Sheeple Who Need Sheeple
by 
Editor’s Note: Have a question with no immediate answer? Don’t ask Matt. He prefers simplicity. Maybe Ask Prudence over at Slate. Or Ask Marilyn vos Savant, whose bio says she has the highest recorded IQ in the Guinness Book of World Records. Though if that old bat is as smart as she says, why does she write for Parade magazine, which is geared to about a sixth-grade reading level? Matt doesn’t have the answer to that. He’s just asking questions. Ask him questions of your own at [email protected].
Dear Matt,
Over the last few years I’ve had dozens of people ask me how could fine, upstanding, thoughtful, R’s have a philosophical aneurysm and become part of the phalanx, dedicated only to Emperor Trump. I said, “Fear.” ( And that’s the reason why people call me Captain Obvious.) My brother still calls Trump a Republican, for God’s sake. (Mutant is the word I particularly like.) Many of the Trump foot massagers have CV’s that are astounding, yet they have debased themselves for life! What keeps them from growing a spine and taking the path of Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger? How can so many of them be bowed by the “angry child” people of the once grand R party?
Brian
I hate to oversimplify, though as a professional opinion-slinger, that’s kind of my job. To break our exceedingly complex world down into easily digestible bites of maxims, anecdotes, and random observations, all tied up in a too-tidy package, and delivered piping fresh to your inbox, so that we can all agree with each other (the ones who don’t cancel their subscriptions in disgust, that is), and congratulate ourselves on our wisdom, discernment, and above-average intelligence. Even though if you were really smart, you’d be asking Marilyn vos Savant, as referenced above, whose SAT scores would spank mine, before sending them to bed without any dinner. Though as I told my fellow classmates (in community college), my intelligence can’t be measured by test-givers.
For me, however, the answer to your question is an easy one, which can be reduced to two four-letter words. The f-word that you’ve already mentioned – fear. Probably second only to pride as the impetus for most of the bad things that happen in this world. (Most of the sins we commit stem from pride, or the fear that results from our pride being injured.) And the other four-letter word would be”math.” The big electoral news of the week – if you can call it “news” – being that a new New York Times survey showed our twice-impeached, twice indicted (with more on the way – here’s a new one that came down as I write), forever seditious former president so far ahead of the 2024 Republican primary field, that short of him expiring unexpectedly from a KFC aortic occlusion or being physically crushed by the weight of his own ego, they might as well hand him the nomination now.
This, of course, was not news to anyone who has regularly paid attention to the numbers. Which is the only thing I regularly pay attention to, as all the election analysis crowding our op-ed pages and inboxes is mostly busywork until the inevitable happens. Things that are written and said, so that pundits don’t have to go out into the cruel world and find gainful employment. But at the risk of being too simplistic, it’s pretty simple. For all the early ballyhoo about Ron DeSantis’s viability, those of us who watched him closely enough early on to realize he had all the charm of one of the lesser cities he governs – let’s call DeSantis the Jacksonville of presidential contenders – he was wayyyyy oversold. New Coke trying to be old Coke when Coke consumers still preferred the taste of old Coke, and old Coke was still on the shelves. (I’m talking about Trump here, with all the coke-talk, some might think I’d switched horses, discussing Hunter Biden.)
DeSantis is a personality with no personality – aside from his Tourette-like outbursts at corporations, woke or otherwise. Government persecution of private enterprise being something conservatives used to oppose, and some say they still do. But – sorry optimists – the numbers have never looked promising for anything but a Trump re-nomination. Suck on this if you don’t believe me: in all but one of 130 or so polls captured by Real Clear since last November, Trump has won against the field in every single poll except one by mostly wide margins. (DeSantis eked out a 2-point victory in a CNN poll in March – put that in your scrapbook, Ron, it ain’t gonna get much better for you.)
And not only that, Trump has POSITIVELY MURDERED the field. You think Republican also-rans dropping out and anyone-but-Trumpsters consolidating around a unity candidate will solve the problem? Guess again, wishful thinkers. In The Real Clear average of polls, Trump currently sits at 53.9 percent support. If you tally ALL of the other candidates’ support up, including DeSantis’s, that only registers 19.9 percent. Meaning Trump (53.9 percent) isn’t only beating DeSantis (18.1 percent), he’s beating the entire field put together. And by 34 percent!
When political-novice Trump murdered the field of 2016 Republican aspirants, which contained a lot more purported once-inevitable future presidents of the United States at the time (Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie), he only did so by an average of around 19.5 percent. And keep in mind he has all kinds of baggage now he didn’t have then. For instance, in 2016, he hadn’t yet been impeached or indicted or spurred a riot that killed five people while he was trying to overturn an election that he lost. And yet, he’s much further ahead now! Which leads us to the next question any sensible person would have to ask of their country: WTF is wrong with America? Or at least the portion of it that decides Republican primaries?
