Story soon… BREITBART orbit is ecstatic… the Bannon-Coulter-Sessions wing of the right is now running GOP nominee's campaign
— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 17, 2016
This tweet last night reminded me of pre-abdication Pope Benedict Ratzinger’s more conservative followers, writing hopefully about how purging the ‘doubters’ and ‘weak sisters’ would lead to a hardened Mother Church of “fewer Catholics, but better Catholics”. (When those tactics didn’t work, Benedict threw his tiara in the cardinals’ laps and ‘withdrew from the world’– but not so far that he couldn’t publicly criticize their choice for his successor.)
Google tells me that the ‘fewer, but better’ formulation goes back to Lenin in 1923, but it’s the rallying cry of every cult under stress. The True Believers tell each other that shake-ups and purity tests will lead to a hardened core of steely warriors, while secretly consoling themselves with the thought that in the new regime at least they will have improved their hold over the apparatus… and their share of the spoils, should the group go completely belly-up.
They’re no longer interested in winning the presidential election; they just want to steal everything they can from the collapsing national party, up to and including the pennies off the corpse’s eyes, to enrich their own fiefdoms in the fever swamps of “alt-right” racists, misogynists & xenophobes.
It’d be more entertaining for the rest of us if the rump revanchists weren’t so heavily armed.
Huge rallies. Gloves off. Brutal fights with Clinton. Heavy emphasis on nationalism and populism. That's the Bannon strategy.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 17, 2016
if he wanted to win, he would have got someone who could shore up field ops. but he brought in more media because that's all he cares about
— laura olin (@lauraolin) August 17, 2016
"Stephen Bannon a 'bully' who has 'shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda',”https://t.co/7KHwoVmzFW pic.twitter.com/R2b7A2GDtv
— Dean Barker (@deanbarker) August 17, 2016
The Trump shakeup has zero to do with winning the election and everything to do with preserving his brand for life after he loses
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) August 17, 2016
Trump is like the guy who fires his doctor for putting him on a diet and finds one who says he can eat steak https://t.co/vCliehDsk2
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) August 17, 2016
Message from a despondent GOP operative:
'I'm beginning to think someone is just messing with us.'
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 17, 2016
Rats might desert a sinking ship but sharks come in to feed. — Commentor Aleta
Open Thread: Fewer Republicans, But <em>Better</em> RepublicansPost + Comments (176)