It’s not hard to find good news for the Democratic Party in last night’s primary election returns, but if anyone is hoping for a return to sanity for the Republican Party the results are not encouraging. Two outcomes in particular will suffice to tell the story.
In South Carolina’s First Congressional District, former governor Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford didn’t even make it to a runoff election, losing outright to Katie Arrington who had blistered him for his criticisms of Donald Trump.
…Sanford continued to take risks by criticizing Trump numerous times despite usually voting with him. The congressman didn’t seem to really care, musing to Politico as far back as February of last year that he was “a dead man walking. If you’ve already been dead, you don’t fear it as much. I’ve been dead politically.”
Sanford kept digging his grave over the ensuing months, opining that Trump had done “some weird stuff” in office (though he was hardly one to talk) and calling Trump’s tariffs “an experiment with stupidity.” All of that suited Arrington just fine: She ran ad after ad arguing that the district needed a pro-Trump loyalist like herself.
Two states north, in Virginia, the Democrats are celebrating Corey Stewart’s successful bid for the Republican Party’s senatorial nomination to take on Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine. If that doesn’t give you PTSD flashbacks to the 2016 election night fiasco, you’re made of stronger stuff than I am.
Kaine was seen as a strong favorite to win another six-year term before it was known that his opponent will be Stewart, but now most analysts are saying that the contest is over. Compared to Kaine, Stewart doesn’t have much money, and his ties to white nationalists, strange infatuation with the Confederacy, extremism on guns and immigration, and overall Trumpian style are supposed to not only doom his campaign but the campaigns of some House candidates who will be sharing the ballot with him. In fact, the Democrats will try use Stewart’s presence as a standard bearer for the GOP in Virginia as an anvil to pull down Republicans all across the country.
For his part, Stewart promises to run a vicious campaign and is already saying that Trump may imprison his opponent along with Hillary Clinton.
At Stewart’s election night party at the Electric Palm Restaurant, overlooking the Occoquan River in Woodbridge, supporters yelled “Corey! Corey!” as the loudspeaker blared “Sweet Home Alabama.”
Stewart was quick to make clear that he plans to run this race in the manner and style of his political hero, down to his hand gestures. “Virginia can choose to continue with the prosperity and the progress of America under President Trump,” he said, “or it can choose the past, with everything we know that has failed — and that’s Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine.”
Which prompted the crowd to erupt in chants of “Lock her up!” Stewart smiled slyly, then replied: “That might just happen, by the way. And Timmy, too. Oh, we’re gonna have a lot of fun between now and November, folks.”
Stewart railed against “criminal illegal aliens,” adding, “by the way, they are animals.” He said that Virginia can choose to let them overrun the state, or “we can arrest them, deport them back to the country they came from and build the wall.” That triggered a familiar response from the crowd: “Build the wall! Build the wall! Build the wall!”
It’s true that Trump did not win in Virginia, and it’s also true that Virginia has not embraced Trump as president and severely chastised the GOP in last year’s state elections. So, analysts have good cause to predict that Kaine will be victorious, but we should have all learned to be careful of what we wish for.
What’s certain is that Sanford’s loss combined with Stewart’s win sends a powerful message to sitting Republicans who are thinking of criticizing the president or holding him to account. Last night’s elections actually strengthened the president’s hold over his party, even if they may have modestly increased the chances that he’ll face at least one Democrat-controlled chamber of Congress next year.
It’s increasingly clear that the only way to save the nation and the Republican Party from Trumpism is to remove Trump from the equation. As long as he sits where he sits, the GOP will continue an inexorable process of remolding itself in his image.
My first instinct is to get in quick with the first tired, obvious, smug cry of ‘they’ve always been like this, he just says the quiet parts loud!’
But while I know this is naive, the truth is I’m still surprised at how utterly, cringingly, self-effacingly supine the Republican Senators are. You don’t get to the Senate without a healthy ego, and a few of them pride themselves (wrongly, but that’s their self-image) on independence and small-c conservatism. Yet there’s barely even a frightened murmur from Susan Collins. Nothing from the ‘foreign policy realists’ when their party gleefully–radically, petulantly–tears down working alliances and strengthens adversaries, and gives a well-lubricated wristy to Russia, of all places!
