Our Pick For Man of the Year...
You may not like it but Matt Gaetz is what the future of the Republican Party looks like
Time’s Person of the Year is Taylor Swift but my Man of the Year is Congressman Matt Gaetz.
It’s a strange thing to be a millennial in this moment. We are well into middle age and yet no one seems ready to hand over power. No one hands over anything — it must be taken. That is the lesson of the moment and it is a generational one. Woke was the first attempt to retire the Boomers. #Metoo was for the GenXers. They were as subtle as they were stupid.
So our elders give us token gestures hoping we won’t notice GenExploitation in business or greedy AirBnbing Boomers raising the rent. Hence Taylor Swift as Person of the Year.
Now with all due respect to the Swifties her pop songs aren’t the kind of leadership we need at this moment and while it’s impressive how you can still sell a generation that grew up opposing sugar saccharine songs, her oeuvre is not exactly the stuff of legends. Besides, we stan Olivia Rodrigo over here at this Substack or maybe even Dua Lipa. Let’s let our British friends have a rockstar. They have so little else these days post-Brexit.
Enter Congressman Matt Gaetz, who took out the Gen Xer Kevin McCarthy over the course of 2023. McCarthy, the last of the Young Guns to grow silent, is left whining and whinging his way to K Street. Gaetz beat McCarthy so badly that he took Patrick McHenry — the interim speaker — with him. Too much McFailure isn’t a winning message. Gen X is going to have a choice over which of the millennials lead — or they are going to be pushed aside. It’s me, not Sam Altman, you want to bet on.
If anything 2023 was the year that the millennials began to take their rightful place — in politics and in tech. There’s much bellyaching about Gaetz not having a program — as if Kevin McCarthy believed in anything beyond his own enrichment — but programs are written by those who take power, not who write white papers or speak before the Knesset.
The year started with Gaetz, in command, defiantly fighting McCarthy, vote after vote. 2023 ends with Gaetz’s total victory over McCarthy. We tire of Californians promising big waves man — only to have them crash asunder. In a democracy when you fail to perform you resign. But on Kevin’s K Street victory is just around the corner. No doubt he was reading Frank Luntz — that fraud — and doling out contracts to his buddies. How pedestrian. For all of Speaker Johnson’s faults he believes in something. Kevin believes in nothing.
The indictments will follow soon enough — once the Likudniks like Jeff Miller conclude that McCarthy is no longer useful to them. Do it, Jeff. Do it.
Maybe Kevin will learn that it’s best not to mess with our Navy. The grift drift was a bit much.
The year started off with Gaetz’s defiance against Kevin McCarthy and it ends with Gaetz too. He is to give the speech before Donald Trump’s at the New York Young Republican Club.
The challenge for Gaetz will be whether or not he plays the favorites or lays out something with a bit more heft, something that shows a bit there than the poofy hair and toothy grin.
If I were advising Gaetz I’d tell him to talk about what it’s like to be targeted and how you can over come it. That is the message that young people need to hear.
Gaetz shows that you can triumph. Enough of this “meh Deep State” came for me talk.
Let’s talk let Gaetz talk openly about how Kushner and Netanyahu betrayed America. Only that conversation will help Trump get a way out of the situation he finds himself in.
Is Gaetz man enough to negotiate a ceasefire not just in Israel or Ukraine but within the GOP itself? And is he tough enough to keep it together? Don’t know, but it’s worth wondering.
We aren’t (yet) allowed to have a real conversation about what happened to Gaetz — or to Trump — and the New York Young Republicans Club probably isn’t the forum for it. We can see the foreign spies rolling around on January 6th thanks to Gaetz disclosures. No, their faces shouldn’t be blurred. Let’s see the informants too — if there are any.
A Likud operation targeted Gaetz — only for the career Justice people to put a stop to it. I’m pleased to have play my role and the fight against the mobsters who run Israel is well underway. Ask yourself if Jake Novak, who ran that op against Gaetz, is having fun these days as he targets American schoolchildren who are sick of Israel’s war criming. Sorry not sorry but Gaetz isn’t going to jail no matter what your liberal wine aunt tells you otherwise. If it be a crime to Venmo women you’ll have to arrest half of the single men under 40 and a good two-thirds of Florida. Gaetz’s punishment will be more severe — he will likely be elected governor of Florida.
Does Gaetz have a doctrine? Hard to say. But he does have a style. A certain je ne sais quoi. This is a generational thing and you either get it—or you are old.
After the debate it seems obvious that Christie will win the New Hampshire primary, that Trump will be convicted, and that the Republican Party will get a lot more George H.W. Bush than Donald Trump. That’s a shame and Christie will struggle to connect with the Trump base in much the same way that John McCain failed to connect. You don’t have to be a Harvard smartass to get that.
Americans love a surprise and what could be more surprising than Vice President Gaetz?