There is a saying you will hear spoken frequently at my house these days:
Burn the lifeboats.
We know that the day is coming when Donald Trump will resign or somehow be forced from office either by a Democratic House of Representatives (please, soon.) or by public opinion.
The White Guys Panel (tm) at Morning Joe knows it too. Spurred on by the courage of Senator Susan Collins, who points out in a recent interview that (a) she wrote in Paul Ryan for President (gag) instead of voting for Trump and (b) she has no idea if Trump will be the nominee for the Republican party in 2020 because....well she doesn't say it but he might be out on his ear.
And the line in this panel that caught my ear most sharply was from Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary, who said about a TrumpExit,
"If Republicans need to create a soft landing space for him, they should be considering how that would go right now."
The thing is, everybody on that panel knows what everyone in my house knows. There are no lifeboats yet for how Republicans separate themselves from Donald Trump.
The base of the Republican Party is the problem. They are still very much with Trump, and any Republican office holder who thinks to distance himself from Donald is likely to pay a heavy price not only in being called a "cuck" on social media, but in actual votes as well. And Donald Trump himself has shown a total willingness to run against a Republican member of Congress, even running ads against Nevada Senator Dean Heller during the Trumpcare debacle. Crossing Trump right now is hardly an option for a swing district house member.
The other problem is that the last time the Republican party abandoned their own history and re-invented their past is very fresh in memory. The average GOP voter could only abandon George W. Bush once a thoroughly Astroturfed "Tea Party" movement (that the complicit media pretended was a whole new political phenomenon) gave them a rallying cry away from Dubya.
The rich "intellectuals" of the party created "No Labels." But it's the same thing.
"Bush Republicans? That wasn't us. That was someone else. We never supported him."
Joe Scarborough, frequenter of Mar-A-Lago at how many Christmases, host of how many phone-in interviews and chummy "we know you can win, Donald" suck-ups, helping Donald with his speech to Congress in late February?
You're the one who needs a "soft landing" away from Trump.
And it's the same with Republican base voters as it is with their complicit media. The clip above, with Scarborough and his white guy panel almost whispering about how to get rid of Trump and provide him with a "soft landing"? He's not the one you're worried about.
And you're all still hoping that somehow YOUR president can survive just long enough to sign your rich-people tax cuts. Who is going to stand behind him with broad grins while he does that?
