The GOP: Not What It Used to Be

[GreyhoundFan]

Not that I think the Squad members are toxic, bizarro, or shit heels...

[GreyhoundFan]

MoscowMitch, Lindsey, Marjorie, and the whole orange klan need to be on the first flight out.

[WiseGirl]

 

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

 

It’s much too late in the game for the Republicans to save the party anymore. This sickness started decades ago, when the decision was made to embrace the angry white male voters by playing into racism and misogyny and pandering to the rich. They gerrymandered, suppressed votes and succumbed to corruption and blackmail. Values and ideals were only a thin veneer covering their unquenchable thirst for power. The disease became visible and undeniable when they allowed the pus filled boil that is Trump to fester and grow. Their hypocrisy was laid bare and nobody cared because they held the Senate in an iron grip. They allowed the rot to spread unchecked for so long that it’s no longer possible to weed it. The necessary healing process would now need to cut away so much flesh that the patient can’t possibly survive.

I think the party realizes they are in the last stages. They will steadily morph further into a party of kooks and crazy conspiracy theory adherents, that will lose more and more voters and members as they sink deeper and deeper into the Qanon quagmire. And they will burn down the country as long as nobody holds them to account. 

[Howl]

Yesterday Kevin McCarthy et al. had a meeting w/ Majorie Taylor Greene to get her to please, FOR GOD's SAKE, CHILL THE FUCK OUT, and she apologized, sort of, but also kind of  told everybody to fuck off, so now the Republicans are going to make Democrats strip her of committee assignments because Repubs do actually support a conspiracy wing nut white nationalist anti semite. 

 Today Kevin McCarthy, who is widely considered to be struggling because he's in way over his head as House Minority leader, pretends that he doesn't know how to pronounce QAnon, because, aw shucks, he just doesn't know that much about it.  

It's exactly like the current Progressive insurance commercials with Dr. Rick who coaches new homeowners to not be like their parents --  in particular the scene where everyone is trying, and failing, to pronounce "quinoa".  

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

You don't say... "The GOP is not a normal party"

Quote

The few intellectually honest Republican officials recognize that the party is nothing more than a cult. Facing sanction from his state party for having the temerity to acknowledge reality and denounce racist insurrectionists, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) responded in a video, “Let’s be clear about why this is happening. It’s because I still believe, as you used to, that politics isn’t about the weird worship of one guy.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) replied to her censure by her state party, “I think people all across Wyoming understand and recognize that our most important duty is to the Constitution. And as I’ve explained — and will continue to explain — to supporters all across the state and voters all across the state, the oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment.” She highlighted the insane views of her fellow party members. “They believe that BLM and antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. It’s just simply not the case. It’s not true,” she said. “And we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do. People have been lied to.”

The problem, of course, is that the party at large — elected members of Congress, state officials and a large portion of the base — believe or at least feign belief in the crackpottery of the former president, the QAnon congresswoman from Georgia (Marjorie Taylor Greene) and the conspiracies promulgated by cynical right-wing media moguls. Frankly, the ones feigning belief are the most reprehensible, because they willingly manipulate the base and undermine democracy for personal fame and power. (On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) correctly analyzed that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “stands for nothing except the perpetuation of his own position. He has no values, and in my view cares about little except for hoping to be speaker one day. God forbid.”)

In what universe can the Republican Party recover some semblance of normalcy? Nearly 150 House Republicans voted to overturn the election results; 199 refused to strip Greene of her committee seats. All but 10 voted against impeachment to hold the former president accountable for insurrection. (And in case you thought Senate Republicans were any saner, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi declared he is “not conceding that President Trump incited an insurrection.” He might check with Cheney and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — and the tens of millions of Americans who witnessed the events of Jan. 6.)

As if to confirm the looniness of his party, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a prime spreader of Russian disinformation during the first impeachment, now leverages conspiracy theories against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “We now know that 45 Republican senators believe it’s unconstitutional. Is this another diversionary operation? Is this meant to deflect away from potentially what the speaker knew and when she knew it? I don’t know, but I’m suspicious.” This is hogwash, but sadly par for the course for Johnson.

CNN’s John Harwood shared the reactions of some political scientists who see what too many in the media and political establishment refuse to acknowledge:

“The broad picture of the Republican Party is really ugly,” says Jack Pitney, a former national GOP official who now teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College in California. “A hot mess of nuts and cowards.”

