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Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism

An old friend who is active in GOP politics just announced his baby boy's name today: Maverick John. Interesting choice.
 
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"“Look,” he responded, “the good news story of the first year of the Trump presidency is that there are checks and balances…. Trump as a personality type is probably no different from a Mussolini, a Peron, a Chavez. And if you were operating in Argentina or Italy, he would probably be a dictator by now. But luckily, he’s not operating in those countries.”"

...

"Boot: I think the ascendancy of Trump has revealed two very unflattering things about the Republican Party. One of which Eliot is referring to when he talks about the spinelessness and pusillanimity of the Republicans in Washington. But it also reveals something about the Republican grassroots, which is something even uglier, I think, because there is a lot of prejudice, racism, homophobia, all sorts of dark impulses out there, that I think were largely kept cloaked when you had leaders of the party like Mitt Romney and John McCain, who were fine individuals who did not appeal to the dark side of human nature.

But Donald Trump is not a fine individual and he appeals to that dark side, and he has shown how much of the support for Republican candidates around the country is based on some of these dark impulses. And frankly, to me, it’s been unnerving. It’s been deeply disturbing as somebody who was a life-long Republican, because what I see happening is that a lot of the criticisms the Democrats have made about Republicans—and which I resisted for years—have actually been vindicated."


https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/18/he-would-probably-be-a-dictator-by-now-216113
 
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Where to put this...OK here.

Only thing I’d add is that Dems need to learn to speak effectively, respectfully, and convincingly about a reasonable appreciation of faith and need to reduce abortion (without making it illegal or inaccessible).

Democrats Are the New Republicans

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Family values. How long have we been subjected to that subjective phrase, championed by Republicans who equated it with heterosexuality, fecundity and Christian piety — and who appointed themselves the custodians of those?

Well, they lost any remaining claim to that mantle by embracing Donald Trump and then Roy Moore. Neither won the support of all Republicans, but both won the backing or complicity of enough of them to confirm just how hollow and hypocritical the party’s attachment to conservative morality always was. Quote the Bible. Denounce abortion. Congratulations: You’re upholding family values! No questions asked about the number of your marriages, the extent of your infidelities or the scope of your sexual predation.

Fiscal responsibility. How loudly have Republicans harangued us about that? It’s a worthy harangue — or at least it would be if there were an iota of integrity and consistency behind it.

But Republicans are poised to enact a sweeping overhaul of the tax code that will add nearly $1.5 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade. In all the news coverage of their need to finesse the math so that they don’t exceed that amount, the fact that they’re plunging the country so much deeper into the red in the first place almost gets lost.

This, mind you, is the same political party that fetishized balanced budgets and browbeat Democrats about being the foolishly, fatally profligate ones. Republicans’ actions routinely contradicted their words, and their tax reform is a contradiction on steroids. Where’s the fiscal responsibility in legislation with such budgetary hocus-pocus as the expiration of individual rate cuts that the bill’s authors fully expect other lawmakers to preserve down the road?

What pretty lies Republicans tell, most of all about themselves. And what a gorgeous opportunity they have given Democrats to steal that bogus rhetoric right out from under them.

Try this on for size: Democrats are the party of family values because they promote the creation of more families. They did precisely that with their advocacy of marriage equality, which didn’t tug the country away from convention but toward it, by encouraging gay and lesbian Americans to live in the sorts of arrangements that conservatives in fact extol.

Democrats also want to give families the flexibility and security that help keep them afloat and maybe intact. That’s what making the work force more hospitable to women and increasing the number of Americans with health insurance do. And Republicans lag behind Democrats on both fronts.

Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility because they don’t pretend that they can afford grand government commitments — whether distant wars or domestic programs — without collecting the revenue for them.

Democrats are the party of patriotism, because they’re doing something infinitely more urgent and substantive than berating football players who kneel during the national anthem. They’re recognizing that a hostile foreign power tried to change the course of an American presidential election. They’re pressing for a full accounting of that. They’re looking for fixes, so that we can know with confidence that we control our own destiny going forward. The president, meanwhile, plays down the threat, and Republicans prop him up.

Democrats are the party of national security. They don’t taunt and get into Twitter wars with the rulers of countries that just might send nuclear warheads our way. They don’t alienate longtime allies by flashing contradictory signals about their commitment to NATO. The leader of the Republican Party does all of that and more, denying the G.O.P. any pretense to stewardship of a stable world order.

