Chat with local GOP boss gives food for thought.

Over the five-and-a-half years I spent editing the Weekly, I developed an exquisitely painful knot in my neck. I came to refer to it as “The Cushman Knot,” in honor of Weekly publisher Erik Cushman and his propensity to be a pain in various body parts. But in reality, the knot was caused by a combination of stress, bad posture and hours spent hunched over a keyboard.

When I left full-time employment at the paper in May, the knot vanished.

Then the morning after the Nov. 8 election, it came back with a vengeance.

That Wednesday was going to be a busy day; we were leaving that night for an extended trip and all the organizing, cleaning and packing I meant to do on Election Day had been abandoned in favor of watching CNN and writhing on the couch in existential angst. I was packing and the knot was flaring full bore when my cell phone rang.

And I read the name on caller ID and laughed.

“Paul Bruno, how in the hell are you?” I said. “Calling for a little gloating?”

Bruno is the chief financial officer of Monterey Peninsula Engineering and a bona fide local GOP shotcaller. He’s vice chair of the Monterey County Republican Party and was regional chair of Ted Cruz’s failed campaign. The day after Cruz dropped out, Bruno said he called the Trump campaign and pledged his allegiance, thus trading his fidelity for a minor demon over to Satan himself.

Bruno was calling to gloat a bit, but he also wanted to make sure my husband and I weren’t renouncing our citizenship and moving out of the country.

“You’re good for the tax base,” he reminded me, not for the first time. And when my Trump-era taxes had to be paid, he said I could call and thank him for the break we’ll all be getting.

But then Bruno got serious and said something kind of compelling.

“We’ve made a lot of promises and it’s time to address those promises,” he said. “If we fail to go forward and produce legislation when we have the opportunity, then we have turned our backs on the people who elected us.”

I had a second conversation with Bruno on Nov. 11 to flesh out some of his thoughts. Policy issues aside, how, I asked him, could he support a guy who said as many vile things as President-elect Pussy Grabber did, both during the campaign and the course of his public life?

“I think a lot of things were done that were amplified by the press. He was brave enough to make statements without focus groups and a teleprompter,” Bruno said. “He was on any television show that would have him, compared to Hillary who kept herself in a bubble.”

Bruno commented that Trump had surrounded himself with “solid” people at the top of his team: Jeff Sessions and Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich and Ben Carson, to name a few. (Solid isn’t the word I would use for any of them, but that’s me.) In the days since I spoke to Bruno, Christie and anyone he brought in have been ousted and Carson took a giant step away from Trump. Sessions, whose ascension to a federal judgeship was derailed after reports he called a black server “boy” and who said last week he doesn’t agree that grabbing genitals is sexual assault, is slated to be the next U.S. Attorney General. Gingrich is waiting in the wings, it seems. Mitt Romney as a possible Secretary of State isn’t the worst idea in the world, and there have been plenty of worse ideas (a Muslim registry, for example) to go around since the election.

“Gingrich is gonna be huge,” Bruno said. “And Pence is a great person.”

“Paul,” I responded, “the vice president-elect thinks conversion therapy works on gays.”

“Did I say I agreed with 100 percent of what he believes?” Bruno said. “I tend to look for the best qualities of people and try to forgive them for the things that are less reasonable positions.”

If we are to take a hint from Bruno, there’s a lot of forgiveness that’s going to be necessary in the next four years. But he’s right about this: It’s time for the GOP, which has the House, Senate and now the presidency, to prove they can govern.

Donald Trump scammed his way into office. Nothing anyone can do about that now. Let’s see if he can scam his way through a full term.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for Monterey County Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com.