SAINTS PRESERVE US

GOP-smacked

Canada’s most charismatic prime minister, the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, once remarked that neighbouring the United States was akin to sharing a bed with an elephant. The elephant is the mascot of the Grand Old Party (GOP), a recognized Republican symbol. Sunday’s news from south of 49 suggests an elephant not only rolled over but started sleepwalking.

I’m not a political news junkie but I keep an eye on Canadian machinations because it’s my civic duty to be informed. As such, it’s impossible to be blind to the executive, legislative and judicial chaos rampaging through the United States; ripples and shockwaves spilling over the border and signaling the decline of empire. No surprise then Republican conventioneers acclaimed der Trumpenfuhrer as their candidate in November’s presidential election.

With apologies to Erin O’Toole who won Canada’s Conservative Party’s leadership race in the wee, wee hours Sunday following a botched vote counting procedure, the night’s big news was the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) declaration that the GOP had zilch for a 2020 election platform. Not a plank. The cadre is prepared to live and die “enthusiastically” with the odious vulgarian’s erratic twitterpations as policy.

The RNC cited the covid-19 pandemic as an excuse for its collective cranial cramp. Yet this intellectually vapid rationale was somehow mildly reassuring. It suggested that the GOP’s backroom operatives recognize the disease for what it is rather than a hoax perpetuated by donkey-riding socialists. It also signaled an existential surrender of sorts. Since der Trumpenfuhrer and coherency pair as well as Comrade Xi and Guns n’ Roses, ‘Chinese Democracy,’ why bother doing the work? The buffoon will go off message the moment he purses his lips in front of a microphone.

Another possibility intrigues me but I can only speculate. What if the lack of a Republican election platform was in fact an invisible plank of a soft coup? What if the RNC has quietly decided that the orange man, his convicted cronies and his spawn are hogging too much space in the elephant’s clown car? What if the brains in the party organization are playing a fatalistic long game: concede the 2020 White House to the Democrats; irradiate the elephantine Republican brand cancer from Queens, and meanwhile, gear up for 2024. There’s got to be at least one Republican backstabber in that divided country who’s looking forward, desperate to launder the soiled sheets of the GOP.     

 meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of political commentary since 2013. Don’t sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, stay safe.