Larry Sabato, the nonpartisan director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, has concluded after events of the past three months that America's two-party system now has one normally functioning entity and another that appears "insane."

“The Republican Party is unsalvageable as a center-right party,” says Sabato. “You can’t treat the situation as normal.”

We therefore need to readjust how we evaluate politics. It is not a failure of “bipartisanship” when President Biden cannot get support for his covid-19 package from the “hot mess of nuts and cowards”; it is to be expected. It would not be vindication of the former president if he is acquitted in the Senate. It would evidence of the cowardice of the Wickers and the rank dishonesty of Johnson and their peers. The conduct of the GOP suggests we follow a few simple rules going forward when considering policy debates and political events.

First, Republicans’ process arguments are invariably false. The law and the precedent for convicting a president impeached while in office is clear. Those voting to acquit simply cannot bring themselves to condemn him for instigating a violent insurrection.

Second, it behooves the mainstream media to point out that Republicans have no policy positions. As such they are not conducting themselves as a legitimate party in the battle of ideas. They spend their time whining about “censorship” (from the floor of the House and on the largest cable news outlet). It is noteworthy that other than 10 Republican senators, congressional Republicans have no proposals for attacking the covid-19 pandemic, reviving the economy or anything that would alleviate Americans’ immediate or long-term hardships.

Third, the individual and corporate donors, news outlets, think tanks and other political organizations that continue to treat the GOP as a normal political party are contributing to the erosion of our democracy and the elevation of authoritarian-minded racists and conspiracy-mongers. They too should be held accountable. Consumers, stockholders, legitimate scholars, real media and ordinary individuals should withdraw support from and recognition of the enablers. The twin powers of the purse and of public shunning are useful tools in knocking down the pillars that support a decrepit party.

Finally, there are normal Republicans — aside from the rump group in Congress. There are many mayors, governors and statewide officials (e.g., secretaries of state). When we want to know “what Republicans think,” we should go to them if we want an honest, fact-based response. Some of them (e.g., Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan) have made clear, for example, that federal covid aid is badly needed. Republican Govs. Phil Scott of Vermont and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts supported the first impeachment of Trump. In addition, Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey “suggested Rep. Mo Brooks deserved a primary challenger for his role in riling up President Donald Trump’s supporters Wednesday before they barged into the Capitol Building,” the Daily Mail reported. If there is to be a sane alternative party to the Democrats, it will be made up of such figures. We should follow their actions and rhetoric, if we want to know what a normal center-right party would act like.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I couldn't agree more.

[GreyhoundFan]

Liar and coward. Yeah, that is a good description of Lindsey:

 

[fraurosena]

Sorry Texans, but this is what the GOP really thinks of you.

[47of74]

Bob Dole has announced he has stage 4 lung cancer

Quote

Former Kansas senator and Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole announced on Thursday that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

"My first treatment will begin on Monday. While I certainly have some hurdles ahead, I also know that I join millions of Americans who face significant health challenges of their own," the 97-year-old Dole said in a statement.

One of the last decent Republicans left. 

[Audrey2]

No! He's one of the good ones. I didn't agree with his politics, but there is no question in my mind that he loves the US.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A few years ago, the Washington Post published this article about Dole. It's a good read. "Bob Dole’s final mission"

Quote

Each Saturday, before Bob Dole sets off on his latest vocation, he has cornflakes, a little sugar on top, and a bottle of chocolate Boost.

It takes less time to get dressed now that the 94-year-old finally allows a nurse to help him, but it remains a rough half-hour on a body racked by injury and age. The blue oxford has to be maneuvered over the dead right arm and the shoulder that was blown away on an Italian hillside. The pressed khakis over the scarred thigh. A pair of North Face running shoes, the likes of which his artillery-blasted hands have been unable to tie since 1945.

Then comes the hard part — getting there. On this particular June Saturday, the Lincoln Town Car with the Kansas plates is unavailable, so Nathanial Lohn, the former Army medic who serves as Dole’s nurse, helps the nonagenarian into Lohn’s Honda Insight. It’s tight, but good enough for the 20-minute drive to a monument the former senator all but built himself.

