The GOP: Not What It Used to Be

[clueliss]

Major League Baseball pulled the All Star Game from Atlanta over voting rights.

 

[AmazonGrace]

This is off topic for this thread because Mike Huckabee used to be a racist and he is still a racist.

 

[47of74]

Because they think Pepsi will support their racist horseshit. 

Quote

Some Republicans lawmakers in Georgia sent a letter Saturday to Kevin Perry, president of the Georgia Beverage Association, demanding that all Coca-Cola products be removed from their office suites "immediately"—after the corporation came out against sweeping GOP-backed legislation that reformed the state's elections.

In their letter to Perry, eight members of the Georgia House Representatives—Victor Anderson, Clint Crowe, Matt Barton, Jason Ridley, Lauren McDonald III, Stan Gunter, Dewayne Hill and Marcus Wiedower—complained about Coca-Cola giving in to "cancel culture" before saying that they no longer wanted the company's products in their offices.

 

[smittykins]

“Cancel culture bad—unless WE do it.”

[fraurosena]

You'd think that with the news about Trump's donation scam using a hidden pre-checked box would deter others from doing the same. Not so with the GOP. Of course they're copying the tactic! With the caveat that the check box isn't hidden -- but does include an overt threat that you'll be reported to Trump himself for being a radical leftist defector if you uncheck it. 

There really is no low they won't go.

 

[WiseGirl]

Wow I'm shocked it didn't work. */sarcasm.

 

[Becky]

22 hours ago, fraurosena said:

You'd think that with the news about Trump's donation scam using a hidden pre-checked box would deter others from doing the same. Not so with the GOP. Of course they're copying the tactic! With the caveat that the check box isn't hidden -- but does include an overt threat that you'll be reported to Trump himself for being a radical leftist defector if you uncheck it. 

There really is no low they won't go.

 

Is that for real?  What amazing chutzpah - PT Barnum couldn't have designed it any better.  There really is a sucker born every minute.  

[hoipolloi]

Meanwhile, in Alabama, the Secretary of State, John Merrill, admits to an affair and says he won't run for the Senate seat of retiring R, Shelby, after all.

Who is John Merrill, you ask?

• Republican? ✅
• White evangelical Christian? ✅
• Bonus ✅  -- he's a Deacon at Calvary Baptist Church

• Quote

  • He is a Deacon at Calvary Baptist Church, where he has served as a Sunday School teacher and a member of the Sanctuary Choir....

• Racist? ✅
• Anti-LGBTQ? ✅

The amazing Freddie Mercury said it all: another one bites the dust!

 

[WiseGirl]

The commenter who said guns, virus, it doesn't matter to Repugs has a point.

 

[Howl]

On 4/9/2021 at 1:49 AM, hoipolloi said:

Alabama, the Secretary of State, John Merrill, admits to an affair 

Holy schmoly, this is salacious and not the first time he's been caught being naughty.  

Quote

"In 2015, Merrill was involved a separate scandal after a woman alleged that she performed oral sex on him in 2010." 

He claims he didn't inhale that she only fondled him. 

But moving right along, from al.com: 

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill admits affair, won’t run for U.S. Senate: ‘There’s no excuse’

Quote

"Merrill denied having had an affair and accused Cesaire McPherson of “stalking” and “harassing” him.  McPherson declined to answer questions on the record Wednesday, instead providing a recording and a short statement.  

I'm confused.  This recording was made last Oct, he seemed to finally break things off for good the next month, Nov. 2020. They began trysting in 2017, 3 yrs is a substantial amount of time.  So who leaked news of the affair 5 months later? Did she?   Did she release the recording for revenge? The recording was a detailed when, what and where.  Why make the recording in the first place unless you have plans to strategically deploy it? Was there some possibility of extortion involved? I'm not quite clear on the dynamic here. 

Quote

McPherson provided Al.com with a recording of an October 2020 conversation between her and Merrill, who is a Republican. In the 17-minute recording, Merrill and McPherson discuss various sexual acts they performed during dozens of romantic encounters that McPherson says took place between November 2017 and November 2020. During the conversation, Merrill seems to try to end his relationship with McPherson, who was reluctant to break off the affair. He told her they had met for the last time and that he was seeking help from the Lord to stay away from her.

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting op-ed: "The G.O.P. Is Getting Even Worse"

Quote

Those of us who had hoped America would calm down when we no longer had Donald Trump spewing poison from the Oval Office have been sadly disabused. There are increasing signs that the Trumpian base is radicalizing. My Republican friends report vicious divisions in their churches and families. Republican politicians who don’t toe the Trump line are speaking of death threats and menacing verbal attacks.

It’s as if the Trump base felt some security when their man was at the top, and that’s now gone. Maybe Trump was the restraining force.

What’s happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swathes of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.

The first important survey data to understand this moment is the one pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson discussed with my colleague Ezra Klein. When asked in late January if politics is more about “enacting good public policy” or “ensuring the survival of the country as we know it,” 51 percent of Trump Republicans said survival; only 19 percent said policy.

