yeah, Vance is something genuinely freakish and largely unasked for outside of elite conservative circles but you can't say the same of Trump
yeah, Vance is something genuinely freakish and largely unasked for outside of elite conservative circles but you can't say the same of Trump
Really? Vance is just a generic suburban conservative man. He’s like half of my former Trumper neighbors.
They all want to be Trumps, but lack the nerve and shamelessness.
I don't think your former neighbors were reading BAP
You’d be surprised, there are some real whackos in the suburban Midwest.
I think Vance presents as a generic con on the surface but once you figure out what esoteric Nazism he's spent the past couple years reading you realize he's something simultaneously more dangerous and more pathetic
So have they. Most conservative Republicans somewhat empathize with the Nazi cause. What did you think GRT was about?
We assume the median voter is more normal than they actually are.
I'm not assuming they're normal, I'm just assuming they don't have the time or energy to work up and read through a whole years-long Nazi reading list like JD has rather publicly been doing?
I don't think they think too deeply about any of this shit and just go on impulse and gutter bigotry. Vance thinks.
I also really don't think your average conservative reads much anymore, whereas Vance very clearly does (and it seems to make him more and more of a Nazi, based on what he reads)
Vance-Thiel-BAP politics doesn't have a mass base large enough to win on its own or dominate a winning coalition, vulgar Trumpism does
post-Trump will be "interesting" bc clearly Vance doesn't have the juice but pretty much no one of the elder millennial generation or younger hasn't been internet brain-poisoned. I don't think the movement withers away but there's going to be some "terrible beauty is born" realignment
That's why I think Rubio will be Trump's successor, because he still kinda appears normal enough to regular people who want to vote for Nikki Haley instead of Trump, but still gives the base its red meat, while mollifying elite concerns.
Yeah, that's cursed enough that it could be true, I'll buy it.
People say he’s dead behind the eyes or whatever, but I think he is legitimately a true believer. Florida now isn’t Florida 2010. He believes his side should have power, that’s all he believes and he’ll do whatever to make that happen.
I don't even know if he's a true believer. I don't think it matters. He wants power and he probably is in the best position of any of this team of reprobates to take it.
He doesn’t have an ideology, he’s just full of unspecified hate at whatever the left is at the moment. People forget how long he’s been around.
I don't believe Marco Rubio has an interior life.
www.tetleystldr.com/tetleystldr-...
yeah, he doesn’t strike me as someone who reflects on anything
Millions of dead wonder why😱
shame, reflectiveness, and the like would have been active hindrances to climbing the ranks of Miami politics, where he was one of the cleaner ones by default by virtue of never facing a publicly known criminal investigation. corrupt polities reward sycophancy, impulse, and mindless compliance
Sword of Chang
Honestly, finding out his connections to Miami drug operations made him seem a lot more interesting.
I think the only thing Marco Rubio believes in is “will this particular position at this particular moment increase Marco Rubio’s chances of becoming president?” Remember he was all in on “sensible bipartisan immigration reform” at the point when it seemed beneficial to him
In this light his unanimous (?) approval by the Senate looks almost like a cross-party conspiracy, like Democrats decided that Rubio would be an acceptable successor to Trump and that's why they voted the way they did. Granted I would've voted for him, because I was afraid of nuclear war.
I don't think it was that. It was that a lot of people thought he would be a reasonable voice within the administration, not the modern Von Ribbentrop. That's his real danger: not a conspiracy, but a comforting appearance.
I think it's likely that he is the only reasonable voice in the administration and for that very reason he's left to do the absolute worst shit so that he will shut up.
The future of MAGA belongs to whoever is able to keep both business/media elites on-side by promising to rein in the "excesses" of the regime while letting the base marinate in the knowledge that somewhere an immigrant is being brutalized. That's Rubio.
the complete charisma vacuum is against him. trump puts enough vaseline on the lens to let people enjoy the idea of state violence whilst permitting them to ignore the reality
Yeah, but in the absence of someone with Trump's charisma, the person who has the best handle on power and can consolidate elite opinion will probably win. Rubio lacks Trump's charismatic leadership, but so does everyone else. Barring a dark horse I think Rubio is the most likely successor.
barring another left-field spurned democrat willing to use "these sons of bitches are gonna get what's coming to them" language, yeah, that's fair
A sort of cursed MAGA Thermidor.
2029 is a long way away, but I haven’t yet felt media elites agonizing much over Trump’s “excesses” and search for a palatable successor, at least not since Peak DeSantis in 2023 They seem to have no qualms and little difficulty covering for Trump or, say for example, Musk’s Hitlergrüße
That's the thing, we will probably be dealing with backlash to Trump by the midpoint of his term, so elites who accepted Trump as a way to beat down workers, minorities, etc. will probably be looking for a successor who keeps them feeling safe while delivering what they like about Trump.
whole thread where i expand on this bsky.app/profile/utop...
Oh yeah, I think I remember reading this and kinda agreeing with it, but not fully. But as time has gone by and I've mulled it over I've come to agree with you.
ha, didn’t mean to impress a need to agree with my analysis, just think that there’s definitely a ton of room for this evil gusano to take power
There's a universe where Marquito gets his payoff for 12 years of clownish syncophancy i.e. a nomination, reverts to the "sane conservative" shtick that fooled a lot of us until 2017, and the GOP kind of returns to a party in a democracy.
But #ETTD and Marquito fits the profile of just one more of Trump's suckers, so I doubt he'll see the payoff. I just hope he fights Vance to the death for it.
This might be overly optimistic, but I think republican political power is likely to fall apart after trump, because every ambitious shithead is currently only restrained by the knowledge that hitching themselves to trump is the optimal strategy.
These people all hat each other and consider themselves gods gift to humanity, and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than a war of mutual annihilation in the absence of trump.
Vance is colorless, but the real danger is his link to Thiel. When Trump fully collapses, they may already have the fascist infrastructure in place for automated purges. www.hivegeist.us/2025/05/15/e... #HiveGeist #TAIRID #EndTimesFascism #StrongerTogether
Vance will go into 2028 feeling entitled to the nomination and the Presidency. When he doesn't even come close to the nomination where does he go?
the usual shit. cable. speaking gigs. shitty books that sell 2000 copies.