There, from a handicapped parking spot, he eases into the wheelchair as the greetings begin — “Oh my gosh, Bob Dole!”— finally rolling into his place in the shade just outside the main entrance to the National World War II Memorial.

And then they come, bus after bus, wheelchair after wheelchair, battalions of his bent brothers, stooped with years but steeped in pride, veterans coming to see their country’s monument to their sacrifice and to be welcomed by of one of their country’s icons.

“Good to see you. Where you from?” Dole says, over and over, as they roll close, sometimes one on each side. New York, Tennessee, Nevada, the old roll-call once again. “Let’s get a picture.” “Thank you for your service.” “What about your service?” “How old are you?” “I’m 90.” “I’m 94.” “Where you from?” “Good to see you.”

He’ll do it for more than three hours on this muggy day, more than six hours on others, staying until the last veteran has gone on by to see the grand columns and fountains behind him. They pump his left hand — the one with some numb feeling left — and squeeze his shoulders, and sometimes he gets home not just tired but gently battered by humanity and humidity alike.

“Physically, it takes a toll,” Lohn says, watching his charge from a few feet away with a waiting bottle of water. “I may find five new bruises on him tonight. But he won’t miss it.”

Dole has been coming for years — weather and his health permitting — to greet these groups of aging veterans, brought at no cost from throughout the country by the nonprofit Honor Flight Network. As the many missions of a mission-driven life have faded into history — combat hero, champion for the disabled, Senate majority leader, 1996 Republican presidential candidate — this final calling has remained, down to just Saturdays, sometimes derailed by the doctors, but still a duty to be fulfilled.

“It’s just about the one public service left that I’m doing,” he says. “We don’t have many of the World War II vets left. It’s important to me.”

But it’s important for him, too. He seems to get more energized with each encounter, frail in his chair but his still-bright eyes locking in on the next old tail gunner or rifleman or supply corps clerk trundling toward him.

“I tell them it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what war you served in, whether you were wounded or not wounded,” Dole says. “We’re all in this together.”

He has watched the proportion of World War II veterans fall over the years, from half the bus to just a few per group, the sun setting on the generation that saved the world. “I just met a fellow who was 103 years old,” he says. “Sometimes I’m the kid.”

Maybe it keeps him young, these Saturdays in the shade of history and heroism. Lohn thinks they do, with this year a vast improvement over 2017, when serious health problems kept Dole grounded for months. Dole’s wife, former senator Elizabeth Dole, says her husband is wired to serve.

She joins him frequently on the Saturday outings, helping to direct the receiving line, sharing the tears, doubling the number of Senator Doles in the pictures and stories visitors take home.

“It’s great, all these tremendous men and women,” she says. “Bob has a goal. He wants to make a positive difference in one person’s life every day.”

One Saturday this month, it was Willis Castille, who walked into a Navy recruiting station when he was 15 and spent six years at Saipan, Iwo Jima and other Pacific hot spots. A lot of years in steel mills and auto factories have passed since, and the 90-year-old wasn’t so sure he was up to a one-day flying visit just to see some fountains. (“Hate airplanes. Would rather come by ship.”)

At his home in Indian Mound, Tenn., he keeps an article about Bob Dole, detailing how the Kansan was struck by a shell while aiding a radioman in Italy’s Po Valley. He earned the Bronze Star for valor and was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries that hospitalized him for 2½ years. Sitting in a wheelchair just outside the memorial, Castille found a story more moving than any marble wall.

“He made this worthwhile,” Castille said after his chat with Dole, the senator’s injured hand resting on Castille’s arm while they talked of age and life and the Navy. “The only person I’d rather meet is [Fleet Adm.] Chester Nimitz. But he’s dead.”

Some give Dole military “challenge coins,” which Lohn puts in his backpack to be stored — or displayed — in the Watergate apartment where the Doles have lived for more than 40 years. Mostly they just swap niceties. “I’m 95. I’ve got you beat,” one says, before his escort leans down to correct him. “Oh, I’m 94. We’re both 94.”

“Let’s get a picture,” Dole says.

“I voted for you,” say more than one. A Korean War vet from Nevada asks Dole his opinion of that state’s Republican senator, Dean Heller.

“I think he’s all right” is all Dole will say, still the laconic Midwesterner and practiced pol.

