With the results now clear in Alabama’s hotly-contested U.S. Senate Republican primary race, the unambiguous message coming from the GOP voters responsible for Roy Moore’s underdog victory is clear-cut — a crucial reminder to everyone that Trumpism is not about any one person.
More importantly, what this humiliating loss tells President Trump is that Trumpism is not even about him. The indisputable lesson here for the president is that even he, the man who started the movement, is not bigger than the promises, ideas, agenda, and platform he ran on.
Yes, Trump ran on specifics such as a border wall, the repealing of Obamacare, and tax cuts. Trump’s existential promise, though, the overall rationale for his insurgent campaign, was all about “draining the swamp,” or taking the fight to the DC establishment — not just within the corrupt national media and the cancerous Democrat Party, but also within the Republican Party, which, as we have seen over the last eight months, is no better than the others.
By fully backing Luther Strange, the poster boy for everything his very own movement despises, Trump defiantly violated his existential promise to us, the promise to drain the hideous DC swamp.
In a different world, in a world where, for the last eight months, while in complete charge of the federal government, the Republican Party actually delivered on its promises; in a fantasyland where the GOP did not expose itself as a gang of feckless cowards unwilling to keep even the Obamacare repeal promise that defined the party’s existence for seven years, maybe Trump could have gotten away with supporting a Luther Strange.
But that is not the world we live in.
The reality is that the GOP chose instead to use their once-in-a-lifetime political opportunity to pander to media hoaxes and Democrats, to launch countless investigations against Trump and to push for citizenship for millions of illegal Democrats.
Had the Republican Party actually honored the national mandate Trump’s 2016 victory called for, Trump supporters might have come to believe that the president had somehow managed to fix the GOP, to give the spineless a spine. In that case his support for a Luther Strange might not have felt like such a mistake … and betrayal.
Here is a another lesson the president should have not been forced to learn through tonight’s defeat…
That when a Republican Swamp Creature leans over and whispers its rancid breath in your ear…
Just come on board this one time. Just play the game a little bit. Not only will the media like you more, not only will we like you more, we will repeal Obamacare for you. See, it is all about relationships, going along to get along… That’s how DC works. Become one of us and we will give you everything you want.
…That is not a promise, it is a trap — a call for the believer to sail right into the rocks and commit political suicide.
You see, there is just no reasoning with professional con men and grifters. There is no compromising with those who have knowingly spent the last seven years hustling their own supporters. There is no bargaining with narcissistic vampires willing to sell their rotted souls for acceptance within the coven that is the mainstream media. There is simply no lie the Republican establishment will not tell, no back they will not stab.
With the 2018 midterms coming, another historic political opportunity looms, an opportunity for the movement to repeal and replace even more of the Republican establishment.
And if Trump has not learned the lesson of Alabama, the movement certainly has — that we do not need Trump in order to obtain victories for Trumpism.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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