The Jilted Revanchists

There's a budding new cell in DC worth keeping an eye on. They will try to hide but put on your pith helmets, part the reeds, listen, and watch.

Who?

Today Ken Paxton won the Republican primary run-off for one of the two Texas US Senate seats. He is a cinemagraphically corrupt, incompetent, divisive, lying moron and everybody in Texas knows it, at least everyone who is not a Fox/Newsmax/OANN gobbling zombie.

Even the Republican state legislature impeached him. Talarico, the Democratic challenger, is a great candidate. Texas is a very low turnout state and there will once again be a massive but quiet Theil/Musk microtargeted digital effort to discourage likely Democrats from voting. If Democrats aren't discouraged by this quiet effort and actually turnout, Talarico will win even with all the voter suppression.

Paxton got endorsed by the Leader a couple of weeks ago so easily beat the sitting Senator John Cornyn who typifies the other GOP faction of office holders: lazy, cowardly, oligarch-friendly, ass-kissers. Cornyn, like all of them, styled himself the-adult-in-the-room. The oligarchs found him useful and tolerated him but nobody liked him. He will now slouch into various board positions for giant corporations that hate people and that people hate, being the Emeritus Loser at Whiteman, Whiteman, & Whiteman, and conversationally plagiarizing Ed Whelan at the country club. When ICE murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis, ever the oligarchic lawyer, Cornyn immediately put forwarded a bill to prevent civil cases against ICE agents. He's just that kind of guy.

After Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina was threatened with a primary challenger, he decided to retire to spend time with the family. He's increasingly taking potshots at the president and his 1.8 billion slush fund. He uses the word "stupid" lots now.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was primaried after he voted to convict after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Didn't even qualify for the runoff. Not psyched.

Republican member of the House Don Bacon from Nebraska, retiring before getting primaried, speaking out more and more, because like all these guys (surprise, they're all guys) they don't have much to lose.

And then there's Thomas Massie of Kentucky. He has been alone among Republicans in caring about the Epstein Files in a performative, but effective way. Trump endorsed a primary challenger Ed Gallrein who won in the most expensive primary in House history. His campaign slogan and every one of his lawn signs was about the endorsement. But Massie has plans. Members of congress can read whatever they want into the congressional record and it can't be used to prosecute them. Now that Massey's out, he says he will read the unredacted files into the record. Good.

Revanchism as a concept comes from the French after they lost Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War and built a whole political movement around wounded pride.

These members of Congress are butt-hurt, humiliated, scorned in the way only true cowards can be. No matter what they say in public, no sitting Republican members of the US Congress likes their leader, even the stupidest of them. They're just afraid of him and accept him as reality. At least for now.

One day, if we are able to vote ourselves out of this, they will all say, "Wow, what was that?!?!? Crazy! Never liked that guy. Here is this tepid equivocal thing I said several years back to prove it. So anyway, let's move forward and not dwell on the past."

But until then, this group of Jilted Revanchists are important, slinking around Georgetown and Capitol Hill. There are all sorts of wrenches they could toss in the gears, particularly if they start quietly egging each other on.

Watch 'em.

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