Boot-Licker Headed for Georgia Trifecta

"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter." -- "Francisco d'Anconia" (Ayn Rand)

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Donald Trump, whose sore-loser antics helped the GOP lose both runoff elections in Georgia back in 2021 is at it again, this time attempting to primary that state's incumbent Republican governor:

Trump's pick for governor, [David] Perdue, faces an even more complex challenge. He has struggled to raise campaign money and trails incumbent Brian Kemp by 11 points, according to a Fox News poll.

Perdue has toed Trump's false line of a "stolen" 2020 election and begun claiming that his defeat to the Democratic senator Jon Ossoff, to whom he conceded in January, was also problematic. "Most people in Georgia know that something untoward happened in November 2020," he told the talk radio host Bryan Pritchard. "I'll just say it, Bryan. In my election and the president's election, they were stolen. The evidence is compelling now."

The Perdue-Kemp contest represents a personal grudge for Trump, which flared after Kemp refused to support his bid to overturn Georgia's 2020 election result. [bold added]

Here's how what I'll call the Trump Trifecta happens: Perdue loses the primary amid baseless claims of fraud -- which Trump is laying the ground for. This results in a loss of enthusiasm by Trump's base in the general, if not what will amount to a boycott. (It's rigged, anyway!)

On top of that, Trump, who is a sort of mirror-image Hilary Clinton in that he motivates voters of the opposite party, will have revved up the Democrat base -- who may already be excited about striking a blow for "equity" by the prospect of crowning Stacey Abrams -- even more.

Abrams wins, becoming the third Democrat to win a statewide election thanks to Donald Trump's shenanigans.

It is also worth noting that Trump has obliged, with the following, anyone in need of evidence that Trump admires what Americans in better days would have condemned as dictators or laughed off as tin-pot:

Image by Jørgen Håland, via Unsplash, license.

Donald Trump chose a rally in Georgia on Saturday night once again to praise Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian president "smart" even as he said the invasion of Ukraine amounted to a "big mistake".

The Republican former president also had warm words for China's President Xi Jinping and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, and referred to such leaders collectively by saying: "The smartest one gets to the top."

He spoke admiringly of Xi in terms of the fact that he "runs 1.5 billion people with an iron fist" and referred to Kim as "tough".

Then of Putin, Trump told the crowd: "They asked me if Putin is smart. Yes, Putin was smart."

He also praised Russia's strategy of a huge accumulation of military force on its border with Ukraine before invading, even if the war is not going well for the aggressor.

"That's a hell of a way to negotiate, put 200,000 troops on the border ... That was a big mistake, but it looked like a great negotiation. That didn't work out too well for him," Trump said. [bold added]

I am an American: I do not admire anyone who "rules with an iron fist" nor do I regard myself as the subject of any would-be ruler.

Pressuring Governor Kemp to "find votes" and screaming about a stolen election while two fellow Republicans were trying to win crucial Senate seats were far from "smart" and these maneuvers "didn't work out too well for him" in 2021, but here he is, doing it again -- and to great acclaim, if a recent conversation I had with a Trump fan is any indication.

Trump's predatory, brutish idea of "smart" reminds me of the Ayn Rand quote at the top of this post: It is ridiculous and unjust to equivocate between intellectual achievement (which requires freedom) and running a tin-pot dictatorship like North Korea or a slave pen like Russia or China -- and in America, of all places!

Here's a pregnant question that might pass for exasperation on my part: Why isn't Trump a national laughingstock by now?

-- CAV