As expected, Nikki Haley bent the knee to TFG on Wednesday, pledging her troth to his election and whatever awfulness he intends to inflict on the nation if he’s elected. I suppose she expects her supporters to roll over and vote for TFG now that’s she’s openly saying she was fully on board. They actually appear to be surprised that Haley has now embraced TFG.

Haley was always going to cave. Her fake principled stances (where she took the same positions as TFG) were just her sales pitch:  “I’m as awful on every issue as TFG is, but I fart a lot less”. And her gambit was always going to fail.

See, MAGA loves Angry Dad. Angry Dad hates all the same people they do. Angry Dad is constantly railing about everyone who is ruining ’Merica. Angry Dad knows that those fancy kitchen appliances are meant to mock regular people with their insistence on saving water or electricity. Angry Dad knows it’s your God-given right to pay as much for utilities as possible if you want to.

Sure, Angry Dad sometimes hits you, but it’s OK because he mostly hits the right people. The various male GOP presidential contenders all tried to be Angry Dad, too, but they were all too young to have fully percolated the toxic brew of entitlement, misogyny, resentment, and racism that fuels the true Angry Dad. And that left a lane open for Haley.

Haley knew that Angry Mom was not an option—MAGA already had Angry Moms. And Angry Lady was also out of the picture, naturally. So Haley decided that her best bet was Fascism With A Smile, which MAGA could easily see through, and which led her non-MAGA supporters to believe she was a reasonable person to support. She smiled! She wore high heels! She only yelled at they right people, like Vivek Ramaswamy! Haley was going to usher in a new option for non-MAGA Republicans.

Here’s the thing:  that ship sailed with TGF’s second impeachment. Throughout TFG’s first term you could see Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Shelley Capito reconsidering blind obedience to him. But cowards always cave, and so did they, and any chance of rescuing any part of the GOP from the smoking ashes after TFG burned it down died. Good riddance, too.

Haley finally saw that her only chance to be TFG’s running mate—her goal all along—was to give in. TFG loves bootlickers, and especially bootlickers who once opposed him, and especially if they are women. So you’ve got to think that Haley is at the top of the VP list for the moment. Kristi Noem spent thousands to turn herself into a scary MAGA Beauty, but she never showed any backbone, and the whole “I Shot A Dog (And I Liked It)” mess has only backfired on her.

The title of this post is offered in jest, but it is true that if Haley is going to be TFG’s VP pick, she’s going to need to perform some act of abject cruelty that will horrify decent people. It’s what MAGA has become:  a collection of people who need progressively worse behavior to excite their interest in politics. It’s not a good direction for one of the 2 major US political parties.

I’ll end with the ear worm embedded in this post: