Do people like McConnel and Lindsay Graham actually want to take a literal bullet for him?
I don't know. I don't think McConnell and Graham know, at least not exactly.
Trump's done the one thing that modern America can't handle. He's introduced ambiguity into their perfectly balanced game.
Politicians, especially people like McConnell who have been in the game for 60 some odd years now, have a huge amount of their personal identity in the idea that they have perfected "the game."
The Republicans know what the Democrats are going to do, the Democrats know what the Republicans are going to do, the Republicans know that the Democrats know what they going to do, the Democrats know that the Republicans know what they are going to do. The Democrats know that the Republicans know that they know what they are going to.... and so forth and so on up to infinity and down to the Planck.
They had all gotten so ******* comfortable in politics being this shadow theater wizards duel where both sides knew the other side so well that the only motion that was possible where just minor ebbs and flows in the margins that they have absolutely no idea, not even like the most basic intellectual structure built up to have an idea, of how to deal with someone like Trump.
Trump is the political Guns of August, that moment when you think you know the battlefield so well you screw yourself over hard by being so goddamn cocksure of yourself that you think you can put plans into motion 10 steps out because you know the enemy as well as you know yourself.
McConnell is right now in a place a twat donkey like McConnell can't stand being, not in a place to read the room. If Trump wins like a traditional politician, he just keeps his nose completely up Trump's hind end and reaps the rewards, no problem. If Trump loses McConnell probably has as many Golden Parachutes as Elton John has fancy sunglasses, again no problem. As Joker said nobody panics because "It's all part of the plan."
But not knowing if the Troll In Chief is going to declare war on the Ottoman Empire or nominate his horse to the Praetorian Guard depending on what the voices in his head tell him over his breakfast in the morning, being forced to deal with the same level of insane unpredictability the rest of us have been having to deal with is probably driving him insane, which I have no problem with and welcome other than the fact that means we can't predict what McConnell, who let us not forget has massive political power until Jan of next year at the earliest, is going to do either.
McConnell, Graham, the rest of the Republicans are (at best when they aren't just being willing collaborators and enablers) scared cornered animals with nothing to lose.
