At last week’s press conference, Governor Nice Guy spent much of the time wearing his Frowny Phil mask. Lots of unpleasant subjects: The still unsettled emergency housing program, all the veto overrides, plus Auditor Doug Hoffer’s scathing report on his pet administrative project, the Agency of Digital Services, which gave him the opportunity to unfurl an obviously scripted and vigorous defense of ADS. (Outgoing ADS Secretary Shawn Nailor was in on the presser for no reason at all, just in case some reporter asked about the agency. When the question did arise, Scott and Nailor just couldn’t stop trumpeting the former’s vision and the latter’s execution.)

On top of all that, he had the opportunity to wallow in his profound political isolation. Not a lot of fun for a politician with an approval rating of, what was it, 163 percent or something?

Gov. Scott was clueless about how we’ve arrived at the point where an historically popular leader is on the short end of historically lopsided legislative supermajorities, and had no idea what he might be able to do about it. Plus he made it clear that his divorce from the Vermont Republican Party is complete and irrevocable.

Really, the governor gave up on his party back in 2017 after his handpicked choice for state party chair, the very experienced and highly qualified Mike Donohue, was edged out by the very Trumpy Deb Billado. But has he ever stated so clearly that he and the party are kaput?

Scott bemoaned the lack of “balance” in Montpelier, which is a drum the VTGOP has been beating nonstop since forever and it’s never made a dent in the minds of the electorate. A reporter then asked, “What are you doing to reach out to more Republican candidates, to get more Republicans in office?”

Even before the question was completed, Scott was frowning and shaking his head. “it doesn’t have to be Republicans,” he said. “I just want more legislators with common sense, more centrists, moderates, that understand how to balance a checkbook.”

That last bit was another of his passive-aggressive digs at legislative Democrats, who presumably don’t know how to balance a checkbook? But the main point is, well, the governor isn’t going to lift a finger to try to influence the workings of the Vermont Republican Party.

He’s got a point. The party hierarchy is dominated by the MAGA crowd, and several of the county or town committees are packed full of QAnon types. It’d be a Herculean task to shift the party back to its fiscally conservative roots. But Scott is the only one with a hope in Hell of doing it. And it’s the only way for him to dig out of his political isolation. Win back at least a few more legislative seats and the Democrats will pull in their horns, just as they did from 2017 through 2022.

Instead, he’s making a vague appeal for a cohort of centrists to rise up and somehow grab a slice of the pie. But he can’t expect moderate Democrats to upset incumbents in party primaries where, if anything, the electorate leans leftward. And while independent candidates will win a seat here or there, the deck is stacked against the unaffiliated. Successful indies are often the result of unique factors in a district. Despite the [checks notes] 326% approval rating his perceived independence has earned him, there is no broader trend toward unaffiliated centrism, and even Phil Scott can’t build a movement that way.

In fact, he can’t build a movement of any kind unless he understands the dynamics of our political situation. In the presser, he made it clear he doesn’t.

I don’t know if [voters] went in and said, ‘We ought to have a Republican governor and we need all these legislators who are left of center to come in and make sure that we get what we need in the end.’ I don’t think they did that. I think they know their legislators or they think they know their legislators and they think that they’re forwarding their ideas and keeping their pocketbooks in mind, you know, when they’re voting on different measures. but they also know me.

Insight is lacking in that analysis. As is coherence.

And so he beats on, boat against the current. He’s incredibly popular, and incredibly isolated. He doesn’t understand why things are the way they are. He doesn’t know what to do about it, and even if he did, he’s never shown any taste for the task of movement-building.

He’s pinning his hopes on a 2024 turnaround, but that’s a Presidential election year with Donald Trump or a Trump wannabe likely to top his party’s ticket and a bunch of Trumpers populating the VTGOP ballot. It’s not going to get better for him. It’s going to stay the same or maybe even get worse. And there’s not a damn thing him and his 498% approval rating can do about it.