No, we'll see a replacement who's more of a far-right radical.

*LOL* You have outdone yourself, sir. :)

CW: On today's topic:

As the information bubbles around the Dems and GOP have hardened of late into force fields, I've been making a sincere effort to spend some time every day over in the Fox News info sphere.

Today I caught a remarkable statement by Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the RNC: "President Trump is a mainstream Republican." She went on to cite a short list of current GOP agenda items that Trump is 'for', including tax cuts to prove her point.

Meanwhile, Eric Erickson, in an op-ed on the Foxnews website, claims that Flake was toast anyway in Arizona because his politics were too mainstream: "He went from being a reliable Club for Growth members [sic] to a reliable Mitch McConnell member", Erickson writes, and adds, "I’m sorry Trump humpers, but Steve Bannon did not defeat Jeff Flake in a game of 13 dimensional chess. The truth is Jeff Flake defeated himself." By not adhering strictly enough to the 'Club for Growth' agenda, apparently.

Got that? To reiterate: Trump is 'mainstream', but being mainstream (i.e., 'the McConnell camp') will kill you politically.

Since the game lately over behind the Democrat Deflector Shield has been a round of 'what will bring down Trump, impeachment, or the 25th amendment?', allow me to postulate a third threat to Trump's presidency: Fox News.

Since Roger Ailes left the network, a lot of ink has been wasted speculating about changes that might be made to that 'institution'. One of the things that hasn't changed is the network's assertion that it is the ONLY reliable and trustworthy news source in the world. This was Ailes' innovation, allowing the channel to simultaneously dominate conservative discourse, yet assert that it isn't 'mainstream media', a term FN viewers use regularly as a pejorative. It was, and still is, a pretty good con.

You may recall that Trump had a faux feud with Fox early in the campaign, over questions he received from Megyn Kelly during a Fox News sponsored debate. Kelly had already made her charge of sexual harassment against Ailes, who, shortly after her dismissal, was reported to be advising Trump on media strategy, which strongly suggests that the whole thing was a setup designed to give Ailes an excuse to fire his accuser, without getting into the whole touchy-threaty thing between them.

Anyway, soon thereafter Fox moved decisively into the Trump camp and has continued to serve as his strongest media defender ever since.

But what Fox giveth Fox could taketh away. At the moment, Trump is Fox's most ardent viewers, apparently believing every word spoken on the network, but if he should ever decide that he'd been mistreated (for real) by the network, I sincerely wonder which of the two would prevail.

There is some speculation that Bannon might try to launch a conservative network of his own to compete with Fox. If such a thing were to actually come to pass and prove popular with Trumpers, Fox's first instinct would be to protect its market share and attack. That would surely split Trump's loyalty to the network and open up the possibility of the sort of intra-party war that would make today's GOP rift seem like a furniture scratch.

Well, hope springs eternal.

Trump is mad at Flake. O'Reilly is mad at God.

God has declined to comment. He is taking the high road. For now.

Though, I'm a believer in Trump as symptom rather than cause, which also makes Flake's comments less worthy.

After all, we have a past that includes Wilson fundraising from "You lie" and no GOP leaders condemning him.

We also have the original in Palin. While McCain was telling a constituent that Obama was a good man, she was going places that no one with a chance of being elected before her went. She even threw in some sexual innuendo for good measure (drill, baby, drill).

As I said, symptom, not cause. For going along with it until Trump, Flake is as guilty as the rest (as you so poignantly put forth in this post, CW).

Chris, I think this is spot on.

I can see Trump being provoked to the point where he will react so outrageously as to make his antics up until now seem like nothing and then deciding that his best option is to resign.

Call me a cockeyed optimist but I think this is the second most likely outcome, just behind being charged with obstruction of justice.

Chris, do you think Senator Flake has a long-term strategy in mind? For some reason, I'm thinking he's not at all done with politics and he's thinking ahead to 2020 and maybe even further ahead than that in terms of a new conservative party ...

However, I'd like to say that there is a really good, deep, progressive argument for setting the corporate tax rate at 0% and working on income and the like, instead.

Business taxes need not be part of the base for a truly progressive and pro-US/Econ approach to work really well.