MAGA is cracking under the weight of its failures

Are you ready for some good news? Of course you are. We all are. And we'll take good news where we can get it, even if it is only a little smidge. We are all dogs in a kitchen, and good news is that spoonful of mashed potatoes or single shred of turkey that somehow ends up on the linoleum floor and now is Ours, irrevocably Ours, and if someone wants to take it from us they're going to have to be prepared to lose a finger or two.

The good news is—and don't get full of yourself, just because one chunk of turkey hit the floor doesn't mean a second will come anytime soon—that the "MAGA" movement appears to be showing some real signs of strain. As much as felonious document-stealing sex predator Donald Trump and his embarrassingly incompetent toadies seek to impose their own aura of invincibility, after a mere ten months of authoritarian-painted government they have only managed to make everything everywhere worse. And it is all "worse" in ways that are difficult to hide, no matter how many billionaires are slobbering over Dear Leader or presenting him tacky gold-painted knickknacks.

And it does seem, based on that far-reaching incompetence, that those who would inherit "MAGA" are beginning to get a bit nervous as to whether there will be anything left for them after the big boy shuffles off his mortal coil.

That's not to say that the American fascist movement is in danger of collapsing; it cannot collapse, because there is nowhere else for the 30% of Americans who truly long for a violent king to go. The theory that angry white conservative men are the sole inheritors of American greatness and that everyone else in the country gets only the rights that fall through onto the linoleum is the only premise of American fascism, and none of the people for whom that control is important give a damn whether the economy crashes, martial law is declared, or polio returns so long as there is someone willing to promise them that they will get to feel superior the whole time it's happening.

But Donald Trump exists—and I mean that literally, I mean the entity known as "Donald Trump" would never have come into being otherwise—because there are a great, great many other Americans who truly do not give a shit, people for whom politics is a football team or a megachurch that gets visited or thunked about only on designated days but considered irrelevant to anybody's daily lives. Those people attached themselves to MAGA for the flags and the promise that they could call people racist names again, and their support is more ... tenuous.

They're into it, to be sure. But not if it means paying a lot more money for certain things, and not if their Politics Team sucks so much that it starts to be embarrassing to wear their gear or admit you're rooting for them. All it takes is for a small number of those people to begin bailing out to bring the whole fascist project crashing down, and we here in America remain impossibly lucky because our fascists are truly among the most stupid, incompetent, foot-eating pseudo-aristocrats the world has ever seen. If anyone can f--k up an authoritarian coup, it's the current Oval Office crowd.

Congress is tilting towards chaos

There seems to have been a tonal shift after Republicans got their clocks cleaned in this month's elections. Republican declarations of invincibility have remained almost entirely unchallenged in Washington itself, thanks to a toadying and often corrupt political press bred to believe anything they are told, but the November elections seemed to catch Republican lawmakers off guard.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and the rest of his caucus seemed to have forgotten, all this time, that they themselves will be coming up for reelection just 12 months from now. In all the bluster and Trump-toadying, it just didn't come up.

Now, though, it suddenly has become top of mind. And the creatures of Congress are beginning to get a bit pissed.

"This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all—appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don't even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.

More explosive early resignations are coming. It's a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out."

That's the evaluation of an anonymous senior House Republican as quoted by (sigh) Punchbowl News, and while both the claim that Mike Johnson's days are numbered and the theory that Republican retirements will cost his party the majority before the midterms are likely just smoke-blowing, the grousing neatly encapsulates the problems Republicans are facing even as they try their hardest to grovel and give up as much power as random Trump toadies demand of them.

Reelection campaigns are based on accomplishments, pork, and good local economies. Trump is tanking the last one, through tariffs, illegal budget cuts, deportation schemes and other bungling; meanwhile, the White House's demand for total subservience means members aren't able to deliver squat to their constituents—or even acknowledge all the ways that Trump has screwed them.

That's led Republicans to abandon town halls, since the only available choices are bullshitting angry voters and having the video posted nationwide or agreeing with voters and having the resulting video sent directly to Donald Trump's smartphone.

It turns out House and Senate Republicans are perfectly fine with abandoning any pretense of doing their jobs. Illegally disbanding government agencies? Refusing to fund congressionally mandated federal programs? Troops in cities? Bombing fishermen? Mike Johnson and Sen. John Thune are fine with all of that happening and will happily beg for more.

What they aren't fine with is not getting reelected, and White House incompetence, corruption, and performative cruelties are now seriously threatening the careers of anyone who's not in a blood-red fascism-or-die state and district. And so:

Redistricting has hit a wall

The most concrete outcome of the disastrous Republican performance in these last elections is that the state-by-state redistricting push ordered by the White House to gerrymander a larger House majority now appears to be dead. Very dead.