He prefers to leave the politics outside this shrine to national unity, where “E Pluribus Unum” is carved in a nearby wall. But one tourist asks about President Trump, whom Dole endorsed when he clinched the Republican nomination. “What about all the tweeting?” she asks.

“I thought tweeting was for birds,” Dole says. “But he loves it, and he’s not going to quit.”

Even two hours in, Dole perks up at the passing of any dog or a pretty woman, asking their names (the dogs), leaning up for a peck on the cheek (the women).

“Oh, you want a kiss,” cries Lisa Velez, a middle school teacher escorting a student group from San Clemente, Calif. “Oh, another one? You’re delightful. Thank you, Senator!”

He says he has more fun when his wife doesn’t come with him.

“That’s okay,” Elizabeth Dole says. “When I’m there, I’m hugging and kissing all the men coming through.”

These outings are the highlight of his week, she says. They make it to brunch many Sundays, the Hay-Adams or the Palm. During the week, while she’s busy with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, which supports military caregivers, he may go into his office at Alston & Bird, an international law firm, for a few hours. Until recently, he was raising money for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, just as he led the campaign that raised more than $170 million for the World War II Memorial, which opened in 2004.

But if his dialing-for-dollar days are largely over, his duty post at the grand marble pond he had built on the Mall endures.

“I sort of have a proprietary interest in the place,” says retired 2nd Lt. Dole of the 10th Mountain Division. “It’s another opportunity to say thank you.”

 

[Black Aliss]

On 2/12/2021 at 6:15 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Liar and coward. Yeah, that is a good description of Lindsey:

 

Wow. The years have not been kind to Miz. Lindsey, have they?

On 2/17/2021 at 11:20 AM, fraurosena said:

Sorry Texans, but this is what the GOP really thinks of you.

Keeping in mind that his constituents elected him, this should not come as a surprise to them. 

[JordynDarby5]

Sorry to hear about Bob Dole's cancer. That stinks.

[Becky]

10 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

A few years ago, the Washington Post published this article about Dole. It's a good read. "Bob Dole’s final mission"

 

Thank you for posting this - made my eyes leak again!  A public servant, still.  Whether you agree with his politics or not, it's hard not to think of Senator Dole as a good man, and a righteous man.  Many current government "leaders" could learn a thing or two from his example. I am sorry for  his diagnosis and I hope he does not suffer.  

[Audrey2]

I own his book, Bob Dole: One Soldier's Story. I thought it was a really good read and I plan to reread it.

whatever time he has left, after all he is 97 and he has been diagnosed with lung cancer, I am so glad that Joe Biden is president and when Bob Dole passes will recognize him in the way he should be recognized. At minimum, he did serve in world war II and gave up the use of his right arm for his country. That is something I respect.

I should also add my grandpa served in world war II and I have read many books about world war II and have a tremendous respect for all of those young men who grew up in the hardship of the depression and answered their country's call when they were called to serve. in my opinion that was a war we absolutely had to fight and a war we absolutely had to win.

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

17 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

I own his book, Bob Dole: One Soldier's Story. I thought it was a really good read and I plan to reread it.

whatever time he has left, after all he is 97 and he has been diagnosed with lung cancer, I am so glad that Joe Biden is president and when Bob Dole passes will recognize him in the way he should be recognized. At minimum, he did serve in world war II and gave up the use of his right arm for his country. That is something I respect.

I should also add my grandpa served in world war II and I have read many books about world war II and have a tremendous respect for all of those young men who grew up in the hardship of the depression and answered their country's call when they were called to serve. in my opinion that was a war we absolutely had to fight and a war we absolutely had to win.

 

On behalf of my late father who was a Marine in WW2 - thank you.

(I was a late in life baby and he died when I was a young adult.  I didn't understand the extent of his bravery and sacrifice until he was gone.)

[fraurosena]

The GOP is still perpetuating the big lie... and the need for voter suppression, of course.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s grip on the GOP just tightened. Here’s what that means for Democrats."

Quote

When Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference next weekend, his message will go a lot deeper than simply reinforcing the message that the GOP is still Trump’s party.

According to sources who spoke to Axios, the former president will communicate that he is still fully “in charge” of the GOP and is the “presumptive 2024 nominee” if he deigns to run. But it will also be that he will endorse primary challengers to anti-Trump heretics — meaning Republicans who hope for political futures must maintain absolute loyalty to him.

