Scaramucci Succumbs to the Lure of the Media Sirens

When MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski go on vacation, it looks like they have another power couple waiting in the wings to guest host: Anthony and Deidre Scaramucci. Most people remember Scaramucci as the short-lived White House Communications Director who lasted only ten days on the job. In spite of his prompt dismissal from the Trump administration, Scaramucci, for the most part, remained a loyal supporter of President Trump; even writing a book painting him in a favorable light called The Blue Collar President.

Scaramucci’s wife, Deidre, on the other hand, does not share the same level enthusiasm for the Trump administration. While the two had well-publicized marital troubles, they have reconciled and have hosted a podcast, “Mooch and the Mrs.,” for about a year. The premise of the show revolved around the fact that Scaramucci supported the President while his wife did not.

All of a sudden, Mrs. Scaramucci’s liberalism appears to have rubbed off on her husband, the same way Brzezinski’s liberalism appears to have rubbed off on Scarborough; who once represented the most conservative Congressional district in Florida as a Republican. To think that Hillary Clinton actually thought that men told their wives how to vote. In the case of the Scarboroughs and the Scaramuccis, it looks like the wives might tell their husbands how to vote, or at the very least, how to think.

Believe it or not, Scaramucci has always agreed with liberals on some issues. A Daily Beast profile on Scaramucci written when he served as “Mitt’s Wall Street matchmaker,” noted that “The Mooch” described himself as “socially progressive” and “pro-choice.” Considering the fact that he probably shares those characteristics with his liberal wife, Scaramucci only needed a little bit of coaxing to ditch the Republicans altogether.

It looks like Scaramucci has gone full circle, from supporting President Obama in 2008 to supporting Mitt Romney and President Trump to opposing President Trump now. For the record, many great conservatives supported President Obama in 2008, such as Stacey Dash. I don’t hold evolution against people. Scaramucci’s comments over the past week prove that maybe he has not evolved that much after all.

Scaramucci complained about President Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the four progressive Congresswomen known as “the Squad.” In addition, he took issue with President Trump mentioning his crowd sizes during his previous visit to El Paso as he visited victims of the mass shooting earlier this month. While Scaramucci has a right to take umbrage with the President’s behavior from time to time, does it really make sense to abandon the thesis of The Blue Collar President just because of the way President Trump talks and acts?

As a resident of Long Island, Scaramucci’s deflection from the Trump train will not hurt the President’s ability to capture the 270 electoral votes needed to gain re-election. Anybody who thinks President Trump has a shot at winning the state of New York in 2020 needs to put down the pot brownies.  Depending on which district Scaramucci lives in, his decision to refrain from supporting Trump could hurt Republicans’ chances to hold onto the House of Representatives. Conventional wisdom would say that based on Scaramucci’s comments, he would likely support the Democratic candidate in the House race as well as the Presidential race. Two of the four Long Island Congressional districts have Republican representatives while the other two have Democratic representatives. Neither party’s presidential candidate exceeded 55 percent of the vote in all four districts. However, Scaramucci has indicated that despite his newfound contempt for President Trump, he might not abandon the Republican Party altogether.

During a recent appearance on CNN, Scaramucci suggested that Republicans need to replace President Trump at the top of the ticket if they want to win the 2020 Presidential election. So far, President Trump only has one primary challenger: former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who ran as the Libertarian Party’s Vice Presidential nominee in 2016. As a “pro-choice, pro-amnesty, ‘Libertarian for Life’ who backed Barack Obama in 2008,” Weld has absolutely no shot at winning the Republican primary.  Two other potential primary challengers have yet to announce whether or not they want to launch longshot bids to unseat an incumbent President with extremely high approval ratings in his own party: former Congressman Mark Sanford and former Congressman Joe Walsh. Both men fit into the category of “deficit hawks” More on Walsh a little bit later.

A few months ago, I wrote an article identifying the different types of anti-Trump conservatives. For the most part, Scaramucci appears to fit into the “style over substance” crowd; although if Scaramucci really wants to convince President Trump to change his behavior, he has definitely declined to lead by example so far. When reacting to the President’s mockery of one of his supporters whom he mistook for a protester at his New Hampshire rally who had a “serious weight problem,” Scaramucci referred to President Trump as “the fattest President since William Howard Taft.” Say what you want about Never-Trumper John Kasich; at least he practices what he preaches when it comes to civility, tone, and politeness.