The whole point of "gerrymandering" is to maximize a party's political power by drawing party voters out of "safe" partisan districts and shoving them into swingier districts, allowing the same number of voters to determine the outcome of three or four districts instead of one. The problem with gerrymandering is deciding how many voters you can move out of those "safe" districts in order to make your plan work, and if nobody knows what "safe" is going to mean in the next few elections then the ploy can backfire. Moving enough voters out of a +10 district that it becomes a +8 sounds safe enough on paper; a few weeks ago, however, we saw numerous elections shift in Democratic favor by more than 8 points.

If that result was to repeat itself in midterm elections, then the hyper-aggressive redistricting the White House has been pushing for would backfire spectacularly, with thought-safe Republican districts falling across the country.

Two months ago, that wasn't a concern. Don't ask me why it wasn't a concern, because it obviously should have been, but the Republican veneer of authoritarian invincibility had convinced Republican state lawmakers that they could kiss Trump's boots on this one and it would never, ever come back to haunt them.

That's no longer true, because those state lawmakers have now seen that voters are still quite willing to deliver a good old fashioned election curb stomp—and enough of those lawmakers are now concerned that their districts aren't "safe" safe that they're shutting down talk of giving their Republican voters to anybody else. It's every fascist ass for themselves, in 2026; say what you want about your average Republican lawmaker, but you will never, ever catch them acting for anyone's benefit but their own.

With the legality of Texas' previous gerrymander now being challenged by the courts, the redistricting efforts now look like a wash. Republican election-rigging will continue in the form of tossing out votes, canceling voter registrations, polling place intimidation and the usual screaming about "fraud," but Republican lawmakers don't feel invincible anymore. Far from it.

Trump looks weak

It is becoming impossible for even the most compliant media to hide Trump's mental and physical deterioration; the man looks awful. He more frequently appears disheveled, his responses to questions have become even more Rube Goldbergian than usual, and questions about bruising and MRI's aren't going anywhere.

The anger Republicans are facing at home, the alarm bells ringing after the recent election trouncing, and above all the utter failure of the White House to deliver anything good, rather than just week after week of insanity-laced chaos; none of it is the picture of a universally loved Dear Leader figure and unstoppable new reich.

Instead, Trump looks fragile, and confused, and his hangers-on keep repeatedly being exposed as clowns. The dismissal of the White House-demanded indictments of New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey are just the latest humiliations for a "Justice Department" that is now being humiliated on the regular. Current FBI director Kash Patel (lol) is transparently a clown.

There is growing public chatter that White House deputy Stephen Miller is the one running the country while Trump dodders. The Trump of four years ago would regularly fly into a rage at public reports that suggested anyone in his orbit was upstaging him; the current version, who regularly appears unaware of what he's publicly signing and who has instead retreated to appointing himself the Emperor of the Kennedy Center and Glittering Ballrooms, does not appear to care.

It is self-evident that Trump himself will not be a political force 10 years from now. He will likely not be a force 6 years from now. It is not a given that the man will be medically capable of serving out his full term, no matter what he or Miller or Mike Johnson might prefer.

And Trump is delivering, for Republicans: Nothing. Not a damn thing. The Trump administration is devoted solely to delivering Memes for an always-online hard-right white nationalist audience that appears to be led in very large part by international fraudsters and grifters, and those online chuds have already seen All The Memes, delivering them more isn't going to gain even one damn voter.

Bleed voters, though? Yes. The crueler White House orchestrated mass detentions and naval murders get, the more public revulsion builds. Independent and low-information voters are, as the election demonstrates, bowing out.

The White House appears to be looking to patch up public perceptions that they are incompetent grifting memelords by, of course, seeking out a new shooting war. Whether the war will be with Venezuela or with as-of-yet unspecified drug cartels in Mexico or elsewhere has yet to be determined, much less the specific rationalization.

But it is not a given that the public will rally to a new "wartime" president, not when the war is so flagrantly invented. The public response is especially uncertain when we remember that any such war will be managed by Pete Hegseth and a White House incapable of not screwing up everything they attempt.

Most dire, for Republicans, is the precarious economic state they themselves have shoved America into. The Biden administration was panned despite a booming economy, solely on perceptions that the progress wasn't trickling down to normal Americans. Unalloyed Republican control, however, has now sunk both the actual economy and the perceived one. Incumbents can kiss their offices goodbye if this keeps up, and it almost certainly will:

Add the now-expected "A.I."-led market crash, and things go from dire to catastrophic.

