Them's The Rules

By Baxter

The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that Benedict Donald can stay on the state's Republican primary ballot, despite the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. (It doesn't rule out a challenge to Trump on the general election ballot, though, so film at eleven on that.)

A lot of left-leaning tweeps were dismayed by this decision, but we cats were okay with it. Several reasons.

First, interpretations of the 14th Amendment are pretty much all over the map right now. We are not legal beagles (beagles are dogs, after all), but we suspect that no definitive action on 14 will take place unless and until Jack Smith wins his January 6 case. Do we think Trump engaged in insurrection? Yes, but somebody more important than we are needs to decide that, too — preferably a judge or a jury.

Second, and maybe more important in the short term, we're very interested in the Republican Party saddling itself with Trump for the 2024 election. Why? Because the path is strewn with minefields for them. In fact, we think we've seen a way in which the party would implode over Donald, something we've been waiting for a long time — or at least ever since Lindsey Graham predicted it back in 2016. (Come on, Republicans, get on with it already!)

The GOP could very possibly blow itself up at its 2024 convention. Trump has rigged the delegate selection rules in the primary and caucus states to favor him — so, don't quote polls at us. Haley or Rhonda or whoever else could get a third of the vote in some states, but Donald would still get all the delegates because of winner-take-all. The nomination could be clinched by Super Tuesday — the day after Trump is scheduled to go to trial for January 6.

Fast-forward to the convention, and you find that pledged delegates are bound to vote on at least the first ballot. Unbound delegates don't have to, but there will be barely more than 100 of them in Milwaukee.

Imagine that Donald's fortunes have declined even further by convention time, and some slice of the Republican Party will try to dump him in favor of who-knows-who. They'll run up against the bound-unbound rules, but those will be nothing compared to the fury of the MAGAts. Trumpsters will brook no opposition, so if the "establishment" tries to throw their hero overboard, we can see them walking out like Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats in 1948.

There's no appeasing the Lovers of Donald — they're just waiting to explode. Which means the GOP is riding a bomb like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. We cats PURR.