The level of Republican pessimism is off the charts. A February Economist-YouGov poll asked Americans which statement is closest to their view: “It’s a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated” or “Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves.”

Over 75 percent of Biden voters chose “a big, beautiful world.” Two-thirds of Trump voters chose “our lives are threatened.”

This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality.

“The decent know that they must become ruthless. They must become the stuff of nightmares,” Jack Kerwick writes in the Trumpian magazine American Greatness. “The good man must spare not a moment to train, in both body and mind, to become the monster that he may need to become in order to slay the monsters that prey upon the vulnerable.”

With this view, the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a shocking descent into lawlessness but practice for the war ahead. A week after the siege, nearly a quarter of Republicans polled said violence can be acceptable to achieve political goals. William Saletan of Slate recently rounded up the evidence showing how many Republican politicians are now cheering the Jan. 6 crowd, voting against resolutions condemning them.

Liberal democracy is based on a level of optimism, faith and a sense of security. It’s based on confidence in the humanistic project: that through conversation and encounter, we can deeply know each other across differences; that most people are seeking the good with different opinions about how to get there; that society is not a zero-sum war, but a conversation and a negotiation.

As Leon Wieseltier writes in the magazine Liberties, James Madison was an optimist and a pessimist at the same time, a realist and an idealist. Philosophic liberals — whether on the right side of the political spectrum or the left — understand people have selfish interests, but believe in democracy and open conversation because they have confidence in the capacities of people to define their own lives, to care for people unlike themselves, to keep society progressing.

With their deep pessimism, the hyperpopulist wing of the G.O.P. seems to be crashing through the floor of philosophic liberalism into an abyss of authoritarian impulsiveness. Many of these folks are no longer even operating in the political realm. The G.O.P. response to the Biden agenda has been anemic because the base doesn’t care about mere legislation, just their own cultural standing.

Over the last decade or so, as illiberalism, cancel culture and all the rest have arisen within the universities and elite institutions on the left, dozens of publications and organizations have sprung up. They have drawn a sharp line between progressives who believe in liberal free speech norms, and those who don’t.

There are new and transformed magazines and movements like American Purpose, Persuasion, Counterweight, Arc Digital, Tablet and Liberties that point out the excesses of the social justice movement and distinguish between those who think speech is a mutual exploration to seek truth and those who think speech is a structure of domination to perpetuate systems of privilege.

This is exactly the line-drawing that now confronts the right, which faces a more radical threat. Republicans and conservatives who believe in the liberal project need to organize and draw a bright line between themselves and the illiberals on their own side. This is no longer just about Trump the man, it’s about how you are going to look at reality — as the muddle its always been, or as an apocalyptic hellscape. It’s about how you pursue change — through the conversation and compromise of politics, or through intimidations of macho display.

I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.

 

[fraurosena]

There really is no low they won’t go.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Native Americans are nothing:

 

[Xan]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Native Americans are nothing:

 

I loathe Santorum.  The people who came over and stole the land from indigenous tribes tried their best to wipe out Native American culture.  We shouldn't be proud of that fact.  Until we come to terms with the reality of our history, we have no hope of understanding where we've been and where we're going.

[47of74]

13 hours ago, Xan said:

I loathe Santorum. 

Same here. I also loathe Samscrotum. He’s a creepy little fuck stick.  I was so glad when he got the boot out of the Senate. 

In other news, a conservative group has released a report card on various GOP politicians. 

Quote

An anti-Trump conservative group is launching an effort to track and evaluate whether Republicans in Congress, in the group's view, have acted to either undermine or uphold democracy and democratic values and what role, if any, they played in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Republican Accountability Project has created what it's calling a "GOP Democracy Report Card," which assigns grades to Republican members of Congress ranging from an "A," which the group describes as excellent, to an "F," which it describes as very poor. The details of the report card were first shared with CNN ahead of its release on Monday.

The group behind the effort, the Republican Accountability Project, is led by Republicans and conservatives who were outspoken in their opposition against former President Donald Trump's reelection, including former Trump administration officials Olivia Troye and Elizabeth Neumann. The group operates as part of the advocacy organization Defending Democracy Together founded by prominent Trump critic Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell, a longtime conservative and Republican consultant. 

Only 14 Republicans in Congress received an "A," the highest possible grade. In contrast, more than 100 Republicans received an "F," the lowest possible grade.

Here’s the site.  Not surprising to see all the Fs, like Gym Jordan or Gaetz.  Lowest grade in Iowa was a D which Feenstra (R-Vichy Iowa) earned.    

[Howl]

I read the saddest twitter thread yesterday. It noted that there is a generation of Americans who have never experienced politicians working together across the aisle for the greater good.  They have only witnessed rancor and and increasingly divisive politics.  The Trump years have exposed and promoted  some god-awful stuff and now it's going off the damn rails.