The fight for MAGA's soul

The most solid evidence that MAGA is cracking up is that, well, MAGA is cracking up. There is now a raging battle for what the movement is supposed to mean; to Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute Republicans, the movement is one of benevolent fascism, one in which Republican Dear Leaders will from here on in protect America from anyone who is not white, male, and perpetually pissed off.

The natural base of that movement, however, the one that brought it into fruition and which has put much of the work into making it crass and hateful enough to expunge all other brands of American conservatism, does not merely want fascism. They want eliminationism. They want violence against immigrants—and they want a purging of The Jews.

Carlson’s interview with Fuentes — who has previously expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler — received widespread condemnation for antisemitism, and the aftermath has exposed fault lines among conservatives.

In his Oct. 30 video, Roberts denounced the “venomous coalition” criticizing both Fuentes and Carlson, adding that Carlson is a “close friend.” He said that though he disagrees with and even “abhors” things Fuentes said, he did not believe in “canceling” him or Carlson. On Sunday, President Donald Trump also defended Carlson, telling reporters “you can’t tell him who to interview.”

Fuentes, a well-known provocateur on the right, has previously said that “organized Jewry” is leading to the disappearance of white culture.

Antisemitism is baked into the American fascist movement. You can't remove it, as the Heritage Foundation is now learning, because all of the conspiracy theories that power the current version were lifted directly from neo-Nazi and other extremist groups. The alleged cabal of "globalists." The "great replacement" conspiracy that claims elitists are intentionally flooding the nation with not-white immigrants in order to "dilute the culture." The QAnon theories of elite sex predators were lifted directly from Henry Ford-era blood libels, as was the notion that authoritarian-minded populist thugs were the necessary countermeasure.

The battle for what MAGA "means" is most evident in the sudden resignation of one of its founding loudmouths, the conspiracy-boosting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is resigning in January, not even bothering to complete her current term; she attributed her decision to a wish to avoid "a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president" after the two had a public falling out.

"There is no plan to save the world," Greene said of Trumpism, referencing her own previous conspiracy theories that supposed Trump to be the hero that would expose those that helped Jeffrey Epstein in his sexual abuse of women and children. Trump instead has staked his presidency on covering up his own Epstein-facilitated actions, leading the conspiracy caucus into the sullen realization that the child sex predators were real after all—and that they've been shaking hands with them this whole time.

These fights are not fights that will go broadly public. The prevailing wisdom among wags is that Greene resigned because she saw no path to reelection and because she is, at heart, an opportunist above all; she is likely planning a pivot to becoming a professional news celebrity of the usual sort, and we are likely to learn much from whether she now abandons her attacks on Trump or intensifies them. And nobody in the real world, not anywhere, gives a shit about what the Heritage Foundation thinks about anything; for all most of the public knows, it's a stamp collecting society or a clearing house for cringe-inducing paintings of eagles holding American flags.

But the effects will trickle down to the electorate. Charlie Kirk had not even been buried before his supposed closest allies began warring over who would take over his empire of hate. A Heritage Foundation that embraces antisemitism will lose enough of its professional luster as to get quoted at least slightly less, if only because some journalists will feel less welcome at their events.

Mostly, though, the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Party, the Trump Whisperers—all of them have had an extravagant time of doing whatever the hell they wanted, to whomever they wanted, and it has all failed. Spectacularly. Humiliatingly. American conservatism came to nearly-unchallenged power, gained the ability to break laws for the asking, and proved that it has no ideologies other than craving power and doling out abuse.

It did not find waste. It made a mockery of "deficit hawk"-ing. It compulsively seeks to do damage even when doing damage is pointless; it thinks murder is funny; it is so grift-obsessed that there is hardly any time left in each day to devote to anything else.

It would be one thing if these lunks were competent, but Republicanism has proven itself incompetent to the point of parody. And Americans can stomach a lot, and Americans like a bit of daily cruelty perhaps more than most supposedly civilized countries would admit to, but Americans like having stuff and absolutely despise any government that threatens their ability to gain more stuff.

And Republicans have, because they are stupid, not been able to deliver on any of it. MAGA was a vibe, not a philosophy; it is not, so far, surviving its first encounter with actual power.

And that is good news, at least a little. We'll take it. As Trump gets weaker, as White House corruption mounts, and as Republican lawmakers begin to realize that no, actually, Americans do still believe they have the right to toss out governments that fail, the gilded veneer of inevitability is already flaking off.

That said, every billionaire and media outlet in the United States is still firmly in fascism's pocket. So there's not a lot of good news here, just a little morsel. Hopefully enough to keep us all going for a while.