Democrats are the law-and-order party. While many Republicans and their media mouthpiece, Fox News, labor to delegitimize the F.B.I. and thus inoculate Trump, Democrats put faith in prosecutors, agents and the system.

Democrats are the party of decency and modesty. None of their highest leaders uses the public arena to bully private citizens in the way that the Republican president does. None advances his or her financial interests as brazenly or brags as extravagantly.

Democrats are the party of tradition, if it’s interpreted — and it should be — to mean a news media that operates without fear of government interference, an internet to which access isn’t tiered, judicial appointees who have a modicum of fluency in trial law.

Under Trump’s thumb and spell, the Republican Party is watching the pillars of its brand crumble. Democrats should grab hold of and appropriate them. And they’re starting to, fitfully and imperfectly. Jettisoning Al Franken as the Republican National Committee reteamed with Moore was part of that effort.

Who among us doesn’t care about family values, defined justly and embraced honestly? Who doesn’t see the good in patriotism, tradition and decency? They’re neither hokey words nor musty concepts, and that’s why Republicans have been using (and misusing) them. But in the age of Trump, they constitute a language that Democrats can more credibly speak.
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That was a lot of fellating...someone needs more "conversion therapy."
 
[h=1]Republican Candidate Goes Full Nazi: Jews "Pretend" to be White to Undermine the White Race[/h]
Last year, Nehlen was much more careful about his bigotry, sticking with the usual right wing standbys of hating Muslims and immigrants. He primaried Paul Ryan as part of the alt-right but didn't go all in on the white nationalist language.
He got annihilated.
But now that Trump has given his presidential seal of approval to white nationalism, Nehlen has dropped any pretense of being your average, run-of-the-mill bigot and he wants Trump's followers to know that he's really one of them.
Lately, Nehlen's been tweeting "It's okay to be white" which is what white nationalists have been telling themselves because they like to pretend that white people are "under attack" for being white. The reality is that white right wingers are under attack for being racist assholes but they live to feel persecuted so good luck convincing them otherwise. Now, however, as John Podhoretz puts it, Nehlen has come out of the Nazi closet:

As we get closer to the midterms, more of these kinds of candidates are going to come crawling out of the shadows to challenge Republicans they feel aren't racist enough (try to wrap your head around that). After the blue tidal wave of 2018 and the full collapse of the Trump administration, Republicans are going to flail about for a quick fix like they did with the Tea Party. Nehlen and his fellow white nationalists, with generous backing from Steve Bannon (or whoever the billionaire Mercers replace him with of he keeps losing), will be there with their energized base to fill that void.

https://thedailybanter.com/2017/12/paul-nehlen-anti-semitism/
 
I think that's going to happen. It's an election year. Once the Never Trumpers are faced with the choice of rejoining their Republican buddies or choosing to vote Democrat in a wave election, they'll go back home.
 
Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread

In the Republican version of It’s A Wonderful Life, God sends an angel to punish a selfless banker who makes affordable loans to immigrants to help them buy homes and start businesses.
 
PhDeac said:
I think that's going to happen. It's an election year. Once the Never Trumpers are faced with the choice of rejoining their Republican buddies or choosing to vote Democrat in a wave election, they'll go back home.
Click to expand...

I actually disagree with this statement a lot PH. Which is hopefully something for you and other Democrats to celebrate.

No doubt there will be some never trumpers on the margins who return back home at some point. But from my anecdotal experience talking to a lot of conservatives (the real ones...not those who worship at the cult of trump) and moderate Republicans (some never trumpers, some Trump voters who are now disillusioned)...I would say nearly all of us believe that the insitutional damage Trump is doing far exceeds any benefit from policy/executive orders he and the GOP led Congress have implemented/could implement.

Barring a complete 180 by the President and Congress...I would bet money the vast majority of never trumpers will vote Independent, Democrat or not vote at all in 2018 and potentially for the foreseeable future. Most of us believe the GOP is irredeemable (count me in this camp) or at a minimum...they need a long fucking timeout to think about what they've done...especially in the past 2 years.

Any other nevertrump republicans on here feel the same way? Feel differently? Would be great to hear from others.
 
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I hope you’re right and they start taking control of the party. But I think all that is easy to say at the end of 2017. It’s harder to say in 2018 when faced with actual Democrats to vote against.
 
 
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