CaptainKudzu

Friday, December 12, 2025

Blue tide rising

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.”

That was the text of a particularly prescient tweet by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. It goes way back to May 2016. The Republicans didn’t get destroyed that year, but I think about this tweet occasionally when a Trump-caused disaster strikes the GOP.

That happened again on Tuesday night. A month ago, Democrats swept off-year elections, and this week they racked up two more impressive wins. Democrats won a state house seat in Clarke County, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia (I am legally obligated to add “Go Dawgs!”), and the mayorship of Miami, Florida. A second state house race in Georgia will advance to a runoff in January.

House District 121 in Georgia has been Republican since 2019, while a Democrat has not been mayor of Miami for almost three decades. Both races reflected double-digit swings towards the Democrats.

Democrats have had an exceptionally good year when it comes to special elections. They aren’t batting a thousand, but it’s pretty close. One of the few races that they’ve lost, a special election for a Tennessee congressional district last week, still reflected a 10-point shift away from the GOP.

As I’ve said many times, it’s almost axiomatic that the more voters see of Donald Trump, the less they like him. He was unpopular at the end of his first term, but Republicans couldn’t accept that he lost a fair race. They brought him back into a second administration that is not hamstrung by traditional conservatives in positions of power. This is pure Trump on display for all to see.

Pure, unidiluted Trump may be what MAGA voted for, but it isn’t what swing voters wanted. Swing voters wanted lower prices and affordability, not tariffs and the advice to make do with less. They wanted to deport violent illegal immigrant criminals, but not have ICE knocking down doors to arrest people who were assimilated into society and harassing US citizens. Swing voters wanted a change from the “Sleepy” Joe Biden, but they didn’t want to end up with America’s crazy uncle, who, by the way, is fighting wokeness by dozing off more than Biden ever did. Voters have seen the Trump vision for America, and they are rejecting it in droves.

The White House’s reaction to the looming electoral catastrophe is the same as it always is: They just need more Trump! Fox News reports that Donald Trump will take his message directly to the voters by hitting the campaign trail again in 2026. It’s not a cult at all.

Assuming that America survives the Trump presidency and civil war doesn’t break out, Trump is going to be the gift that keeps on giving for Democrats. Most Republicans, especially those in tight races (and “tight” could mean if they had less than a 15-point margin last time), are not going to want Trump anywhere near their campaign, but they can’t distance themselves from him without the president throwing a temper tantrum and attacking them. It is a rock-or-hard-place conundrum. Do they want to be beaten up in the primary or the general election? Even Laura Loomer sees it coming.

The whole mess was easily predictable. Republicans have been telling me for decades that taxes increase costs and are paid by the end user. Tariffs are no different, yet the formerly conservative Republicans pretend that they are. Who could have imagined that Hispanic communities like Miami’s Cubans would object to being racially profiled and subjected to federal brutality? Pretty much anyone except MAGA stalwarts. Americans are not okay with provoking a war with Venezuela or murdering alleged drug traffickers.

Republicans and Libertarians have been warning the country about an intrusive and abusive federal government for as long as I can remember, yet under Trump, they have embraced the federal whip hand because it is striking people they don’t like. It has been one of the most astonishing displays of hypocrisy that America has ever seen. It’s now clear that Republicans aren’t opposed to Big Government; they are just opposed to letting Democrats control it.

American voters don’t like it when Republicans aim the federal government at them. There is a blue tsunami building for 2026. It is foreordained that Republicans are going to suffer apocalyptic losses.

What happens after that is more questionable. By rights, Americans should never trust Republicans to run the government again. Of course, we know that won’t happen. In our two-party system, voters will eventually tire of and/or be alienated by Democrats again the way they were in 2024. The question is how long that will take.

If Democrats go off the deep end the way MAGA has, the Republican time in the wilderness may be relatively short. If Republicans shake off the Trumpian fever dream and return to sanity, they may also limit their time in exile. If they persist in allowing the MAGA faction to control the party, they may be a minority for a long time, especially since Trump won’t be on the ballot to motivate his base.

I may eventually vote Republican again, but after watching so many Republicans that I used to trust and admire abandon their principles to kowtow to an authoritarian, I’ll never trust any of them again. I’ll never again call myself a Republican.

I’ll offer my advice to Democrats again: Let the Republicans embrace the crazy. Be sane. Aim for moderately conservative swing voters who are unhappy with Trump and the GOP. When you regain power, keep the same strategy and don’t go nuts. Don’t confuse dislike of the other party with love for your fringe. Concentrate on basic competence rather than reaching for the progressive moon.

The first party that takes this simple advice could be dominant for a generation.

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THE US SEIZED an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

FIVE YEARS OF SOCIAL MEDIA HISTORY will be required from travelers seeking to visit the US from countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program.

THE CALIBRI FONT is woke according to Marco Rubio, who banned its use at the State Department.

From the Racket News

Crony government

One of the most interesting shows that I’ve watched recently was “Death By Lightning,” a four-episode Netflix series about the assassination of Garfield. When I say “Garfield,” I mean James A. Garfield, our 20th president, and not the more well-known lasagna-loving cartoon cat.

President Garfield [spoiler alert] was shot by a deranged supporter only a few months after taking office. He died after a long struggle with infection from a wound that probably would have been survivable had it not been for the doctors of the day. The series is both informative and entertaining. Nick Offerman, best known as Ron Swanson on “Parks and Recreation,” steals the show as the corrupt-but-redeemable Chester A. Arthur. (Be aware that Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, spent time in a sex cult, and this is graphically depicted.)

