What If McConnell and McCarthy Aren't Playing To Win Deliberately?
Taking the tiff between Peter Thiel and McConnell seriously not literally
How much of politics is, you know, fixed?
We know a lot of sports is fixed. We don’t talk about it but we kind of know it. Boxing, the World Cup, horse racing. Even the World Series. And this isn’t in the distant past either. Steve Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins football team, has been suspended for not only tampering with players and coaches on opposing teams, but potentially paying his coach to tank in order to obtain a more favorable draft position.
But politics? Do you dare ask?
A friend of mine who worked for Secretary Elaine Chao has a theory that she was placed there by the RNC to get precisely nothing done. In this lack of effort, she succeeded admirably—and totally. She even looked busy while she did it.
President Trump, who I’ve come to believe is himself a Fed, pointed out that Chao — “McConnell’s crazy wife” tried to “get rich on China” last month.
Here’s how The Hill details those ties.
Chao’s father founded the Chinese shipping company Foremost Group, and her sister is the CEO.
Though Chao has no formal ties to the business, she and McConnell both faced questions over her potential conflicts of interest during her time in the White House and whether she used government resources to support her family’s business.
Appointed by Trump in 2017, Chao reportedly didn’t disclose her family’s affiliation with Foremost Group during her confirmation hearing.
A key point of concern was Chao’s continued media appearances with her father even after assuming office, which her team reportedly countered were opportunities to share her story as the first Chinese American and Asian American woman to hold a Cabinet position.
…
Chao resigned after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. After her resignation, the Justice Department declined to pursue an ethics probe into how she used her position.
Why didn’t the DOJ prosecute Chao? We don’t know but allow me to venture a guess.
Could it have been that a deal was worked with McConnell where he wouldn’t work so hard to oppose Biden’s agenda in exchange for Biden’s DOJ going easy on his wife? Or was it mere collegiality that Biden had with McConnell for their 36-year relationship?
"Mitch, I don't want to hurt your reputation, but we really are friends," Biden said at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year. "And that is not an epiphany we're having at the moment. You're a man of your word, you're a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend."
There are two ways of taking this statement. One way is that everything Biden said here is true. Another way is that everything is the opposite of what he said and work back and forth between his initial statement. That’s where the truth really lies. Consider it the Straussian Biden.
Friends don’t jail friends’ wives. That’s just not done in the clubby Silent Generation. Messages are sent subtly. The message has been sent that McConnell is both expecting — and expected — to lose the U.S. Senate.
Once McConnell “lost” the Senate he could turn around and blame billionaires like Peter Thiel and Donald Trump for “candidate quality” after a number of candidates went down for defeat.
You could say the same thing with regard to candidate quality happened in 2010-12 so historical precedent exists — Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd “legitimate rape” Akin, Richard Murdock, Connie “Hungarian lobbyist” Mack, Wendy Long, Josh Mandel…
McConnell could claim — quite rightly — that neither Thiel nor Trump cared enough to spend money to elect their candidates in a general election. He could, in Thiel’s parlance and formulation, make Thiel the scapegoat.
But Thiel may well like Masters and Vance going down for defeat. He can retreat from politics altogether, saying, “Well, you know I tried and spent a lot of money…”
I suspect that Thiel sees a lot of the PayPal Mafia going down for defeat in the Musk trial, including David Sacks, who failed to squash the subpoena, and who I have long argued is the real don of the PayPal mafia.
True to form and his mythmaking, Sacks promises they’ll be a PayPal miniseries in the mode of the “Last Dance.” It’s been something that Sacks has turned in his writings as well, telling founders to “Be Like Mike.” (Does this include the illegal gambling stuff?)
Yes, Sacks really is comparing PayPal to the Chicago Bulls, one of the most winning NBA teams in history. OK.
Senator McConnell’s calculus is easy to see: Would I rather be Senate Majority leader of an unruly caucus? Or have total party discipline as Senate Minority Leader?
It’s an easy choice, especially as McConnell nears retirement. Eighty year olds don’t last forever.
Of course there’s this larger question of who the McConnell-Chao clan really work for. I highly recommend watching her talk about her love of China in this speech from earlier this year.
Now I’ve already written quite a bit about how the GOP became Chinese. The posts are well worth reading in their entirety if I do say so myself. There’s Ben Shapiro’s relationship with Chinese fronts and of course, we talk about how Kevin McCarthy installed Chinese spy Peter Kuo at the California GOP to pay off his wife with a “no show” job.
McConnell is more Chinese-American deep state while Kevin McCarthy lacks that sophistication. You don’t invite Elon Musk to the Wyoming conference of the GOP—if you know what’s really going on with Tesla, The Boring Company, and SpaceX?
But Kevin isn’t so bright. He’s GenX and he can’t cut a deal even if he wanted to with our Silent Generation president. (For whatever reason GenX and Silent Generation hate each other. I don’t make the rules. Sorry.)
McCarthy may soon be under his own pressure. His body man and money man, Jeff Miller, is reportedly under pressure now that his firm — Ryan LLC — is under investigation by the FBI and weirdly suing USA Today in some part of random part of Texas.
And who could forget the shady relationship he has with Frank Luntz, the fraudulent pollster who gave us the Iraq War? McCarthy lives in Luntz’s apartment in DC — a totally illegal arrangement.
I’m sure it’s a total coincidence that Luntz is meeting with Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame — the very same Kagame who is stealing the Democratic Republic of Congo’s resources for Chinese factories producing Tesla batteries. Oh, and committing genocide. But Frank thinks he’s a great guy.
No, one gets the impression that McCarthy isn’t totally in it. Nor does the GOP electorate seem terribly interested. In the last five special elections the rural vote has been anemic while single women are registering to vote at record numbers.
Now McCarthy is trying to downplay expectations to donors. He says the Republican majority may only be 15 seats, way down from the 60 he had previously predicted.
This narrow margin creates all kinds of opportunities for reforming the Congress and the GOP — and for showing Kevin McCarthy the door.
Will the GOP seize the opportunity?
There’s one man who might well see the opportunity — Tom Emmer, Republican from Minnesota — who has informed his fellow members that he’s running for whip.
I think he’s really running for speaker.