This ongoing development calls forth obligations from Democrats. First, they need to communicate effectively with the public about what a malignancy on democracy the GOP is becoming amid this worsening radicalization.

Second, this recognition gives rise to another one — that broadly speaking, the GOP simply will not function anytime soon as a participant in our democracy when it comes to addressing large public problems. That means Democrats have to go as big as possible on policy in their first two years, on their own if necessary.

After all, the GOP may well seize control of the House in 2022 — largely due to its escalating reliance on counter-majoritarian tactics — which would grind President Biden’s agenda to a halt in the face of those problems.

In an interview, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, hinted at an understanding along these lines.

“Dangerous elements are controlling the Republican Party,” Maloney told me. “They’ve got their hands around its neck right now.”

Maloney cited the GOP’s broad support for Trump’s refusal to accept the seriousness of coronavirus and for his effort to overturn the election, and its refusal to punish QAnon-sympathetic Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) despite endorsing political violence against Democrats.

The GOP, said Maloney, has “become a danger to our democracy and our public health.”

Trump’s grip really is tightening

There is ample reason to believe Trump’s tightened grip on the GOP is working, at least in some ways.

Trump advisers say he will support primary challengers to elected Republicans who have “crossed him,” as Axios reports. One Trump adviser said: “Trump effectively is the Republican Party."

Many Republican officials are plainly in thrall to this notion. They are widely censuring the Republican lawmakers who have “attacked” Trump by voting to hold him accountable for trying to incite the violent overthrow of U.S. democracy.

In short, loyalty to Trump means Republicans must pledge absolute fealty to his evolving mythology. The 2020 election was a monstrous injustice perpetrated on Trump (it was stolen from him), and whatever efforts he undertook to overturn the results were uniformly peaceful (he had nothing to do with the violent insurrection) and an absolutely legitimate effort to right that wrong.

As Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer points out, GOP voters are far more in thrall to Trump’s mythos than to anything elected party leaders tell them. This will make it hard to evolve the party past Trump without fracturing it.

Indeed, an extraordinary new USA Today poll underscores the point. Fully half of Trump voters say the GOP should become more loyal to Trump, even as more than 9 out of 10 say Trump didn’t incite an insurrection, and 73 percent say Biden didn’t legitimately get elected.

And this is having forward-looking consequences. As Amy Gardner reports, Republicans are implementing new voting restrictions across the country. Critically, they are casting these measures as necessary to restore confidence in elections, because so many people believe it was stolen from Trump:

Proponents say the actions are necessary because large numbers of voters believe Trump’s false assertions that President Biden won the 2020 election through widespread fraud.

In short, the big lie that the election was stolen from Trump — and the fact that a lot of Republican voters believe this — is becoming the fake justification for more voter suppression and a redoubled commitment to winning future elections with counter-majoritarian tactics.

All this underscores the stakes of the next two years. Republicans are openly boasting that they will use extreme gerrymanders to recapture the House in 2020, and some experts believe they can do this even if Democrats win the national popular vote.

Losing the House to an increasingly radicalizing GOP would go a long way toward crippling the country’s ability to respond to large public problems.

The stakes are incredibly high

This intensifies pressure on Democrats to hold the House, of course, which in turn requires a reckoning with why Democrats lost a dozen House seats in 2020 even as they won the White House and Senate.

When I asked DCCC chair Maloney how the party will learn from 2020, he promised a “deep” analysis into those losses, “to understand what lessons there are both in terms of where we can do better, but also what worked so well in places like Georgia.”

Maloney noted that this analysis will look at what went wrong with outreach in Latino communities — where Trump and Republicans gained ground — and how to improve communications on digital and social media.

But this state of affairs will also require communicating with the public about what today’s Trump-controlled GOP has become — with a particular emphasis on how its descent renders it incapable of handling big pressing problems facing the country.

“They are divided and under siege from their dangerous elements,” Maloney told me. “If that’s where they continue to take themselves, then I believe they will separate themselves from the voters they need to win.”

“Swing voters in swing districts,” Maloney said, will “not follow the Republican Party to crazytown.”