Thanks for reading The Racket News ™! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This little-known episode of American history is relevant today because Garfield was a reformer (and an anti-tariff free trader to boot). He rooted out corruption in the Post Office, even though his own Republican Party was involved. His uncompromising objectivity and righteousness did not fit well, even then, in the federal government or the Republican Party.

Charles Guiteau considered himself a Republican stalwart. He was a ne’er-do-well who has since been diagnosed with possible schizophrenia. Guiteau felt that he was entitled to be appointed to the position of Paris consul, despite the fact that he spoke no French, as a reward for his service to the Garfield campaign.

Guiteau was more of a partisan than a patriot. The Republican split over Garfield’s policies concerned him as dangerous for America, and he believed that it would be better for the country if Garfield died and Vice President Chester A. Arthur assumed the presidency.

Aside from the obvious parallels with today’s political violence and partisanship, the story is relevant for another reason. Guiteau’s murder of Garfield backfired in that the new president embraced Garfield’s reforms and signed the Pendleton Act in 1883, reforming the civil service system.

Prior to that time, the federal government operated primarily on the spoils system. Each new presidential administration would remake the majority of the federal bureaucracy. Jobs would be filled with political appointees who were not necessarily the best person - or even competent - for the job. Civil service reform insulated federal workers from the changing politics of different administrations and introduced a merit-based system of employment and advancement.

Fast-forward to this week when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a case that tests presidential control over independent agencies established by Congress. The case centers on the question of whether Trump can fire Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, whom Trump himself appointed in 2018. Slaughter was appointed to a second term by Joe Biden and was not slated to leave the FTC until 2029. The 1935 Humphrey’s Executor ruling limited the president’s power to fire independent board members at will (the law requires “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”), but a new generation of unitary executive activists is questioning that long-held precedent. Some even consider the delegation of power by Congress to independent boards to be potentiallyunconstitutional.

In the past hundred years or so, executive power has expanded dramatically under both parties. Congress has made a habit of passing general laws and delegating power to make specific rules to executive branch and independent agencies. In practice, this has transferred lawmaking power to the executive branch and the presidential appointees.

It also means that national regulatory policy changes dramatically when power shifts from one party to the other. Something legal under one president can suddenly become unlawful under a new Administration without Congress ever acting.

This is possible because the top-level officials who head the regulatory agencies are still presidential appointees. This is a vestige of the spoils system that is necessary because a president should have people heading his Administration who will carry out his philosophy of government.

As part of Project 2025, the Trump Administration is seeking to expand its ability to fire federal workers and exercise control over federal agencies. This would essentially represent a return to the spoils system in which federal bureaucracies were gutted every four to eight years and restocked with party loyalists. This might sound good to the Republicans who currently hold power, but they should ask themselves what will happen when Democrats regain control of the government. The current crowd seldom seems to consider this possibility.

The Trump Administration is probably the worst possible poster child for a return to the spoils system. Trump and DOGE have already fired thousands of federal employees (while increasing the cost of government), but the poor quality of Trump’s appointees at the top level should terrify Americans everywhere about the possibility that he might eviscerate and rebuild the entire federal government from the bottom up with MAGA loyalists.

Can you imagine a full complement of Kash Patels at the Federal Election Commission? How about RFKJR setting nuclear power standards at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? Maybe some other Fox News alums would be tapped to set broadcast standards and oversee licensing at the FCC. The possibilities are both endless and horrifying.

There probably needs to be a line beyond which Congress cannot delegate, but it’s also true that politicians don’t have the expertise or objectivity to micromanage very technical fields. A bunch of lawyers isn’t necessarily qualified to make safe or sensible regulations for operating a nuclear power plant, and the federal gerontocracy isn’t tech-savvy enough to do a good job of regulating AI and other emerging technologies. Donald Trump’s brain trust also definitely isn’t qualified or trustworthy enough to regulate tech, as he is trying to do with an Executive Order preempting state regulation of AI. (On a side note, E-O-E-O-A-I is ripe for insertion into a parody song to the tune of “Old MacDonald.”)

Some delegation is clearly needed and constitutional, but federal agencies need to remain responsive to the Article I branch of government (Congress, for those of you in Rio Lindo) rather than falling into the orbit of the increasingly imperial presidency. The framers did their best to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of one man, and we’ve been steadily undoing their work ever since.

The general consensus after the oral arguments on Trump v. Slaughter is that the Court will uphold Slaughter’s dismissal and strike another blow against congressional relevance, but the big question is how far the Court will go. The range of possibilities runs the gamut from a narrow decision favoring Trump but maintaining limits on the president to a broad ruling that eviscerates the entire concept of independent agencies.

The best solution to presidential encroachment is to elect good people. The ultimate direction of the country is going to depend on the voters. If the American people don’t like the growing concentration of power in the hands of sometimes corrupt and often incompetent presidents, then they have the power to do something about it. I have faith that they will.

In the post-Trump era, Americans need to look toward reform-minded individuals in the mold of Garfield and Arthur who will work to return power to the people and Congress. Passing reforms that limit the power of the presidency over a filibuster and a presidential veto will require selflessness on the level of George Washington, who rejected a life tenure to return to private life at Mount Vernon, on the part of both the president and members of Congress.

If we find the people to vote for a return to the original intent of the founders, I hope we find government officials of caliber of Washington, Garfield, and Arthur to see it through.

Thanks for reading The Racket News ™! This post is public so feel free to share it.

EPSTEIN FILES A federal judge in New York has ordered the Epstein grand jury files unsealed, but 324 days after Trump returned to office, the Epstein files have still not been released.

TRUMP FIXES PROBLEM CAUSED BY TRUMP I’m surprised it took this long, but Trump unveiled a new $12 billion aid bill to bail out farmers hurt by the tariffs and trade wars.

From the Racket News