Somewhere along the line, the Party of Lincoln became something else entirely—something dark, unaccountably moist, and circus peanut-sinister.
Not only is it no longer the Party of Lincoln, it’s not even the Party of Reagan anymore. Or even of Dan Quayle. Or Kevin Sorbo, for that matter. No, it’s the Party of Putin—full stop. And as such, its members have increasingly relied on the same cursed monkey paw that’s kept Donald Trump twisted up in a savage Underoo wedgie lo these many years.
Yes, Russia helped Trump get elected in 2016. And they tried again in 2020. Everyone other than Trump and his yet-to-be-betrayed cronies now acknowledges this—including, a little more than a week ago, a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
Russia also knows what’s bad for democracy is good for Putin-style autocracy, so they were rooting hard last week for Republicans to ride a red wave to Washington—and eventually to Moscow for another weirdly timed July 4 treason-palooza. In fact, the GOP’s midterm fate was important enough to Putin and his murder mice that they put off some fairly momentous decisions until after the election was over.
According to CNN:
The US has intelligence that Russia may have delayed announcing its withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson in part to avoid giving the Biden administration a political win ahead of the midterm elections, according to four people familiar with the intelligence.
Senior Russian officials discussed the US midterms as a factor during deliberations about the withdrawal announcement, one person familiar with the intelligence said. Waiting until after the US election was always a “pre-planned condition” of Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson, a second person familiar with the intelligence told CNN.
Since Republicans represented Putin’s last, best hope for his simpering twit brigade, which for months has struggled mightily against the underdog Ukrainian army, the midterm results must have been a big disappointment to the Kremlin.
For his part, President Joe Biden found the timing of Russia’s announcement convenient, to say the least. “I find it interesting they waited until after the election to make that judgement, which we knew for some time they were going to be doing, and it’s evidence of the fact that they have some real problems—the Russian military,” Biden said at a press conference the day after the election.
Meanwhile, writing in The Daily Beast, the redoubtable Russian media monitor Julia Davis noted that Russian state television seemed taken aback by the Democrats’ midterm success:
This plan to discredit the U.S. elections and convince the Republicans that the mighty Kremlin hand covertly helped push them to victory had backfired. On Wednesday, state TV propagandists were scratching their heads about the wave that turned out to be but a trickle. During the broadcast of 60 Minutes, host Olga Skabeeva asked an expert: “How are our guys in America?” Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov clarified with a chuckle: “Our Republicans.”
Dmitry Abzalov, Director of the Center for Strategic Communications, noted that the outcome was much different than the predictions: “Even the Democrats predicted the red wave that will mow everything down, but it turned out to be quite modest.” Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov said, “The worst fears of the Democrats are now behind them. They easily won the states they were most concerned about.”
I hope American voters—who surprised many observers with their determination to defend our democracy and their own hard-earned rights against the rising forces of fascism—will take note of who’s on the GOP’s side these days: namely, the diabolically evil Vladimir Putin and the off-brand Bond villain Elon Musk, among others. Indeed, birds of a feather flock together, and what we have here are a bunch of amoral, stumbling-drunk emus.
Luckily, America saw through them. This time. Let’s hope that by 2024 Putin is rigging cockroach races in a gulag instead of fucking with the lives, livelihoods, and well-being of millions of free people.
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