1. Whose Party Is It?

“Trump’s power in the Republican party is waning!” is one of my favorite genres of wishcasting.

You see this take from the Maybe-Trump/Always-Republican industrial complex every once in a while. Like, for instance, when an obscure, Trump-endorsed candidate loses a special election. Or some Republican senators sign on to a legislative deal with the Biden administration. Then it’s all green shoots and turning of the tide.

It’s also a fantasy.

Yesterday the two major power brokers in the tiny non-Trump wing of the Republican party bent the knee.

The first was Mitch McConnell affirmatively endorsing the carpet-bagging Herschel Walker in Georgia.

Walker has no qualifications for this post. He doesn’t know anything about legislating. Or holding office. Or how government functions. He is not a businessman, or an intellectual, or even a Georgia resident.

Walker’s only qualification is that he’s both the biggest MAGA stan and the craziest sonofabitch available.

And so Mitch McConnell chose to get on board with him.

Please note that this isn’t McConnell grudgingly supporting a nominee with whom he is stuck. McConnell doesn’t actually believe any of Walker’s schtick.

But McConnell does understand that he holds only a ceremonial position; that this isn’t his party. It’s Trump’s party—and thus Walker’s party. McConnell had to become their supplicant to remain in good standing.

The other supplication came from the Wall Street Journal, the last bastion of mainstream, country-club conservatism left in the media. Yesterday it published a “letter-to-the-editor” from Donald J. Trump.