So far, it looks like 2024 is going to be about whether we allow Donald Trump back into our home to sit as our father at the head of our national table.
The Democrats will have no trouble uniting around their reasons to say No.
But Republicans are torn. Even the ones who want to say Yes want to say Yes mainly to keep the Mommy Party from dominating the household.
While it’s not really clear what Republicans are for these days, it is abundantly clear that the Democrats are owned and operated by various cliques of victimology, neediness, and claims of injustice as weapons dripping with guilt rather than as tools for reconciliation.
A key indicator of Republican confusion for 2024 is that — though we supposedly reject snowflakes — our front-runner is quite expert, even genius, at holding himself out as beleaguered by various victimizers.
Extreme narcissists never think they do anything to merit criticism; criticism itself is victimization. If you have any doubt that Donald Trump is America’s Narcissistic Father writ large, this article in Psychology Today might help you see and feel how he has manipulated you to do his bidding, thinking of himself above you and everybody and everything else.
Dad was self-centered and pretty vain. He had an inflated sense of self-importance that led him to believe he was superior and entitled to only the best.
Dad used people for his own good. He would take advantage of others, to the point of exploiting them when it suited him. Everybody seemed to cater to him, or at least he expected them to.
Dad was charismatic. Everyone wanted to be around him and he relished admiration from others. He loved being in the spotlight and the positive reinforcement that came from being the center of attention.
No one had an imagination like Dad. Grandiosity is alluring, and so were his fantasies of success, prestige, and brilliance. He would often exaggerate his achievements, and his ambitions and goals bordered on unrealistic.
Dad didn’t take criticism well. Nothing stung him like criticism; he often cut those people out of his life or tried to hurt them.
Dad’s rage was truly scary. Some people get mad and yell a lot. Dad could hurt you with his anger. It cut to the bone.
Dad could be aloof and unsympathetic. Narcissists often have a hard time experiencing empathy; they often disregard and invalidate how others feel. Of course, he was exquisitely sensitive to what he felt.
— Psychology Today, March 13, 2013
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are two Republicans who have demonstrated clearly that they have had quite enough of our estranged, out-of-control, narcissistic father. As often happens to whistleblowers, that have temporarily, at least, been ostracized by their siblings.
As a pair, as a team, as a unit, Cheney and Kinzinger are the perfect model for how parenting should be done. They have shown how the best principles of the Daddy Party can work constructively — for the benefit of the whole family — with the best of the Mommy Party.
When Liz Cheney formally announces that her loss in Wyoming was only the necessary first electoral step in permanently unelecting Donald Trump, she should announce Adam Kinzinger as her running mate at the same time. She can make the point to her party that her ticket has been solidly, consistently conservative and that its conservatism takes a backseat to nothing other than existential threats to the Constitution. Who, she can ask, are the RINOs? And who are the rogues running amok?
With her dual announcement, she can assure persuadable Democrats and others that there will be no compromise candidate for vice-president, that there will be no room, no office, in her White House for Trump apologists or other seeds of dysfunction. Thus, she begins the rebuilding of trust, confidence and amity with the other party and wins the votes of people who value character and integrity over policy positions and pronouncements that cannot, in any event, be guaranteed by any campaigning politician.
Republicans can be the Daddy many in the electorate felt strongly in 2016 they needed, the one for which they longed when Donald Trump manipulated their feeling that Mommy was being cruel.
Cheney/Kinzinger, as a team of one mind on the timeless, classical issues of American governance, can proclaim “Daddy’s home.” And the first thing they will say to Mom is “We have a problem. We need to talk.”