I came across a reference to a woman in Delaware who ran for a US Senate seat in Delaware, primaried her fairly normal Republican opponent, and happily the people of Delaware elected a Democratic.  She makes Marjorie Failure Greene (Q-GA) and Lauren Boebert seem pretty damn normal.  Besides QAnon, she's a flat earther and mega conspiracy nut. 

Actually, things aren't getting worse in one sense: people came together to vote Trump out of office.  Biden has his highest approval in "young people" but I'm not certain how this demographic is defined -- those under 26? College age? Not sure, but it's very, very good news going forward. 

 

[47of74]

5 hours ago, Howl said:

I read the saddest twitter thread yesterday. It noted that there is a generation of Americans who have never experienced politicians working together across the aisle for the greater good.  They have only witnessed rancor and and increasingly divisive politics.  The Trump years have exposed and promoted  some god-awful stuff and now it's going off the damn rails.

I came across a reference to a woman in Delaware who ran for a US Senate seat in Delaware, primaried her fairly normal Republican opponent, and happily the people of Delaware elected a Democratic.  She makes Marjorie Failure Greene (Q-GA) and Lauren Boebert seem pretty damn normal.  Besides QAnon, she's a flat earther and mega conspiracy nut. 

Actually, things aren't getting worse in one sense: people came together to vote Trump out of office.  Biden has his highest approval in "young people" but I'm not certain how this demographic is defined -- those under 26? College age? Not sure, but it's very, very good news going forward. 

 

There was still some semblance of it back in the 80s but even by then it was starting to slip away.  I'm old enough to remember when Louisiana Republicans endorsed a Democrat for office - either Governor or Senator - because David Duke had the Republican nomination.  Back then they rather would have had a Democrat in that seat than a Klansman.  Hell if Duke ran today the Republicans would be just fine and give him their full throated support.  Probably have fuck knob out campaigning for him too since he and Duke share a base.  Then in the 90s that's when it really started going to shit with guys like Newt, Shrub, Cheney, et al. getting into positions of power.  Which is when a lot of adults were born.  So that's all they grew up with.

If the woman in Delaware ran in Iowa - especially Vichy Iowa (former Rep. Steve King land) she probably would have won hands down.  That's how far down the tubes Iowa has gone.

 

[Cartmann99]

6 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Here’s the site.  Not surprising to see all the Fs, like Gym Jordan or Gaetz.  Lowest grade in Iowa was a D which Feenstra (R-Vichy Iowa) earned.    

The newest clown that represents me:

[Cartmann99]

The full article can be found here.

Quote

But in truth, I’m not really avoiding the vaccine due to potential medical complications, or because of the speed with which it was produced. 

Personal liberty is not the reason I’m avoiding it, either. I’m not a member of the “don’t tread on me” club. Though I don’t think mandated “vaccine passports” are a brilliant idea, my refusal to take the vaccine is not related to some perceived or real government overreach. I’m not here to take a principled stand against the federal or state governments on this issue. In fact, I’m saving my principled stands against the federal or state governments for issues that really matter, like strengthening libel laws so that lying journalists can finally be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where they belong.   

My primary reason for refusing the vaccine is much simpler: I dislike the people who want me to take it, and it makes them mad when they hear about my refusal. That, in turn, makes me happy. 

Maybe it’s petty, but the thought of the worst people on planet earth, those whom I like to call the Branch Covidians, literally shaking as I stroll into Target vaccine-free, makes me smile. 

The author:

Quote

Peter D'Abrosca is a conservative campaign strategist, author, and columnist. A proud law school dropout, he is not a decorated member of the fancy credentialed class, and that's just the way he prefers it. He considers himself a political outsider who seeks to give a voice to the long-forgotten American working class.

 

[Becky]

50 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

The full article can be found here.

The author:

 

Oh brother. Grandma used to refer to such thinking as “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.”  

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

The full article can be found here.

The author:

 

Well I can see no way that that can possibly backfire on him, so that's good.

As for his bio, talk about grow the hell up petal.

[47of74]

The GQP doesn't like Romney anymore

Quote

Sen. Mitt Romney was lustily booed by the more than 2,100 Republican delegates who packed into the Maverik Center on Saturday for the party’s state convention.

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” said Romney trying to deflect the chorus of catcalls that greeted him as he took the stage.

“I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues,” said Romney as delegates attempted to shout him down. Accusations that Romney was a “traitor” or “communist” flew from the crowd like so many poison darts.

The cacophony of disapproval only ended after outgoing party chair Derek Brown scolded delegates to “show respect” for Romney.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

On 5/2/2021 at 11:38 AM, 47of74 said:

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” said Romney

Members of the GQP are incapable of feeling embarrassed.

[47of74]

50 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Members of the GQP are incapable of feeling embarrassed.

All the ones that could got chased out of the GQP years ago. 

[Cartmann99]

Wasn't sure where to put this...