The Crazification Factor

The Crazification Factor is the famous estimation of just how low the floor is for a conservative politician.  The answer is 27% approval.  It's almost physically impossible to get lower than that.  If you want to know who makes up the 27%, here is a good example.  There simply is no amount of evidence that can dissuade these folks.  The "Good Loyal Republican" will eventually turn on some of their politicians as not being "true conservatives" and abandon them, as many did Dubya in his last years.  As Digby once wrote: Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.  Trump will be a great manifestation of this, as he was once a registered Democrat.  He will govern as a "bog-standard Republican" but when his shitty policies, narcissistic personality disorder and toxic combativeness drives this country into a ditch, we will all be regaled with how many in the GOP never wanted Trump to be President in the first place.

Why do I bring this up?

Because Trump is already circling down to the 27% threshold before he's even taken the oath of office.  He's the singular most unpopular person to ever lay his hand on the Bible and take the oath.

Why is he so low?

Consider what we have seen over the past three months.  Trump has staffed his Cabinet with the Super Rich, after promising his voters to "drain the swamp."  Everyone who wasn't a fucking fool knows he was lying, but his supporters believed him and many are now disappointed.  That goes doubly for those who assumed he was lying about destroying the ACA, or perhaps believed there really was "something better" hidden in his tiny little hands.

Since 1994, the Republican Party has gone dangerously off the rails.  They have rejected - in no particular order - empiricism, diversity, math, physics, compassion, empathy and reason.  They have devoted themselves to an ideology that prizes great wealth over all else, while draping themselves in the flag and thrusting a Bible about.  But George W. Bush was primarily interested in American power.  Even he knew enough to provide seniors with prescription drugs, as long as he could wage his mighty wars.

Since 2008, the GOP quite literally went insane.  They embraced a vision of governance so at odds with American traditions that Norm Ornstein of the rightist American Enterprise Institute called them "ideological insurgents."  The list is too long to catalog, but a sampling would have to include nearly defaulting on the debt, walking away from a 10-1 tax cuts to spending compromise and quashing Merrick Garland's nomination.

Now these nihilists have the reins of power and an idiot, narcissistic manchild at the helm.  The introduction of the Betsy DeVoses of the world has shown the limits of ideology against the real world, yet she will be confirmed and commence to fuck everything up.  Rex Tillerson will lift sanctions - which are working - on Russia.  We have an ongoing investigation of Russia's involvement in the election which will be killed - Saturday Night Massacre style - by Orange Julius Caesar.

That's why he's at 37%.  And if it turns out we can find real evidence of Russia's involvement in his campaign - looking at you Paul Manafort - then he will slip further.

But never below 27%.

Ben Franklin was famously asked about what the Constitutional Convention had created.

"Doctor Franklin, do we have a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic, if you can keep it."

We have work to do.