by Larry Schweikart

For as long a I can remember, the Democrats were referred to as the “evil” party and the Republicans as the “stupid” party, the implication being that Democrats knew what they were doing, and Republicans didn’t. I think we need to revise our thinking on the latter. Mitt Romney (Minion) and Mitch McConnell (Yertle) didn’t get where they are by being stupid. Indeed, Romney was quite devious, picking a state that was not only overwhelmingly conservative but one that was uniquely Mormon. (It’s hard to imagine Romney getting elected in, say, Florida.)

No, I think we need a new way of looking at the “stupid” party, and it’s the Vain Party. For the most part, today’s GOP thinks of themselves as the Guardians of the Galaxy of Etiquette and Manners. They perceive themselves as so “moral” and “principled” and “ethical” that not only would they not cheat, but they won’t call out Democrat cheaters because, well, that “wouldn’t be nice.” And we have to play nice.

It’s important to see the vanity at work in D.C., and certainly not just with Republicans. But the difference is that the Democrats’ vanity is in their perception of themselves as the only ones moral enough in terms of current political correctness and social justice to hold power. They see themselves as uniquely “holy” when it comes to positions and policies. To them, personal behavior is utterly irrelevant, so long as one holds the right policies. This was perhaps best demonstrated in the Clinton years when a female reporter publicly stated she would perform a Lewinsky on Bill Clinton because of his position on abortion. So, both the Republicans (in terms of seeing themselves as the lord-protectors of ethics and polite behavior) and the Democrats (in terms of policies and issues) are drenched in vanity. Angelo Codevilla in 2010 perfectly explained this in his description of the “country class” and the ruling class.

To recap—as this is critical to understanding what happened on January 6 and the Great Capitol Chase or, as I call it, the Flight of the Squidpickles—both parties are dripping with vanity. They are just vain about different things.

Then came January 6, when hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters showed up in Washington, D.C. Some—it is still not proven if the main perpetrators were pro-Trump or fascist so-called “Antifa” plants—broke in the Capitol building. What came next was critical. It changed the entire narrative of the focus of the Joint Session, which was to announce Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

 

Instead, the break-in by an assortment of oddballs, including a Leif Erickson, horn-headed Viking, a fellow with a beard the size of Los Alamos, and a goofy looking assortment of people who, in the tradition of the mobs celebrating Andrew Jackson’s victory as they broke into the White House and drained the liquor cabinets hauled off everything from Nancy Pelosi’s gavel to the Speaker’s Podium. (One can imagine the E-bay ad: Speaker’s Podium, U.S. House of Representatives, sanitized, reeks of alcohol. Make offer). But if you’re paying attention to those scenes of high comedy, you’re missing the profoundly revealing moment.

As the members of Congress heard about the crowds, they panicked. Some hid under chairs or tables. Pelosi and her squad dashed for the elevators to go to the secure bunker, no doubt fully stocked with masks and vodka. Senator Lindsey Graham would later say he feared for his life. (“They could have killed us all.”) Riiiight. Greybeard and the Minnesota Viking “could have killed them all.” One can almost picture Graham scurrying to don women’s clothes and pushing men out of the way to get on the last lifeboat on the Titanic. There certainly will be no profiles in courage coming from the behavior of our elected officials that day.

Quite the contrary, that a handful of ordinary citizens could trigger the Flight of the Squidpickles is extremely…

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