The magnitude of voter’s rejection of MAGA politics, policy, tactics, and performance is probably still settling into the minds of MAGA elites and some others too, e.g., me. For the most part, the elections forced MAGA elites into a mostly defensive mindset and posture compared to their pervious aggressive and attacking mindset and tactics. It is highly unlikely that Trump or the remaining MAGA elites in elected offices will change much from three important traits of their pre-election mindset.
First, they will continue to support tyranny (mostly dictatorship, oligarchy, and Christian nationalist theocracy), deep corruption, service to special interests at the expense of the people and the public interest, and shameless pollution for profit. Second, they will continue to oppose democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest, competent, transparent governance. Finally, MAGA elites will continue to rely heavily on aggressive demagoguery, with its constant deceit, lies, slanders, knowingly flawed (crackpot) reasoning, and knowingly divisive irrational emotional manipulation to foment unwarranted fear, anger, hate, intolerance, bigotry, racism, etc. (emotional poisoning).
That much is about as near to a certainty as anything in politics can get. The eat-your-face MAGA leopard ain’t gonna change its spots. There’s just way too damned much wealth and power at stake to walk back to a pro-public interest, pro-democracy, pro-rule of law mindset.
But, given the high magnitude of MAGA’s election losses, we should expect some recalibration in MAGA’s divisive demagoguery tactics and focus. Two major lines of MAGA’s post-election defense and offense come to mind.
Slandering congressional oversight
The first line of defense that comes from the elite MAGA mind wondering ‘what the hell are the dems gonna do once they control congress?’ Good question. Probably the very first thing that jumps into elite MAGA consciousness is something like ‘holy crap batman, they are gonna do legal congressional oversight and find out about all the crap, corruption and incompetence we have ignored since the day in Jan. 2025 when Trump was sworn into office. How the hell are we going to deal that gigantic embarrassment?’
To one familiar with demagoguery and its tactics, the answer to that is instantly obvious. Simply do what demagogues always do in the face of inconvenient truth about incompetence, corruption, cruel tyranny, waste, fraud, grifting, treason, pedophilia, etc. Lie, deny, deceive, distract, distort, downplay, confuse, slander, crackpot, and emotionally poison. Those same propaganda tactics have been successfully used for over a century, probably millennia, to hide and distort bad news or to confuse the public into paralysis, false beliefs, etc.
So, when the dems start to engage with constitutionally legal congressional oversight of incompetence, sleaze, crimes, corruption, pedophilia, etc. by Trump and his MAGA elites, MAGA’s well-funded demagoguery industry will immediately attack calling it unwarranted partisan revenge, a constitutional outrage, etc. That exact argument has already been raised here at BNR by a MAGA troll as a pre-emptive MAGA defense even before the dems are seated in congress. It is almost a certainty that criticisms of congressional oversight by dems will be attacked and discredited in any way that highly paid, morally rotted MAGA demagogues can think of.
Digression: FWIW, MAGA operatives are not highly paid unless they are morally rotted. Moral rot, and blind loyalty, are mandatory qualifications for MAGA salary and perks.
Two points are worth mention. First, legitimate congressional oversight is not revenge. It is what congress was supposed to be doing, but failed to do, ever since Trump was sworn into office in Jan. 2025. MAGA congresses do not do oversight of their own. They protect their own.
Second, MAGA blowhards bitching and whining about revenge is hypocrisy. Trump himself told us “I am your retribution”. From the MAGA point of view, revenge by their own is perfectly acceptable, probably commendable. But constitutionally legal oversight by the opposition is horrible, terrible partisan revenge. See the shamelessness of the hypocrisy there?
The new boogeyman
Another deficiency that MAGA demagoguery needs to fix is the list boogeymen that MAGA demagoguery can use to divide, scare, anger and poison people’s minds with. Tinkering with the list seems to be in order. Appeals to grave threats from communists, socialists, the LGBQT community, the radical left, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, feminists, Antifa, journalists, “deep state” monsters, DEI, etc., did not resonate with voters enough to prevent the shellacking that Trump and MAGA politicians got two days ago.
To win power and stay in power, authoritarians and kleptocrats almost always need one or more scapegoats to attack. The old list clearly did not work in the last election. So, if American tyranny and kleptocracy are to persist past Trump, effective scapegoats need to be found and scapegoated. Trump loves America’s enemies and tyrants everywhere, so making Russia, China or North Korea into a viable boogeyman seems unlikely. Global warming and the Green New Deal have proven to be rather ineffective boogeymen to attack for major public support.
So who or what is left to demagogue for a boogeyman? Well, how about the Jews? For decades, maybe centuries, the Jews have been a common boogeyman for authoritarians and kleptocrats. They are a great target for blaming societies’ problems on. MAGA elites could choose to target Jews, while quietly trying hard to keep the flow of Jewish money into MAGA coffers flowing. But even if Jewish money stops flowing to MAGA coffers, there is far more money to be harvested from non-Jewish authoritarians and kleptocrats. Maybe MAGA elites will decide they can lose the money if demagoguing Jews helps fill MAGA’s need for more boogeymen to attack and slander.
Q1: How likely is it that MAGA demagoguery will attack dems doing legal congressional oversight as unwarranted partisan revenge, or even illegal?
Q2: How likely is it that MAGA demagoguery will attack Jews to fill MAGA tyranny’s need for boogeymen?
Some info sources:
Trump vows retribution at Waco rally: “I am your warrior, I am your justice” — “I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Trump said in a nearly 90-minute speech, most of it focused on perceived political enemies and slights. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution.” Trump positioned himself as the sole protector of American values, painting a grim future if he is denied a second four-year term. (emphasis added)
Trump, at Latino event, stands by false claims of immigrants eating pets
Trump repeats false claims that children are undergoing transgender surgery during the school day
Trump suggests he’ll use the military on ‘the enemy from within’ the U.S. if he’s reelected
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