I’ve never been a big fan of the FBI or North Korea, but to watch the Republicans turn the former into Goldstein and the latter into Teddy Ruxpin is a terrifying marvel.
Fun facts
https://bluevirginia.us/2018/06/so-who-is-corey-stewart-exactly-heres-who-corey-loves-and-who-loves-
him-back-and-hates-and-who-hates-him-back
Booman rites:
Be careful what we wish for.
Indeed.
I heartily agree.
What I personally wish for?
A new DNC.
But I needn’t be “careful” with that wish, any more than someone wishing that they would win the lottery or become immortal should be careful.
Why?
Because on all evidence, it simply isn’t going to happen.
As my old Iirsh garndmother used to say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
Yup.
No perceptible change yet.
Sigh…
AG
Corker is right in observing that the Trumpers are cultish.
For those who believe there is a chance of the Trump base having some kind of intervention where they discover the truth I would only remind of what happened to those who believed that Trump would magically become presidential upon taking office. No, he is worse, just as the Trumpers will become worse.
This is not a drill.
I had a go-round with some Trump supporting relatives last night on Facebook. I posted a link to an article about children being forcibly separated from their parents at our southern border, and I said that somehow I knew in my heart that this was how, for some, America would be made great again, by taking away children from their parents and locking them up. I was told that this “was absolutely not true” and was “nothing more than a liberal talking point”. Also, “President Trump would never allow such a thing. If it was happening he would stop it right away. He would never allow something like this to occur”.
Several friends jumped in to provide links to articles showing that this was the actual policy of the administration. I was told that all those were just “liberal media B.S.”, even though one article was from Foxnews.com.
I really don’t know why I even try anymore with my family. They are absolutely and totally enslaved to Donald Trump. They have completely lost the ability to discern reality from unreality. It is truly Orwellian.
My friend is a middle school teacher who has a student that always talks about “fake news” when they do “current events”. I told her to maybe share Fox links that talk about the same story so that their biases can be bypassed. Welp, looks like that won’t work.
I know the feeling. I have some old friends on FB that I worked with for many years. I always knew where they stood but this, this is far worse. I doubt we agree on anything and I have been blocked by a few. It is just as well. The thing you noticed is also true: they have little knowledge of current events and all of it is fake news and any link I provide is nonsense. Some of them go off and find their own links, which at best is highly selective of the real facts. Just now they are praising Trump and think he definitely should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. It is hard to continue except for a few sane family and old school friends.
Oh my. Digby has a tweet saying Pence said ” training exercises” will continue in South Korea. Nice distinction to war games. Kim may not like that.
That’s so terribly sad, because we passed up frustrating months ago. The shades have been drawn on their houses and no daylight will penetrate.
This is what I think of when I read something that amounts to “both sides do it,” so we have to be tolerant and understanding and modulate our views. I’m sorry, but there is no legitimacy whatsoever to a viewpoint based on blatant lies and propaganda and unfortunately no common ground. We have to work on the more open persuadables or those who share our policy positions but for one reason or another do not vote.
I feel fortunate that nearly all my immediate family is very liberal and same for most of my friends. I have an agreement with the 2 family members who are conservative that we don’t talk politics. However, both have recently made remarks to me or my spouse indicating strong disapproval of Trump. However, the best we can ever hope for them is that they will not vote for a nutty Republican. One, in particular, would die before voting for a Democrat and a couple of years ago felt we had a liberal Supreme Court. We’re talking highly educated folks here, but obviously not as well informed as they might think they are.
They are all still frothing at the mouth at my Facebook post, 2 days later. I sent my Aunt a long private message a couple of hours ago explaining the context of my post, because she asked me, “Why would you even post something like this”? So I told her, very nicely, why I did. She was one of the ones who said that what I posted was absolutely was not true.
I have learned that the best thing for me to do is be factual, concise, calm, and thoughtful when trying to talk with these people. And that is more for my sanity than theirs. They want to call you names and argue about reality. They want it to turn into a big shit-flinging fight. But I also have been accused of thinking I was smarter than everyone else because I try to be factual, concise, calm, and thoughtful. I am tired of acting like this is all normal. It’s not. I am not going to apologize for who I am and how I feel. I’m not going to belittle them or call them names, but they need to be able to defend their point of view. If all they can do is call you names and scream FAKE NEWS!!! then the fucking conversation is over, if there was ever one to start with. I am one of four or five non-conservative people among all my many relatives. Me and my nephew are the only ones local. I rarely post much political stuff on my personal Facebook page anymore, and this simple, short post about how disturbed I was about us forcibly separating kids from parents at the border made them all go ape-shit.
I really am beginning to wonder who these fucking people are with whom I share my genes. I literally don’t recognize them anymore. Maybe all these years it was just well hidden and I didn’t pay any attention. But it seems that during the Clinton years they all latched onto a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh, and it has been a slow decline ever since that time.
. . . much that was previously — if not necessarily “well hidden” — at least mostly suppressed beneath a veneer (or pose) of basic decency and civility. Brazenly encouraged the deplorables to let their deplorable flag fly.
Who here hasn’t experienced horror at recognizing how naive we were about the nature of a substantial proportion (and how large it was) of our fellow citizenry prior to 11/8/16?
And, no, it didn’t start with Trump. You’re right that Rush, Hannity, Breitbart, et al. laid the groundwork. But they used dog whistles to retain that veneer of respectability. E.g., they kept up the pretense of believing racism is wrong, but focused relentlessly on alleged “reverse-racism” or “no, you’re the racist”.
Then Trump threw the dog whistles away, thereby encouraging Trump’s deplorables to do the same. With the rightwing propaganda machine continuing to run interference between them and Reality.
Don’t forget, Trump was the inevitable RESULT of the Republican Party, their operatives, and their major donors decisions and actions since at least the end of the second world war in order to keep winning elections while pushing policy that was acutely detrimental to their own base voters.
Republican voters WANTED Sarah Palin in 2008 for god sakes and look at every micro-Trump elected at the state level and congressional level since 2010.
Trump is Frankenstein’s monster turned against it’s creator because Republican voters had spent 8 years hearing from the Republican party’s media apparatus pumping White Resentment every day all day about how President Obama was a dictator, breaking all governmental norms, capitulating to foreign dictators, etc. all to give THEIR stuff to underserving lazy people and make their kids gay.
Actions have consequences, even if they are unforeseen. After the GOP consummated the “Southern Strategy” by embracing Ronald Reagan and his racist dog-whistling, it was on the slippery slope to Donald Trump’s inevitability. Without Trump, it would likely be someone worse, someone like Trump only smarter. The GOP now has no choice other than embracing its destiny.
Indeed it is their destiny, but doubtful it was unforeseen. Roger Ailes is on record for stating the whole reason he conceived of Fox News was so the next Nixon got away with it.
The utterly absurd tacit conclusion of those pebbling the “Trumpism” moniker is that Republican voters will suddenly wake up, while continuing to socially self-segregate and suck down hours of Fox News, AM Radio, and Breitbart et al., and vote for a John Huntsman Jr. Republican in 2024.
Whaddaya mean, the GOP continues to DRIFT towards Trumpism?
IMO, there’s no “drift” happening. Trumpism is Here Now. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
Anyway, I resent and resist the terminology “Trumpism.” That’s just me, but from where I sit this is just the GOP, plain and simple.
Labeling it “Trumpism” is, to my mind, giving the Republicans a Pass or something. No, this is who they are, and frankly, pretty much who they’ve always been.
You disagree? Fine, but I’m old enough to remember hearing how Republicans talked behind closed doors going back to the 1950s. All that’s happening now is that those doors have been opened, and everyone’s been given the Go Ahead to speak their inside voice outside in a very loud voice.
There’s no “drift” going on. It’s what and who the GOP are now and always.
You’re 100% focused on racism and perhaps anti-science cronyism.
The GOP did not do things like Trump just did in Canada and Singapore. Treason was not part of the Southern Strategy.
True.
But GOP operatives did do Watergate, Iran-Contra, and lied us into Iraq. So maybe Trump isn’t as bad as I think.
