No, I think Conway is more of a mouthpiece than a king maker. The Mercers are the king makers:
The heiress quietly shaping Trump’s operation
Major GOP donor Rebekah Mercer has funded many of the groups and figures helping to assemble Trump's team, and now she's formally part of it.
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
11/21/16 05:15 AM EST
politico.com
excerpt:
Some of the biggest names on the right are jockeying for power in President-elect Donald Trump’s nascent operation, but one of the lowest-profile figures is arguably among those wielding the most clout — a press-shy hedge fund heiress who co-owns a boutique cookie bakery.
Rebekah Mercer, a 42-year-old who homeschools her young children, rarely visits Trump Tower and has a relatively narrow official portfolio in Trump’s transition effort. Her influence comes instead from her close relationships with the people and groups carrying out the day-to-day work of building Trump’s administration and political apparatus, some of whom have been the beneficiaries of millions of dollars of funding from her family.
Mercer’s influence in Trump’s transition effort — detailed here for the first time — calls into question Trump’s campaign trail boasts that his own fortune, which he used to partly fund his campaign, would make him independent from deep-pocketed donors and special interests he railed against on the campaign trail. And the entanglement of connections between Trump’s aides and Mercer’s big-money political operation has prompted complaints from campaign finance watchdog groups, and grumbling from Republican operatives who contend that Mercer has too much control over Trump’s GOP.
“It would be difficult to overstate Rebekah’s influence in Trump world right now,” said one GOP fundraiser who has worked with Mercer and people in the campaign. “She is a force of nature. She is aggressive, and she makes her point known.”
Mercer has a coveted seat on the Trump transition team’s 16-member executive committee. Her work, which she does mostly from home, includes collaborating with conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society — to which she has steered a combined $4.7 million or more — to recruit appointees for positions at the undersecretary level and below, according to a transition team source.
more at the link
None of that is to say that Conway "just" takes orders. Or that she doesn't help to inform what the Mercers think or do. But I think that they have the final say. When they were behind Cruz, she was behind Cruz. And when they switched to Trump, she switched to Trump. They are the people that backed Bannon at Breitbart too, after Andrew Breitbart died and the online publication was going broke. They came in with $10m to save it.
It is all more complicated than you think, Koan. Or, for that matter, than any of us on SI thinks. There will be a lot of insidious things happening with the govt now that a rich tool who can't think is Prez, along with a majority Republican Congress. Some rank and file angry Rs think that "they" won this election. If they are actually people who care about the solvency of the country or they are not part of the top 1% or if they care about the next generation of Americans, they are sadly mistaken. In the ripeness of time, they will be ruing the day that Trump was elected, just as they eventually rued the day that Dubya was elected.
Paraphrasing the saying from the Ancien Regime, "Apres le Trump, le deluge!" |