 

[47of74]

Young Pharaoh got his ass dis-invited from CPAC

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From Joe Scarborough: "No amount of disaster can shake the GOP loose from Trump"

Quote

Five years ago, Donald Trump seized control of the Republican Party by attacking conservative icons, insulting former GOP presidents and disregarding Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment that warned against criticizing other party members. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham told me at the time that Trump was like a hijacker taking control of an airplane while the passengers cheered him on.

Now that flying machine is disintegrating in the air, much like the United Airlines flight that scattered engine parts across Colorado this past weekend. Fortunately, that passenger plane landed safely. I suspect there will be no happy ending for the party of Trump.

The damage inflicted on Republicans since 2016 cannot be overstated. Even before his disastrous handling of the pandemic, Trump’s impulsiveness, ignorance, racist screeds and gratuitous personal attacks offended enough suburban Republicans and swing voters nationwide to cause disastrous election results for the party in the 2018 midterms. In 2018 and 2019, Democrats won gubernatorial races in the bright-red states of Kansas, Louisiana and Kentucky.

Trump’s subsequent loss of the White House in 2020 was made worse for Republicans by his manic promotion of numerous conspiracy theories, all pointing to widespread voter fraud as the cause for Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s lawyers then spent the next two months having those conspiracy theories tossed out by more than 60 courts, many of those controlled by Trump-appointed judges. And still the failed president pushes the Big Lie, hoping to undermine more Americans’ faith in democracy while keeping his cult-like followers in a constant state of delusion.

It has proved to be all too easy for Trump.

Seventy-three percent of Trump voters surveyed by Suffolk University/USA Today believe Biden was not legitimately elected president. Fifty-eight percent blame antifa for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, despite law enforcement officials saying left-wing agitators had nothing to do with the attack. Even House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) found himself shouting at Trump during a phone call after the president blamed antifa for the riots. According to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call, McCarthy barked, “Who the [expletive] do you think you’re talking to?” The GOP House leader reportedly asked Trump to order his rioters to stand down. The then-commander in chief, however, failed to do so, causing the attacks to continue for hours before the president of the United States finally told the rioters to leave the Capitol.

That Republicans ever saw Donald Trump as their ticket to a governing majority is damning enough. The fact that 76 percent of Trump supporters would vote for him again in 2024, according to the Suffolk/USA Today poll — even after he lost the White House and surrendered Congress to Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — proves again how destructive their obsession is with this political loser.

They now spend their days doing little more than seeking out political sinners. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and others face censure by party officials for criticizing the demagogue who inspired the Jan. 6 attacks. Even as the party tumbles ever closer to Earth, GOP apparatchiks race up and down the aisles hunting for heretics instead of finding someone on board who can actually land their plane.

Democrats love the madness of it all. They know it was Trump who made it possible for Pelosi to become speaker of the House yet again. They know it was Trump’s idiocy during the Georgia runoffs that made Schumer the Senate majority leader and put Bernie Sanders in charge of the Senate Budget Committee. It was Trump who offended enough suburban voters to elect Democrats to both Senate seats in Arizona and Georgia, and allowed Senate Democrats to begin filling federal court vacancies with liberals.

Because of Trump, Democrats own all the levers of power in Washington. After years of legislative gridlock, Biden’s party can pass whatever it wants, should it choose to unilaterally to do away with the legislative filibuster. And unlike Trump, Biden will not be content to govern by meaningless gesture or mean tweet. Instead, expect the new administration to put vaccines into the arms of millions of Americans, pass the most expansive relief package in U.S. history and reverse Trump’s most damaging policies. Biden will do it all while benefiting politically from the stark contrast between his presidency and that of his unhinged predecessor.

As Biden’s approval rating rises toward the upper 50s, Trump’s Republican Party plummets ever closer to catastrophe. And yet, even as their plane disintegrates, Trump’s passengers keep celebrating every wrong move, every wrong turn and every pilot error that will seal their party’s fate.

As Sen. Lindsey O. Graham said at the start of this long, disastrous trip, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.” The South Carolina Republican was right back then. The only question now is why Graham and so many of his fellow passengers continue to cheer on their hapless hijacker.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is the damned truth:

[GreyhoundFan]

So very true:

[GreyhoundFan]

"great legacy?" My eyes hurt from rolling them so hard.