Worried about too much systemic rigging and fraud for a Republican ever to win office again? Good news! The riggers themselves are quietly starting to worry it may happen. Deep State Quietly Starting to Fear the Worst: the Return of the Trump Wrecking Ball ATHENA THORNE 9:51 AM ON MAY 21, 2023Puh-lease. the Politico piece :In many ways, the book [After Trump, a volume of proposals designed to protect the nation from future rogue chief executives] was the culmination of a conversation that preoccupied Washington during the Trump years, briefly turning members of the Beltway’s legal-ethics and good-government commentariat into local celebrities: How to shore up a system that depends on the observation of fast-fraying American political norms? Goldsmith and Bauer, with long tenures in and around government, may have produced the highest-profile laundry list, but they were hardly the only ones planning for a new age of political reform. In fact, the premise of the book, and the broader conversation, was that it would be acted on in some future America, either 2021 or 2025, that had definitely turned the page from the 45th president — a country in the mood for a 21st-century update of the post-Watergate reforms that had aimed to Nixon-proof the presidency. That country, though, hasn’t come into being. And now, as polls suggest that “after Trump” may be turning into “between Trump,” almost none of those reform ideas have become reality, either. Which means that, if Trump does retake the presidency, he’ll be returning to an office that differs “minimally, if at all” from the one he occupied during his chaotic term… On a recent university tour, I witnessed a horrifying sight. In a vast, soaring hall, dozens of earnest young students — almost exclusively white women — were performing a poster session. There were endless rows and columns of eager social scientists, each presenting their ideas for social policy initiatives that would better mankind through increased government. I shuddered as a dismaying realization descended on me: these bright, well-meaning young people were future Deep-Staters — the unelected bureaucrats who burrow into our ever-metastasizing federal agencies (and corporations) and create rules that are actually laws in everything but name.Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the heroes see the full scope of the massive pod-proliferation operation:VIDEO A number of reform advocates told me this week that they’d started getting alarmed phone calls from folks whose interest in the state of guardrails had suddenly rebounded after a Washington Post poll suggested Trump really might win (and a Trump CNN town hall demonstrated that he was just as determined as ever to shred political norms). … And there’s no reason to doubt Trump will make the most of that lack of limitations. “If he runs and wins after his performance in office in his first term, and after what it clearly appears that he’s running on, which is a platform meant to include pledges to break norms — he can claim that the American people have approved, that his agenda is to rethink the executive branch, the nature of the presidency and the civil service, the deep state,” Goldsmith told me. “And he’ll have a very good argument, frankly.” Yes, it’s early, and yes, polls are unreliable, but Trump is running ahead of the decrepit shell fronting the Democrats in the RealClearPolitics average and trending in the right direction:Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice? Not gonna happen. 
