Attacks on Donald Trump have begun in the aftermath of the midterm elections.  We should have set our watches.  Washington’s Republican establishment is pushing the line that the GOP’s underperformance in the midterms is “100%” Trump’s fault.  Of course, there’s no stink on D.C. Republicans -- not Kevin McCarthy, not Mitch McConnell, not Ronna McDaniel, not Tom Emmer (chairman, RNCC), not GOP consultants and pollsters…  Not on any Republican who hangs out at the Capitol Hill Club.   

Conservatives shouldn’t be goaded into a Trump versus DeSantis fight.  Trump and DeSantis shouldn’t permit themselves to be baited, either.  It’s so transparent, it’s laughable.  That’s exactly what the establishment is trying.  Washington Republicans don’t intend to just knock out Trump, but split conservatives.  Is that rank odor wafting through the air from Karl Rove and Jeb! lurking behind the curtains?   

No stink on the insiders.  Nope.  Just Trump.  Washington’s favorite game is in full swing: The Blame Game.  Republicans play it as viciously as Democrats.  It’s one of D.C.’s charms.    

The long knives are aimed at Trump because he remains the Republican establishment’s nemesis.  The aforementioned “players,” among many others, don’t like their apple carts upset.  Why, they get all touchy about that.  Trump the disrupter, Trump the change agent -- not good for business.  And make no mistake, in D.C., it’s all about business.  Show me the money, baby! 

Why do you think parades of unrich politicians who go to D.C. leave -- if they ever do -- worth millions of dollars?  You think Nancy Pelosi is the only member of Congress -- Ds and Rs -- who’s alleged to profit from insider trading? 

Enriched, these “representatives of the people,” while producing absolutely nothing of real value…  who retire from Congress or lose their seats to then get fat off defense contractor board appointments, consulting gigs with whatever special interest thinks their “ins” can be leveraged, and fat off consulting fees just because someone owed them a favor.  Give me a guy making widgets in Paducah, Kentucky over these scammers any day.      

And who -- somehow, mysteriously -- get rich off their family’s and friends’ connections. 

Case in point, the august Mitch McConnell, who, in fact, has become the poster boy for everything cynical, smarmy, and loathsome about the Swamp.  At least, on the Republican side of the aisle.  R or D, Mitch isn’t alone.   

Elaine Chao’s -- Mitch’s wife -- family has made a fortune in shipping, primarily off the People’s Republic of China.  McConnell and Chao, per Peter Schweizer, have both played key roles in furthering the Foremost Group’s interests.  That’s James Chao’s -- Elaine’s dad’s -- company.  Since 2004, the McConnells’ fortune has ballooned to as much as $36.5 million.  How do two D.C. lifers get that rich?    

But no stink on Mitch and Elaine for -- as Schweizer terms it -- “corruption by proxy.” 

And no stink on Mitch for publicly remarking during the midterms that “candidate quality” among Republican Senate hopefuls was lacking, which meant don’t expect the GOP to win the Senate.  But Mitch wasn’t done.  Caring more about retaining his Senate leadership position (even if that meant minority status), McConnell’s PAC pulled badly needed money from Blake Masters’ race in Arizona and Don Bolduc’s New Hampshire contest. 

Worse -- if there is a worse -- well, yes, there is -- Mitch has poured money into propping up Lisa Murkowski’s campaign in Alaska.  Murkowski, who just radiates political whore.  But, hey, that’s the ilk Mitch runs with. 

No stink on Mitch, but, per Daily Wire, “GOP’s Midterm Losses were 100% Trump’s Fault.” 

The dunce who penned the Daily Wire piece actually claims that had Trump not pushed Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick would have been Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate nominee… “And McCormick most likely would’ve crushed the bumbling John Fetterman.”

That Dave McCormick, who made “$22 million last year [2021] as CEO of the world's largest hedge fund,” Bridgewater Associates?  Bridgewater Associates that made truckloads of yen off the PRC, a communist regime that oppresses Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Hongkongers?  Dave McCormick’s Bridgewater Associates, which knows it’s more lucrative to help create jobs in China than the U.S.A.?    

Does the Daily Wire dunce not appreciate that Democrats would have fricasseed McCormick for all of the above plus more?  That Pennsylvania’s “No Questions” mail-in balloting would have done in Abraham “Mr. Freed the Slaves” Lincoln?                  

Details, details.  Just get Trump. 

Trump, who did more for the nation in 48 months as president than D.C. lifers have done in their careers.  Trump, who kept the nation at peace, who had the economy humming, who stood up to Xi and Putin and Kim and the mullahs.  Trump, who, against Democrat and Republican opposition, effectively closed the U.S.-Mexican border… who fought the drug scourge and child trafficking coming from Mexico. 

Donald Trump who, this election season, made dozens of endorsements and took to the hustings to support Republican candidates via rallies in key states, while most establishment Republicans hung out in their nicely appointed D.C. offices, sitting on their fat rears, spinning whatever intrigues they believed advanced their petty interests.

In 24 months of the Biden administration and Democrat control of Congress, along with the passivity of Kevin McCarthy and conniving compliance of Mitch McConnell, what has happened to the nation?  It’s become an awful mess.  It’s tumbled into deep troubles -- thanks to utter incompetence, ideological blinkeredness, and greed -- that appear only to have begun.  A potential Perfect Storm of crises, domestic and foreign, is brewing. 

And yet no stink on the elites, whose conceit is their most outsized feature.  Elites, who aren’t just Democrats but quisling establishment Republicans and pay-for-hire “conservatives,” whose devotion to liberty and nation are distant seconds to devotion to themselves. 

All of them are miserably failing the country -- the honest, decent, hardworking Joes and Janes who comprise the real backbone of America.  They’re being failed -- we’re all being failed -- by crimped minds whose reflex is to shift blame from themselves to Trump.  Good Lord, deliver us from these fools. 

Lastly and not least, Newt Gingrich has weighed in.  I’ve long respected and appreciated Newt, starting when he was a firebrand backbencher in the U.S. House in the late 70s and early 80s.  His contributions have been historic.  But he, too, has decided to pin the blame on Trump for the GOP’s underperformance -- or was it more on the order of inflated expectations now being spun as underperformance? 

Said the former speaker, per Just the News, November 10:

"I was pretty shaken because that was not the election I expected," he admitted. "And I don't have as much confidence in my own judgment as I would have had yesterday morning."     

Well, Mr. Speaker, perhaps you shouldn’t.  Perhaps most of us misread developments.  Maybe we need the humility to admit we were wrong.  But lackluster Kevin McCarthy, whom you mentored, and along with House Republicans, concocted the tepid “Commitment to America,” receives not a single word of criticism from you?  And what about your role in counseling McCarthy and having direct input into the “Commitment?”  Perhaps introspection and further reflection would help you arrive at a deeper, wiser understanding of your responsibility?    

I’m decades past an infatuation with any politician.  Donald Trump is no more perfect than the rest of us.  He has his good and bad attributes.  But we should all be damned if we allow feckless, self-absorbed, and incompetent Republican D.C. lifers to get away with evading their ample share of responsibility for the midterm outcomes.  Yep, stink is on them, thick and pungent. 

Conservatives, don’t take the bait.  The lifers want us to form a circular firing squad.  If we let them blame Trump “100%,” shame on us.  

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover. 

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