Tread softly with me upon this path of speculation for a moment and consider the following queries.
First off, why does Brandon Bell, chair of the Rhode Island Republican Party (a veritable clown college at this point), actually give a flying fig about what the Democrats do with their endorsements? Isn’t the point of the Republican Party’s entire existence to help make it so people actually don’t have to worry about the internal combustion of the Democrats? Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to be Tweeting about endorsements and primaries in HIS party?
Unless of course Bell had hoped for a while that a Trump-boosting alt-right troll like Mike Earnheart would get the endorsement…
And were that the case, one could reasonably deduce the following:
Let us suppose that, realizing the GOP brand in Rhode Island is as marketable as dog poop, Brandon Bell and a few of his fellow knuckleheads decided to run some of their guys in Democratic primaries against progressive incumbents.
Not only would this be a relatively easy move given the insanely simple party affiliation laws, it would also be a pretty brilliant ground game considering the gubernatorial race. Gina Raimondo has been a complete disaster. Her likely challenger, Allan Fung, just barely lost to her four years ago. In that time he has built his credibility almost in direct proportion to her decline. Many progressives these days are slamming the pavement for Matt Brown precisely because they realize this also.
So what if the hard right tried to position their guys in the General Assembly so they could break ranks during the next session and vote for bills Fung would pass? The Janus decision was predicted a long time ago and people knew that was coming. Four years ago, Fung actually told the AFL-CIO while being vetted for an endorsement that he would be willing to make the state right-to-work.
But now that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has decided to retire, we could very well see Roe v Wade overturned and made into a state issue. Can you envision a Gov. Allan Fung and his well-positioned alt-right DINOs in the General Assembly outlawing abortion? It could be a whole bevvy of hard-right bills that Fung and Earnheart would play legislative table tennis with in the next session.
We may have just witnessed a small coup in the Democratic Party that nearly succeeded.
Now I am forced to hope that Joe Trillo and Gina Raimondo can win the votes to keep us from returning to the Dark Ages. While I find the Italian gremlin Trillo to be vile, he also could play the role that Bob Healey did four years ago, sucking away enough votes from Fung to give Raimondo the victory.
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