While Scaramucci’s departure from the Trump train definitely illustrates the effect the lure of media approval has on some Republicans, it also illustrates Republican Presidents’ awful history when it comes to personnel. President Trump has made quite a few lackluster personnel appointments who have either stabbed him in the back after leaving their respective posts (Rex Tillerson, Omarosa, Anthony Scaramucci) or prevented him from implementing his Make America Great Again agenda (any one of his previous or current Homeland Security secretaries.) For example, Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan actually apologized for enforcing the law by conducting raids of food processing plants in Mississippi relying on illegal immigrant labor; citing the “unfortunate” timing. The raids took place less than a week after the tragic mass shooting in El Paso, where the deranged shooter posted a manifesto highlighting a disdain for Hispanics. McAleenan apparently believes that the left would have not have pushed back so hard on the raids at any other time. Give me a break.

President Trump should definitely have realized the impact of personnel on policy. After all, previous Republican Presidents have also made personnel appointments that they should regret even if they don’t.  One of President George W. Bush’s press secretaries, Scott McClellan, ended up stabbing his former boss in the back after leaving office while one of the members of his Communications team, Nicolle Wallace, has spent her retirement from the Bush administration spewing bile on TV that ought to make the mild-mannered 43^rd President of the United States throw up; most recently by suggesting that President Trump wants to exterminate Latinos.

In addition to failures when it comes to Executive Branch appointments, previous Republican Presidents have appointed duds to the judicial branch. Dwight Eisenhower reportedly declared that he made two mistakes during his presidency and both of them ended up on the Supreme Court. Richard Nixon only made one stupendous Supreme Court appointment out of four while Ronald Reagan made one and a half out of three.  Reagan elevated solid originalist and one of the two justices who dissented in Roe v. Wade, William Rehnquist, to the position of Chief Justice while replacing him with the legendary Antonin Scalia. Reagan’s other two appointments to the High Court, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, had mixed records at best. President George H.W. Bush appointed disappointment David Souter and smashing success story Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court while his son appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Sam Alito.  Three decades earlier, Gerald Ford appointed John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court, who wrote an op-ed advocating for the abolition of the Second Amendment. Republicans’ failures when it comes to personnel over the decades can ultimately explain why the country became such a mess in the first place. For the most part, President Trump appears to have outdone his Republican predecessors when it comes to appointing strong conservatives to the judicial branch.

While President Trump has made some mistakes, specifically when it comes to personnel and spending (although Congress deserves most of the blame on that issue), his mistakes do not warrant a primary challenger or the non-stop 24/7 rancor from #NeverTrump “Republican” talking heads that dominate cable news.  Yet, some people disagree with me.  I have talked enough about William Weld and Mark Sanford but I have yet to weigh in on former Congressman Joe Walsh.

Walsh represented Illinois’s 8^th Congressional District for one term following the Tea Party wave of 2010.  He lost re-election in 2012 after deciding to run again in the 8^th district even after it became much more Democratic as a result of redistricting, which forced Walsh’s house into the 14^th District. Walsh initially supported the election of President Trump but has emerged as a prominent Trump critic. Not surprisingly, Walsh took his anti-Trump anger to The New York Times, which relishes in all things anti-Trump. In his op-ed, titled “Trump Needs a Primary Challenge,” he called President Trump a “racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base and advance his electoral prospects.” Perhaps Walsh thinks that trashing President Trump will get him into the good graces of the media, who would surely have labelled Walsh a member of “the basket of deplorables” at any other time in American history.  Walsh serves as another example of a Republican whose obsession with “style over substance” causes him to forget the profound choice America faces in 2020. The idea that Walsh, Sanford, or especially Weld could successfully oust President Trump in a primary has no basis in reality. These people apparently fail to realize that this obsession over “style over substance” as well as the fixation on removing President Trump in a Republican primary distracts from what every American to the right of Karl Marx ought to focus on: making sure that none of the socialist Democrats win the 2020 Presidential Election.

Like Scaramucci, Walsh’s deflection from the Trump train will have little impact on President Trump’s performance in the Electoral College; since President Trump has no shot of carrying Illinois. However, the results of the House race in Illinois’s 14^th Congressional District, where Walsh currently lives, will likely have a substantial impact on which party controls the House of Representatives following the 2020 election. President Trump won the district with a narrow plurality in 2016 and Democrats seized the district from Republicans in 2018. It remains a mystery as to whether or not Walsh will still support the Republican House candidate in spite of his newfound animus for President Trump. At the very least, Walsh has set himself up as a candidate to serve as a fill-in host on “Morning Joe.” If Scarborough decided to abandon morning TV altogether, Walsh could replace him without requiring the show change its name.

In addition to securing the border and stopping the admission of immigrants predisposed to vote Democratic, the survival of the Republican Party depends on its members resisting the lure of the sirens in the mainstream media; which promises favorable treatment to any so-called conservative willing to disown their previous lives and positions and join #TheResistance. A party scared of its own shadow that consistently appoints wimps to important positions in the Federal government will not survive for very long.