Cheeto Jesus

I had not planned to follow a Trump post with another Trump post. 

I had hoped, with some naivete, that Trump posts would never more sully the splendor of I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You.

And yet here we are. 

I had no delusions that evicting Trump's orange tinted fat ass out of the White House would put an end to him. 

I had hoped, again with more than a modicum of naivete, that the Republican Party just might realize that "Ding! Dong! The witch is dead!" and stop sucking on his backside.

But no. 

In fact, the cult of Trump seems to have a worse stranglehold on the party than ever before and Wyoming Congessperson Liz Cheney may be about to pay for that. 

Cheney is one of the few Republicans who has refused to capitulate to "the Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen and that Donald Trump really won.  She actually voted in favor of impeachment for Trump's role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6th. 

Trump is actually trying to appropriate the term "the Big Lie" for his using, applying it to the idea that  Joe Biden won fair and square.  

Liz Cheney fired back at Trump's attempt to use "the Big Lie" for his purposes when the lie is that Trump won and the election was stolen.

Cheney's latest repudiation of Trump put her back in the crosshairs of her own party. 

Cheney's lack of fealty to Trump has prompted Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise to indicate their desire to push out Cheney as House Republican Conference chair and replace her with Elise Stefanik who is fanatically devoted to the Trump cause.

Trump issued a press releases attacking Cheney along with Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence for not getting with the program that Li'l Donnie won the election but that it was stolen from him.

Loyalty to Trump has subsumed the Republican Party.

Which sounds a bit familiar to certain scholars and historians.  

Jonathan Weiler, a University of North Carolina authoritarianism expert, notes parallels going back to Nazi Germany. “It’s interesting that Cheney is condemning Trump specifically for his use of the term ‘the Big Lie’ to push his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.  The ‘Big Lie’ itself is a term often attributed to chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels ― the idea being that if you push relentlessly and totally a falsehood you can get ordinary people to believe it.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and fascism expert, had this to say: “The move to purge Liz Cheney is another example of the authoritarian-style party discipline adopted by Trump’s GOP. It is more evidence that the GOP has become a far-right party beholden to a leader cult."

Tom Nichols, a scholar of the old Soviet Union and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, observed, “The whole atmosphere is one of loyalty to the leader and to the party, and none to principle or policy." 

I get a kick out of Nichols follow up comment:  "The only saving grace is Trump’s lack of competence, even at being an effective authoritarian. The Soviets banished people from the party, or worse, for disloyalty. The best the GOP can do is run a primary election against Cheney while an old crank in Florida issues angry memos that no one is going to read.”

The View’s Meghan McCain called the Republican Party a “sausagefest of MAGA” that has rallied around a “Cheeto Jesus.”

Man, are we never going to be done with this son of a bitch?