To which I say, the numbers answer the question for you. Our so-called Republican leaders – I’ve been a Republican since I started voting in 1988, even if I no longer give a wet s—t about Republican loyalty, and even if I’ve abstained in four out of the last five elections in a non-vote of conscience – aren’t leaders at all. They’re followers. Sheeple who need sheeple. As my former Weekly Standard colleague, the great Jonathan V. Last, has written on many occasions, they are afraid of Trump’s voters, and therefore, are afraid of their own potential voters, if their own voters (i.e. Trump’s voters) are to keep them in power. Which is why, as Reverend Russell J. Levenson Jr. (George H.W. Bush’s former pastor) recently wrote about “key leaders of the GOP, who seem — either by design or default — intent on steering their adherents to certain ruin, without regard for the moral implications of their actions,” they are in “ a moral abyss.”
Just to name-check one dishonorable mention is RNC chair Ronna McDaniel (never-Trumpster Mitt Romney’s niece) – nearly thrown over by the pitchfork-wielding Trumpsters for not being loyal enough just months ago – who turned into a sputtering, equivocating mess on Chris Wallace’s CNN show, “Look Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.” When former Fox News host Wallace asked her if Republicans would have a problem nominating someone who was under indictment or a convicted felon, McDaniel beclowned herself, while showing us the current soul, such as it is, of the Republican Party, sounding, as Levenson said, “like a toddler trying to explain an advanced calculus problem.” The woman who has mandated loyalty tests to support the eventual Republican nominee (which Trump, barring an act of God, will be) to anyone who wants to get on a primary debate stage, had the cheek to say: ““It’s not up to me. It’s up to the voters. They’re going to make their decision.”
You know how people in my position, who write about people in her position, typically say something self-effacing such as “Not to too harshly judge Ronna McDaniel…….” ? Well eff that. I am harshly judging her. McDaniel is an abject moral coward, and has been since she’s taken her current post. A go-along accommodationist who, just a few years ago, would’ve probably never supported the things she openly shills for now. And who is the perfect embodiment of Republican leadership, such as it is. A throne-sniffing parasite.
Which is why, to answer you original question, we have the problems we do now. Anger and spite and resentment have given way to opportunism, and opportunism abhors the moribund rulebooks that used to govern us all. Republican politics having turned into the veritable grievance-laden spite store of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame. Opportunists are indecent by nature. And when decency dies, indecency rules. Making the latter ascendant, allowing them to camouflage their naked ambition as the “will of the people,” who are not above rooting for indecency themselves. When Nero fed Christians to the lions as part of his bread’and’circuses program, he didn’t do so because it was unpopular, but because it was. Similarly, being evil when half the electorate has convinced itself evil pays, often pays off. And if you’re someone who goes where the money is, as most politicians do, well then, here we are. A self-sustaining evil loop. Brought to you by people who used to know better. Enjoy!
Bonus Track: I feel kind of badly about slagging Jacksonville, even if I’m always pro-slagging Florida, a sunny state for shady people. But I have friends there. So here’s Whiskeytown doing “Jacksonville Skyline.”
Bonus Substack Recommendation: Back when I was a serial profiler (in the magazine sense), I made it my life’s work to avoid boring subjects. Which was a challenge. Because boring subjects populate politics.(This was largely before politics became overrun by criminals, pirates, nuthouse escapees, and insurrectionists – it’s rarely boring now, even if half the so-called interesting people belong in jail.) But one man I never had to avoid was Mike Murphy. Not only one of the smartest political consultants of his or any other generation, but much more important by my lights, one of the most entertaining. Murphy was and is a veritable rat-a-tat machine gun of memorable quotes. Don’t believe me? Here’s my 8,000 word profile of him for the Weekly Standard (not for The Washington Examiner, the bastard sister organization that now sadly houses our archive) after his Jeb Bush campaign crashed and burned in 2016, and Murphy laid his soul – and the soul of the Republican Party – bare. Murphy is incapable of talking boring, and therefore, tends to tell the truth along the way. Which most political consultants only do by accident.
And the good news is he has now started a (free) Substack, which you should check out. Though feel free to pledge him your money – also an option – just to keep his head in the game so he keeps entertaining us. His Substack mission statement, he recently wrote, is not just to offer up election analysis, but “more offbeat ramblings, not just he usual political stuff. You know, windy posts about aliens and romance and Jerry Lee Lewis’ piano playing and small engine repair, etc. You have been warned.” You can find Murphy here:
Bonus Youngster Track:
If you’re too young to understand the headline reference, here it is.
