Eating their own
There is no loyalty among MAGA
For those not in the know, I am from the purple state of North Carolina, born and bred. Go Heels! My location in this wonderful state is close enough to the southern border that all of our local news stations are a heavy mix of North Carolina/South Carolina news. That means I’ve been seeing all the ads for the South Carolina primary races. I see enough to know Lindsey Graham will likely win the primary but lose the midterm election. This would be a major turn for our sister state, as they have been reliably, stupidly MAGA from the beginning. There are cracks, however, as witnessed by their state senate rejecting the last-minute attempts at redistricting. This wasn’t just a slap to King Trump’s face. This was full-throated push back. It was a beautiful thing. The hope is that more red states begin to stand up to the creeping authoritarianism of the Trump regime.
Getting back to Senator Graham, he holds a comfortable, but waning lead over his primary challengers. I don’t see them closing the gap before the election, but there is time. While Graham, as one of the least principled dogs from Trump’s kennel, has his master’s endorsement, he is not without his MAGA detractors. There is a rumble of a MAGA-born movement that has targeted Senator Graham for destruction and the televised ads they have unleashed against him are so shockingly vile that anyone with a shred of moral fiber should be outraged.
A particular ad airing with regularity begins by attacking immigrants as “criminals,” and claims that they “disdain our God,” and “steal our jobs.”
Oddly enough, pretty much everything coming out of the current GOP swamp is disdainful of a holy God, but I digress…
The ad then launches into Graham’s record of [long] past support for immigration and “Dreamers.”
At one point, an image of Graham standing with a rather flamboyant looking young man, with what appears to be large pearl earrings and makeup on flashes across the screen. A stern voice reads the accompanying caption – “He’s never been married!”
Yes, we all know what they were getting at, and we’ve all, at some point, likely made that same assumption, but to have it put out there as a blatant pejorative is a bit much.
The ad does not go on to endorse any primary challenger. It notes that no candidate has paid for the ad. It was put out by a PAC called Courageous Conservatives PAC. After doing a brief search, I found that their last target was Senator John Cornyn, of Texas. Further delving names the chairman of the PAC as Chris Ekstrom, an also-ran from the 2020 Texas Republican primary for District 13. While searching the PAC’s website I loudly guffawed over their core principles statement, which included the line, “dedicated to electing principled conservative leaders.” This was under a slavish endorsement for Ken Paxton.
Ken Paxton.
No. You can’t make this stuff up.
I decided to follow the breadcrumbs and look into the mind behind such ugly rhetoric. Ekstrom has a social media presence that vomits out his position on multiple topics. Most of what you find is drooling sycophancy of all things Trump, more than a few racist dog whistles, plenty of cult reports from OAN and Newsmax, calls for a return to the Confederacy, an end to “black culture,” attacks on the Civil Rights movement (including multiple attacks on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), and at least one really bizarre AI campaign ad in favor of Spencer Pratt for mayor of Los Angeles.
OH – and lest I forget – his social media pages have background imagery of Jesus Christ. Those go so well with the page entries that call for a return to the “lost Christian virtue of intolerance.”
This is not a well man. This is not a decent man. This definitely is NOT a Christian man.
I’m no fan of Senator Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, or anyone else in the current stable of Trump bootlickers. When the snakes begin to eat each other, it’s a win for normal, decent society. I didn’t feel compelled to write this as a defense of anyone. I felt compelled to write this to put a marker down. We are seeing our nation devolve into such uncivil, corrupt, profane ugliness. It’s not as if we haven’t been on a downward spiral for quite a while. It is in our nature, apart from a holy God and a firm moral code, to destroy each other. It has been several decades, however, since politicians and talking heads so openly campaigned on racism and intolerance, targeting the lowest among us, appealing to the visceral need to demonize “other.”
Senator Graham is being attacked for his past policy stances, even though he has more than earned his Trumpian kneepads. He’s being attacked for having “never been married.”
*wink, wink*
Remember this moment in time. Remember this PAC, the so-called Courageous Conservatives. The reality is, there is nothing conservative about hate, racism, or a confederate movement that divides our nation, rather than pulling a nation of individuals under one, proud banner of unity.
It is these hateful, ignorant subgroups among us that make this nation suffer. They’re not saving us. They’re not preserving anything of worth. Every value and alignment they adhere to is poison. The fact that so often you see these putrid beasts pimping their garbage under the banner of Christ makes it all the more insidious.
This isn’t a problem that started with Trump or the MAGA cult movement. Trump and the MAGA faithful just gave the wretched scum new courage to slither out from under their rocks and into the light.