Also, maybe I’m overstating things, but constantly hailing the mythology surrounding a defeated, seditious, brutal rebellion that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans as the very essence of American White Male-hood isn’t even a little treasonous?
The “Great Man” theory of history has its partial validity. Mitch McConnell and whoever hooked the NRA up with the Russians were indeed not predictable.
Yes but no.
Trent Gahan beat me to it:
I could keep on going. Yeah, I focused on the bigotry and racism in my initial post bc THAT’s what keeps the voters coming. That’s why Lee Atwater invented the Southern Strategy.
But I really fail to see how Trump’s most recent egregious/traitorous behavior at the G6+1 and with North Korea is any worse or more significant that the very partial list, above.
It’s just a continuum of the same old, same old, with lashings of raping the environment, ripping off the taxpayers, ongoing major-league grifting thrown in for good measure.
JMHO, of course.
Those events didn’t take place when fascism was ascendant worldwide. The difference beyond “in degree” and even “within the same ballpark” is the context under which these things are happening.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
I certainly get that fascism is ascendent, but I disagree that that should make a difference.
IF you believe that what Trump did was traiterous or whatever, I don’t think it should matter whether fascism is ascendent or not. It’s either wrong or it’s not.
JMHO, of course, but for me, that particular context doesn’t matter at all.
The context can’t be ignored because everything is vulnerable right now to complete collapse of which the fascists get to re-write the rules if they succeed. In that context, Trump is selling the entire liberal world order for quid pro quos and fascists get the spoils. I’m not saying what they did was right. But I am saying that regular conservatives are different from fascists even if conservatives (almost always) go along for the ride because of who is empowered as a result of their actions.
It’s like if we talk about Obama’s deportations compared with Trump’s. Obama deported more people than Trump, but if you talk to activists who are heavily involved in the issue they note that “it’s different this time”.
Look, you have a point with Nixon fucking with the Vietnam peace talks and Reagan negotiating with the Iranians while still a candidate.
But, as horrible as both of those acts were, once they got into office they didn’t sell out the West to the Politburo.
Even Reagan’s worst scandal was about trying to secure the release of hostages and broadly consistent with American foreign policy posture towards communism.
Reagan didn’t offer to sell out South Korea and Japan for hostages. He didn’t arm people to cause problems in allied nations. He didn’t try to split the Western Alliance, divide Western Europe, weaken NATO, and cover up for every excess and human rights violation emanating from the communist world.
What he did he did out of an excessive desire to win election and then out of an understandable desire to win the freedom of American hostages along with an excessive zeal for the Cold War.
He can be faulted six ways to Sunday, but it’s not on a scale of what we’re seeing with Trump. Not even close.
You make some cogent points, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on how much slack – it seems to me – you are cutting for both Nixon and Reagan.
I do understand what you’re saying, but I don’t quite agree with it.
And then, back to my point (which perhaps I didn’t make all that clearly), I just see Trump as the natural continuum of all of this that has gone before in the Republican party.
I mean, seriously, Reagan negotiated with Khomeni to keep US citizens in danger mainly so that he could win the election and throw shade on Carter. That’s pretty bad. At that time, Khomeni was pretty much decried as one of the USA’s bigger enemies. Ergo, was that not a traitorous act?
I would argue that Reagan and his henchmen sold the USA down the river in a lot of ways. Perhaps not as dramatically as Trump’s latest escapade, but pretty darn close. It’s all about opening up the floodgates to let these things flow down hill and boom! Here we are today with North Korea and G6+1.
But like minds can disagree, and I appreciate the intelligence and thoughtfulness you invest in your important work.
I think we’re going to find out that the treason started earlier than with Shitmidas. That the NRA and the evangelicals were both in bed with the Russians for a long time. Longer than we fear.
Drown the government in a bath tub was part of the Republican strategy long before Trump. Don’t forget the Koch Bros grew up in a John Birch household, and at least one was an active member for years.
