ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — What’s the deal with the North Korean-style loyalty of Republican representatives who have apparently decided that the wrath of their own party’s voters for failing to defend conservatism is preferable to dealing with that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s making a mockery of it?

It would be one thing if Trump were defending free-market and limited government principles. Instead, he’s actively putting socialism into action. And worse, he’s doing it alongside the sort of kleptocracy that’s typically associated with the Soviet Union. Pretty sure that no one voted for Trump to convert widespread systemic Washington establishment corruption into a family and friends startup.

So what’s left to defend for the GOP candidates who condone or ignore all this — except one’s own behind, and at the cost of lying to voters about glaringly objective reality?

Trump decided to make one of his midterm messages the need to protect America from socialism. But then he went ahead and outdid any socialist in recent memory by making it so stupid that it doesn’t even benefit the wrong people.

At least when leftists do socialism you know the cash is going to a class of people — whether it’s a leftist activist class and/or the dependent class. But Trump’s brand of socialism is so idiotic that it’s not even clear who gains — if anyone at all. Except maybe his cronies.

When New Yorkers elected avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor, they knew that he’d be doing class warfare, but that at least he’d be tossing some juicy bones to those who support his worldview. And that those folks wouldn't amount to five people.

Even the dumbest socialist that I’ve seen in France — one of the most objectively socialist nations on the planet with eye-watering levels of public taxation and spending — is at least smart enough to use enough of it to keep people complacent so they don’t revolt ... except to ask for even more.

Instead, Trump just seems to be running a largely self-serving racket.

What else do you call taxing Americans to the tune of a couple hundred billion a year on imports, then having to toss taxpayer cash around like a game show host to avoid a midterm electoral rout of your own party? One New Jersey food importer, Gellert Global Group, projects importing around $80 million in Canadian cheese over the coming year, and is suing Team Trump over what it says could amount to a $40 million annual tariff bill.

Trump himself announced an $8 billion “harvest relief” program to address this glaring problem earlier this month, with payments expected after the midterms. Which comes not just as a result of the tariffs, but also by launching a new war in Iran for his pro-Israel donors. But how much is this per farmer? Sure doesn’t seem like much.

Then he made a big show of getting Russian President Vladimir Putin to send over a token shipment of roughly 40,000 metric tons of diesel, downloading the optics problem of whether to deal in sanctioned Russian fuel onto American companies.

It’s not even clear whether the juice would be worth the squeeze since we’re talking about a drop in the bucket when it comes to the quantity of fuel that represents on the global market.

I mean, it’s a great tactic for breaking the ice on the taboo of dealing with Russia to end the war in Ukraine. But Trump’s family and pals egregiously using everything from war to diplomacy as a pretext to cash in means that it’s impossible not to wonder whether the impetus behind the move is a PR favor for Putin in exchange for another deal on the down-low. Particularly since no one in this administration has bothered to do the math on exactly how much this diesel will actually lower the price — either inside America or anywhere else. Yet we're apparently supposed to trust that Trump's "head math" game is solid as he keeps forgetting that he's already bragged repeatedly about passing dementia tests.

He’s had the federal government buy up ownership stakes in private companies — a "feature" of the Soviet economic system — including a 10 percent stake in Intel. Meanwhile, the administration has welcomed the expansion of media ownership under one of his own donors. Monuments to his own greatness — a ballroom, mockups of European landmarks like France’s Arc de Triomphe, and an attempt to shoehorn himself onto the front of the Kennedy Center with JFK — are reminiscent of the Lenin-era personality cult aesthetic.

Why would anyone vote Republican — particularly actual right-wingers — when they’ve done nothing with their majority in service of the constitutional checks on executive power when that power is serving socialist interests? Maybe the actual socialists will do better. Particularly since the bar isn’t very high.