After Michael Corleone decided to kill Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey in Louis’ restaurant in the Bronx – in retaliation for the botched assassination attempt on his father, Vito – he asked Clemenza how bad things were going to get in the Mafia war sure to follow.
The great Italian philosopher replied:
“Pretty goddam bad. Probably all the other Families will line up against us. That’s all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one.”
Well, that pretty much describes the civil war among conservatives that’s raging after Dave Flippo killed the GOP’s dominance of Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District by losing a seat that Democrats had never won before.
As a reminder, we’re talking about a district with 70,000 more Republicans than Democrats – and the Flippo campaign, including independent expenditures, is estimated to have spent over $7 million.
To be fair, that includes Flippo’s character assassination campaign in the primary committed against former State Sen. James Settelmeyer
But the war isn’t constrained to CD2.
Flippo’s bid to take over the district was primarily aided and abetted by an out-of-state organization, TPUSA, that’s also being held responsible for similar catastrophic losses in its home territory in Arizona.
So there’s a LOT of bad blood to go around.
The architects of the Flippo Flop were his general consultant, Rory McShane, and his mini-me button man, Woody Johnston.
And the two are spinning like Tasmanian devils trying to deflect, excuse, and blame anyone and anything – especially the national “blue wave” – for this historic and unprecedented Custer-like defeat.
As retiring CD2 Congressman Mark Amodei characterized it, the “deflection Olympics.”
“No one can deny what happened on Election Day,” McShane wrote on X a couple days after the CD2 debacle. “Republicans lost in the worst wave election since 1958.”
“There’s an attempt from people in our party…to try to make this out to be some exception,” McShane told the Nevada Independent, “but it’s not.”
Um, yes, it is. No Democrat has ever won this seat…until now. That’s the very definition of an “exception.”
And the “blue wave” is no excuse. Flippo lost by 19,197 votes districtwide (unofficial figures). But Gov. Joe Lombardo won the same CD2 counties by 22,220. That’s a 41,000+ gap.
The Indy also reports that a post-election poll shows that only 75% of Republicans supported Flippo – normally 92%-plus – and “about 1 in 7 said they had backed Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson.”
“It was a horribly run campaign with a terrible candidate who was a liar and completely incompetent, someone who didn’t know why he was running, and there wasn’t a single day that didn’t go by without a scandal,” a GOP strategist told the Nevada Independent.
“Winning a primary campaign in such a way that it makes the general more likely to be lost isn’t a victory. It’s incompetence,” wrote Republican activist Orrin Johnson on X in responding to McShane’s spin.
“If you actually care about the future of Western civilization, as I do,” he continued, “you will slink away, seek forgiveness, seek understanding for how and why you failed, sincerely apologize, and redouble your efforts as a way to atone for your blind incompetence.”
Ouch.
Indeed, when will Flippo, McShane, and Johnston apologize for what they did to Republicans in CD2?
And when will the Reno “going away” party be held for Flippo before he loads up the U-Haul and hauls arse back to Las Vegas?
But here’s the big question: Why did they wuss out of CD4 in the first place?
Flippo was running for the 4th Congressional District in Clark County for about three years before switching races at the last minute and deciding to “save” CD2 by moving there just weeks before filing.
One thing’s for sure.
Anyone who knows anything about norther Nevada politics knows the voters of CD2 sure as heck didn’t beg Flippo to move into their district.
The disdain northern Nevadans have for Clark County is off the charts. Everybody knows it.
Well… almost everybody.
So what was it? Pure political opportunism?
And who’s brilliant idea was it? Who gave the order?
I’m guessing Flippo will channel Hyman Roth and respond: “I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!”
As for McShane, his big regret, as posted recently on X:
“The worst part of an election cycle is the first day back at the gym in 6 months, realizing how much your bench press has fallen off.”
That pretty much says it all.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“No prediction market gives her (Teresa Benitez Thompson) more than a 28% chance of winning. The Flippo campaign will have plenty of resources to expose Mrs. Benitez-Thompson for the radical socialist she is.” – Rory McShane, Nevada Current, 7/20/26
“She’s (Teresa Benitez Thompson) the perfect Democratic candidate for this seat, right? She’s Latina. She’s a legislator. She’s incredibly well-spoken. She doesn’t come off like a radical. She’s a former beauty queen. I mean, her husband’s the local weatherman. You literally could not pick a better Democratic candidate for this seat.” – Rory McShane, Nevada Independent, 11/8/26
