Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
The latest No Kings rally occurred this past weekend. It was a beautiful autumn day, (in the words of Tom Robbins in his novel Another Roadside Attraction) “…one of those mellow October days that seem concocted from a mixture of sage, polished brass and peach brandy.”
Hundreds of people gathered in Cathedral Square Park in Milwaukee, and over five thousand other such gatherings took place across the nation—and globally. The people of Kenya, England, France, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and other great countries of the world held rallies condemning the authoritarian ambitions of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and other would-be tyrants.
American citizens were encouraged to register to vote if they hadn’t done so already, and to vote early starting October 20th. At the Milwaukee rally, food trucks lined the streets surrounding the rally and people came wearing colorful costumes and sporting creative protest signs. It was peaceful, even festive. The event had more of a carnival atmosphere than a political rally. People talked, joked, and got to know each other. When the march began, the feeling of shared esprit de corps and solidarity was almost palpable. It felt good to stand up for our country and our Constitution.
Later that night, I posted some photos of the rally on social media. I was expecting some trolling—because there always is some—but I was amazed at the volume and vitriol—and sheer malic of the responses. I wasn’t surprised at first, but they just wouldn’t quit. I had over one thousand responses before I finally cut off unqualified comments. And I had to ask why, what did these trolls suppose they were accomplishing?
I think part of it was rage-baiting, trying to start a fight, but that obviously wasn’t working. If they were trying to scare anyone, memes of The Simpsons and Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants wasn’t doing the trick. I suppose the bulk of the venom might have been the very juvenile articulation of their own frustration and anger. Nothing Trump is doing is working for them, so they hide behind a wall of rage—and that’s not even working. Their trolling is so predictable and so ordinary, it’s become almost. I suspect that some of them were trying to impress each other with their smarmy animus.
The Republican Party seems to be going through the motions, too. Heather Cox Richardson points out in her latest installment of Letters From An American, President Trump’s catastrophic tariff policies, his monumentally corruption, his colossal contempt for the American people, his disastrous war in Iran that has sent fuel and fertilizer prices through the roof, his slashing of Medicaid and federal health insurance subsidies have eroded his approvals to historically low levels.
And because of his unpopularity, incompetence, and alarming incoherence, Republicans running for office in the upcoming mid-terms are running for cover. Many are refusing to debate their opponents or to hold town halls with their constituents. Those who have faced the music have faced withering questions about affordability, the influx of AI centers, ICE raids and deportations and have no answers. They blame it on Biden. They bring up Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Cox Richardson brings up the point that many Republican candidates seem unprepared. She cites a debate in Alaska between Republican senator Dan Sullivan and his Democratic opponent Mary Peltola. Surprised that his opponent seemed to know the answers to the questions, he accused the moderators of providing her the questions, she replied that no, she had simply done her homework.
In recent elections, Republicans—and its most of them—who bent the knee to Trump were unwilling or unable to stray far from the party line. Those who did, like Liz Cheney and Thom Tillis, were primaried. Now, when their leader is falling, the Republican candidates are scrambling. Representative Maria Elvira Salazar filmed a commercial criticizing Trump for his draconian deportation policies.
A number of Republican candidates have avoided appearing with their president as he barnstorms across the country. Besides having to acknowledge his disastrous policies, they have to endure rambling speeches about everything from men’s asses to his long-debunked claims of election fraud. They know he’s poison.
This reluctance to engage with their constituents and unilaterally support an increasingly deranged and corrupt scab of a man and disgrace of a president begs the question of why they want to run.
As Ms. Cox Richardson so aptly puts it, “Their invisibility raises the question of why these people, who evidently don’t care about representing their constituents, would want to hold national office. Perhaps they want to hobble the federal government to enable wealthy businessmen to gain even more control over the country. Perhaps they want to enable the rise of a theocracy. Perhaps they are hoping to make money off their offices. Perhaps they simply want the prestige of a federal office.”
Their electorate is beginning to see this reluctance to serve and will hopefully vote for change. This does seem to be the trend. While polling continues to be very positive for Democrats, recent miscalculations have thrown all polling into doubt. A stronger indication may be the 2025 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election in which Susan Crawford was elected over Brad Schimel.
According to an NPR report, billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk sunk nearly $20 million into Schimel’s campaign. Trump himself endorsed Schimel was the recipient of $9 million from the GOP, nearly matching Crawford’s $10 million ante from the Democrats. The race received national attention and was widely perceived as a bellwether for national political feeling.
Not only did Crawford win by over ten percentage points, traditionally red counties in the northern part of the state and the WOW counties surrounding Milwaukee had much stronger democratic showings that usual.
This evidence seems to point to one conclusion. The Republican Party is dying. Donald Trump is the one who has killed it, but it wasn’t as if they were coerced into becoming a phalanx of zombies following Trump’s every move. They had choices. They could have fallen back on the decency of a John McCain or the integrity of a George H.W. Bush. Instead, they chose to follow the walking malignancy that is Donald J. Trump and will more than likely be paying the consequences during the coming midterms.
Trump will not go quietly. He will no doubt insist the midterms were fixed and that the Democrats will ruin the country. He’s been pulling out all the stops. His racist, sexist, anti-Muslim comments have become more abhorrent by the day.
The impotent raging of both the president and his MAGA social media trollers (or their bots) is symptomatic of a mass dementia. They are the inmates howling at the moon.
Trump’s vitriol and webs of deceit are becoming more and more troubling. The other day he wandered off to greet an imaginary audience near his new helipad (YouTube). And this is only the tip of the iceberg. He seems to be sundowning. The Republican Party seems to be sundowning, too. They don’t have to be, but they have chosen to go down with the mad king rather than stand up and represent the people who voted them into office. History will not forget their cowardice or their corruption as they march to the elephant graveyard. They will have to live with the shame of that for the rest of their lives–and beyond.
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