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote.  Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies.  Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain.  This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.

In the NYTimes Opinion section, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explain the GOP scorched earth strategy and how it’s destroying our democratic system.  Good read for a Saturday morning.