I consider the invasion of Iraq more sophisticated than what Trump is doing now and also more destructive. The propaganda, lies and motives were similar but we used them to invade another country. Hundreds of thousands died, millions became refuges and much of the country was demolished. This invasion continued the destabilization of the Middle East begun by the machinations of the Western Powers after WWs I and II, and much of the world is suffering for it.
I agree 100%. Trump is just their leader that meets all of their specifications for one built over the years by the GOP. The “bonus” they get with Trump is he’s naturally ignorant. So unlike past leaders who had to play at it and may not have come off as genuine, Trump’s stupid is real. He doesn’t have to play at it. And they love it.
It is done…Trump has won
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/republican-leaders-silent-full-day-after-congressman-retweets
-neo-nazi
—Roy Edroso at alicublog (who regularly slogs through the fever swamps so we don’t have, upon his latest foray there. Find some representative, erm, “kernels” from the likes of Jonah “Liberal Fascism” Goldberg and Byron York, plus a few random twitter morons, at the link.)
“remove Trump from the equation”
Well, one can’t really “un-see” what one has seen. (I guess repression can happen, but it’s apparently not a conscious choice.) The American rightwing turds (either from birth or manufactured via gorging on the “conservative” sewage dump) love every minute of what they are seeing from Der Trumper. The mold has now been made and future Repub leaders will present themselves as the Next Trumper. Any vicious white nationalist can b expected to follow in the footsteps of the New Reagan.
The “conservative” revolution is (finally) well underway, with no meaningful checks in place, and happening at about the pace of the Nazi makeover in 1933. With every anti-democratic ruling of Roberts’ Repubs, the possibility of an electoral revolt by the citizenry is being reduced. The regulatory state has already been massively altered and weakened; Roberts’ Repubs will kill it decisively within the next couple years. Torrents of money are being poured down the militarist rathole, just as Hitler did with the Wehrmacht and Gestapo. Trumper is prancing about the world stage as if it’s Munich 1938. The Western democracies are essentially appeasing him and seeking “peace in our time”.
Repubs are officially an American Fascist Party. Would an elected Repub even risk denying it?
NO, for the nth and last itme, Trump is a distraction. The Republican Party would be doing all of this anyhow, and they have been doing it since the Reagan campaign for the Republican nomination. None of this is the least bit new. Trump has still not gone a trillionth of a split hair beyond Reagan. Nothing has gotten any worse (or, of course, any better) since 4 Nov. 1980.
I don’t completely agree, as I do feel things have gotten worse since Reagan.
But I completely agree that Reagan opened the door for Trump to follow along. It’s a natural progression, and it’s just a matter of degree between what Reagan, GW Bush and Trump have done.
It’s where the GOP has been headed my entire life. I can’t speak for before I was born, but I suspect it was the case back then, too.
It’s just that it’s much more blatant and in your face. But Lee Atwater talked about that in the Southern Strategy. So really it truly goes back to Nixon.
Two things are happening simultaneously and they are interconnected:
1. The Republican has become fully evolved as the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, money and power worshipping cult they have aspired to be my entire life.
Lee Atwater didn’t invent the Southern Strategy, he inherited it from the white supremacist Buckley and the criminal Nixon. Reagan and Bush exploited it along with Atwater. But at that point it was a foundational principle for the cult.
Like all faith based cults Republicans believe in the power of faith over reality. Laugher Curves will balance the budget, compromise is evil because there’s only one true path, Dan Quayle, George W Bush, Sarah Palin arefully fit to lead an anti-intellectual party.
This sets the stage for the second, simultaneous event.
2. Trump recognized the opportunity to build a mailing list of suckers for his scams by running a faux campaign for president that evolved into something more sinister. The opportunity was bigger than Trump realized. Coincidentally, the Russians knowing Trump’s predilections and the money he has very likely laundered for them saw the potential for mischief.
Smart people, like Putin know that not every bet pays off and further making no bets will ensure there are no pay offs, essentially adopts Trump’s same strategy of playing the string all the way out to see what the potential is for their advantage.
So the 1M to 1 long shot wins and the payoff is huge for Russia and the Trump family grifters.
But none of it is possible if the Republican Party hasn’t reached peak self-actualization as a reality-denying faith based racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic cult.