So during this weekend, the national-level leadership of the Republican Party censured the Congresscritters who called trump out for his January 6th insurrection - Liz Cheney, Republican Or Not? - and also decided that the rioting mob that smashed their way into Capitol Hill were, and I quote, "A Legitimate Political Discourse."
About as brazen a lie as anything trump himself could cook up. Then again, the GOP have gone all in to defend the indefensible since 2016...
Lemme refer to Vixen at Strangely Blogged for some observations:
The phrase "legitimate political discourse" sounds, in the phrasing of the Republican party, like a new and not-improved version of "the Aristocrats": there are a lot of ways to tell that joke, but the point of it is its filthiness. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been censured by the gutless old party for bothering to look into a national security incident affecting the seat of our democracy, but the party chooses to see them as persecuting "ordinary citizens"...
Who stuffed their brains with the nonsense of German servers, Venezuelan voting machines, Chinese thermostats, and Italian satellites? And how are the people who perpetuated that level of absurd fraud, and a White House that not only tolerated but encouraged it, not anything but illegitimate? This isn't legitimate discourse, but weaponized bullshit. It was dangerous agitprop designed to produce a chaotic and violent result on the ground, and a disruption to the country's leadership at the top, and Ms. McDaniel wants to argue semantics?
The interest of justice lies in the pursuit of truth with neither fear nor favor, and the oath to the Constitution deserves no less fervor...
But this is where the Republican Party HAS been for years now, well since before 2015 when I declared it dead and void of principle, well before trump became its standard bearer, its guarantor of crassness, and the wingnut's golden calf. OF COURSE the Republican Party leadership would rebuke even a conservative stalwart like Liz Cheney, all because she dared to point out that rallying to trump is a bad idea.
Whatever conservative principles Cheney may think she's defending, those principles are meaningless to the Republican leadership's utter obsession with winning at ALL costs even if it alienates them further with more Americans. Because those leaders genuinely think they still have enough of a voting base to eke them through, and that they're successfully rigging future elections to favor only themselves.
We're at the point the Republicans - as a Minority Party in all but name - are getting to where they're kicking to the curb every other American who could actually give them hope to stay in power anyway.
If David A Graham at The Atlantic (paywalled) is right about any of this:
Once upon a time, not so long ago, the Republican Party prided itself on being a big-tent party. This didn’t mean that anything went—generally, members were expected to adhere to a philosophy of free markets and small government—but the party tolerated the left-leaning Nelson Rockefeller as well as the rock-ribbed Barry Goldwater, the conservative Ronald Reagan and the moderate Arlen Specter. The GOP no longer has many coherent policy goals, mixing free traders and tariff fanatics, entitlement-cutters with populists. The single unifying requirement is paying fealty to Donald Trump. Pretty much anyone willing to do that is welcome. This resolution is a demonstration of that fealty...
The RNC is trying to be cute here, winking at the insurrectionists without actually endorsing the violent assault on the Capitol. Trump allies have been working on this quickstep for months, downplaying the violence without explicitly accepting it, while supporting other parts of the attempt to overturn the election. The censure appears to have been written so that everyone could read into it what they wanted; McDaniel’s amendment is evidence this worked all too well...
One might say that these contortions to pacify Trump are really just attempts to respond to the desires of Republican voters, but this defense is flawed. First, pandering to voters who wanted to overturn a legitimate election (and coddling their false claims that the election was stolen) is an abdication of citizenship and leadership.
Second, if Trump service is intended as voter service, it’s at least a second-order effect; the participants seem most concerned about what the former president will do. Trump is still the favorite for the GOP nomination in 2024, but there are signs that voters are a bit weary of Trump. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in last year’s Virginia gubernatorial race showed that a candidate can win while keeping Trump at arm’s reach. Some recent polls have even found that fewer than half of Republican voters—including many Trump fans—want to see him run again in 2024...
Thing is, nobody can rile up that fervent, violent base of the Republican Party like trump can. He may seem weak now, but that's only because he doesn't have the primary rallies and the constant media attention that nets him. If he's still out and about by 2024, smashing his way through every state primary like he did in 2016, all of the nightmares and threats he represents are coming back with him.
The Republican leadership still doesn't seem to understand just how dangerous this all is: Not just to Democrats and to Americans outside of their power circle, but to Republicans themselves. They're debasing themselves into lesser creatures, unthinking and unfeeling and unable to take care of the simple basic things that keeps us a civilized society.
Yet the GOP will lie to us, lie to themselves about how they are in control, oh yes they are please believe us, of their own party ranks and their own party standard bearers and their own violent angry voting base.
I said it before and saying it again: This is not going to end well.
1 comment:
We told them it was a bad idea to build the monster in the first place, and now that it is shambling about eating their brains they aren't any more receptive to our entreaties than any garden variety junkie is to the entreaties of their family, friends, and that nice social worker lady.
And yes, I said "eating their brains" (though how such a monster keeps from starving on such meager fare is a mystery); we are needlessly up to nine hundred thousand dead in this country from a disease we have had a vaccine for for over a year, these aren't harmless word games they are playing.
And still Fergus tells them his lies. And still they believe him, though perhaps believe isn't the operative term, still they act on the bad information he dispenses.
This is why it is a good thing that the US government is such a boring and cumbersome device: requiring that the truth be arrived at before mundane decisions are made at least ensures that the concept of truth still exists and is somewhat functional, addressing the root of the informational malfunction we see menacing the continued existence of our democracy.
The flip side, though, is that responding to such an insurrection by one of the two governing parties is painfully slow, and that party might be able to win back the power it needs to quash the response before it can hold them to account.
Merrick Garland has a chunk of the future, as well as history balanced on his shoulders right now, and I can only wish him the best in his attempt to reckon with it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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