What Happened to MAGA?

So, whatever happened to MAGA? Wasn’t it supposed to be this enormous national movement that was going to make America ‘great’ again? Wasn’t it supposed to transform the Republican Party from a bunch of RINOs into an effective fighting force that would tear through the mid-term elections and then catapult Donald Trump back into the White House in 2024?

Thursday, the GOP announced a new strategy for the mid-terms which are now only six weeks away and if the polls mean anything, an awful lot of people need to be convinced that the red team needs them to show up and vote.

Called the ‘Commitment to America,’ this laundry list of proposals harkens back to 1994 when Newt Gingrich concocted something called the ‘Contract with America’ which helped the Republicans achieve a majority in both Houses of Congress which they used to bust Bill Clinton’s balls over the next six years. Incidentally, an hour after the GOP put up their new game plan, they took it back down.

Actually, what really made the difference for the GOP in 1994 and again when Trump ran in 2016 was Rush Limbaugh. Think I’m kidding? I’m not. Not only did Limbaugh invent social media on AM radio, but he also invented the rallies which Trump used in 2016 to build his brand.

The point about social media is that for all the talk about it being ‘social,’ in fact it’s primarily a way to deliver political messaging without having to depend on printed media or TV. Both mediums are not only expensive but also try to enforce certain rules regarding whether or not what you say bears any relationship to the truth.

Want to say something really crazy like the stuff that QAnon puts out? You can blast it all over the place on the internet or Breitbart but even Fox News will quickly shut you down. On the other hand, you can rant and rave all you want about how bad things have become under demented Joe, and as long as you deliver your narrative without curse words or insulting language, you can basically say anything you want.

The GOP’s ‘Commitment to America’ lists four basic policy areas which will be up for grabs in 2022 and again in 2024: economic growth, safe borders, and safe streets, get the government out of education and health care, make government ‘accountable’ through investigating how the Democrats have weaponized the FBI and protecting the ‘unborn.’

This so-called commitment reads the same way that every Republican electoral blueprint has read since…