Here is the synopsis of the WP story in the Political Wire




To understand the very unusual dynamics of what is happening you have to understand what a nut job Kelli Ward is.

She lost to Martha McSally in the primary to run against Sinema. It was a brutal primary and McSally's accounts were depleted and she narrowly lost to Sinema. One of the issues that came up was Kelli Ward's previous support of conferences to discuss how the government is using chemtrails to poison the population.

One of the reasons that McSally was appointed to the Senate was the belief that if they appointed anyone else then Ward would do another primary challenge and likely win.

How off the rails is Ward? During the primary she booked a ticket to Mara Largo and paid a hefty fee to have a one on one picture with Trump. They made her promise not to use it in campaign literature because they knew she would lose and they were endorsing McSally.

So now that Ward's antics have helped turn two AZ Senate seats blue which provided the coat tails to help AZ go Biden business/institutional/Mormon/regular Republicans banded together to defeat Ward as State Chair of the Party and Trump intervenes and barely, barely drags Ward over the finish line with 51.5%.

He also commits to the idea of a MAGA Party.

McConnell will be discussing this in depth with the Republican Caucus and they will face the realization that the Impeachment trial provides them a one time possibility to remove the man that is out to destroy them.

If Trump is convicted it will be because instead of just shutting up and sitting in silence he had to try and drag the AZ Republican Party into his corner.

The carefully orchestrated drip drip drip of key Republicans indicating that they intend to support impeachment and or removal of Trump reveals that Republicans with a long game are trying to grab the golden ring of today's Presidential GOP Merry Go Round; eliminate Trump permanently from future political office.

If they don't they will have to tolerate and participate in an increasingly delusional game of double down that has already pushed the Republican Party into a high wire act of chicken on a wire that is fully electrified, there is definitely fun in the set up but the finale is not going to end well.

The Democrats are providing a lifeline, one with costs. It will cost the Republican Party a lot in the short run as the Trumpsters will go wild and they will lose some elections but if they do nothing the Trumpsters are going to go wild and lose some elections so this allows a bounce back towards the end of the decade.

So what is it with the leaks, the constant "Donald there is more" drip drip drip "bad news"?

Axios is now reporting that there is a "better than 50% chance that McConnell will vote to convict". So the first thought I had was that they were trying to box in Trump and get him to resign to avoid embarrassment. Under normal circumstances with a normal person that would be a sound strategy but to paraphrase the great Bill Russell "they knew how stubborn Trump is and Trump knew that they knew how stubborn Trump is and they knew that Trump knew that they knew how stubborn Trump is" so they knew that he isn't going to resign (unless he could monetize it somehow).

So Cheney and McConnell, et al, are not trying to box him in, they are close to having the votes but need Trump to add more kerosene to the gasoline and so they appear to be trying to provoke Trump into making a spectacle of himself in such a way that it could push another 6-8 Senators to either vote for conviction or stay home (all that is needed is two thirds of those Present)

They are trying to bait him into a cry baby fit where he complains that none of the Republicans lifted a finger, that he did all of the work and now he was going to give them real pay back, you know the same tired crapola.

Trump has mastered one skill: baiting the media. When there is one outlandish lie discovered or one outstanding failure of competence Trump baits the media with another outrage so that the last one is forgotten. (Who, except the political addicts remember Trump's seditious call to the Georgia Secretary of State?

The thing is that the easiest person to bait is some one who is a "bait-or". Its like the easiest person to close is a salesman, they already buy into the structure of the conversation, you just need to land a hook.

And so it is with Trump. In order to give them just enough critical mass to pass a conviction they just need a little push of stupidity, aggression and narcissistic self delusion to get a couple of Senators to vote for conviction or even "self quarantine" during the conviction vote.

It is likely to work because if it is easy to bait a regular ole bait-or it is that much easier to bait a Master and as everyone knows Trump is a Master-bait-or