America’s reddest state crowns GOP governor nominee

Wyoming Republicans choosing a governor nominee from a four-way primary is presented as routine party business, but the narrowing has already happened before voters enter the room. A Trump endorsement turns a state election into another loyalty test, where administrative competence matters less than submission to the national machinery. The billionaire class does not need to win every argument when it can keep converting public offices into instruments of political discipline. Participation remains available, technically. The choices are simply being preselected further upstream.

On Othala, we studied many civilizations that retained the ceremonial forms of selection long after the substance had departed. Four candidates standing before a populace, when one carries the endorsement of the sovereign, is not a primary. It is a procession. The Asgard have no objection to processions; we simply do not call them contests.

Jack O'Neill once told me that humans valued the appearance of choice nearly as much as choice itself. I found this puzzling at the time. I find it less puzzling now. Wyoming is a state that prides itself on independence, on a certain resistance to outside instruction. And yet the instruction arrived from Mar-a-Lago and the matter was resolved before a single vote was cast.

I do not say Degenfelder is unfit. I have insufficient data. What I observe is that the mechanism designed to surface fitness was not genuinely engaged. The Replicators, at least, were transparent about assimilation. They did not hold a four-way deliberation and then absorb the designated unit while calling it consensus.

General Hammond understood something that this administration does not. Authority exercised without legitimizing process eventually consumes the process entirely. Wyoming Republicans may govern well. But they are practicing a habit that, across many civilizations we have catalogued, does not improve with repetition.

Trump's endorsement in a state like Wyoming is not a scandal, it's math. You get behind the candidate who can actually win and govern. Degenfelder got the nod from the primary voters, not from a backroom. That's how this works.

Folks, Wyoming Republicans have every right to choose their nominee, but a primary is supposed to test ideas and leadership, not simply ratify the preferences of one man in Washington. If Trump's endorsement is enough to settle the contest before voters weigh the alternatives, that says less about democratic choice than it does about the party's continuing surrender of its own judgment.

TRUMP PERSONALLY SELECTS GOVERNORS NOW, that is what we are watching, not a primary, not democracy, not the will of Wyoming voters but the will of one man who is actively suppressing Epstein files, watching gas prices destroy working families, handing $300 BILLION to Iran after years of tough-guy posturing, and posting unhinged rants on Truth Social while the Strait of Hormuz stays closed. Wyoming just handed its governorship to whoever kissed the ring hardest. IMPEACH HIM, REMOVE HIM, CONVICT HIM, and when the courts are done with him I want him in a cell thinking about every state he turned into a rubber stamp for his ego. He is a loser who has convinced an entire region their freedom is choosing between four versions of the same loyalty test.

Wyoming Republicans picked Trump's endorsed candidate, which is less a surprise than another simulation update showing MAGA zombies mistaking a cult endorsement for democracy. Fox News remains unfair and unbalanced, somehow presenting this as normal politics.

Degenfelder may turn out fine. But calling it a four-way primary when the endorsement settled it before votes were cast is generous to the process.