Alternatively, they can just try to stop people from voting, full stop. Or, make it so that even if a candidate gets more votes, their internal people can simply ignore this, and install the “preferred” candidate.
This seems to be the direction the Republicans are heading in. Creating policy that is popular among most voters is a plan that they have firmly rejected quite some time ago.
So instead of merely saying he wants Democrats killed, I guess they’d prefer a candidate who has actually killed Democrats.
This is where we’re at.
Sure, but I’m not sure what the value is of your response. The question was, “What could they do to make things better?” I’ve answered what they could do and why it wouldn’t hurt the party. Yes, they could not do that thing but, for the purposes of this discussion, that’s like saying, “Well yeah, someone could get chemotherapy for their cancer but they could also not do that. Betcha didn’t think of that! Teehee!”
Not exactly what I was getting at. There is no indication whatsoever that the Republican party is desiring of making their party or the country better. It is patently obvious now that their only goal is to seize power using whatever means possible - legal or illegal, and to keep that power in perpetuity.
To use your chemotherapy example, It’s like someone is asking what could Bob do to book chemotherapy for his cancer, but Bob has made it emphatically clear that he is against any kind of chemotherapy or medical advice, and is going to continue to use salt water enemas to cure his lung cancer. It’s pointless to try to figure out how to book a chemotherapy appointment when Bob has been very clear that he has no intention of ever seeking any medical advice or treatment.
Ultimately, the world becomes a better place because people want it to become a better place. Those people express a desired state, provide evidence for why that’s better, give a path for getting to that destination, and work to push things forward.
Which do you want, a better world or a worse world? Which are you currently fighting for?
I want a better world. As do you. As do most. Why would you think that because I merely expose a group who are actively trying to seize power through undemocratic means, then I must support those people? And that I don’t want a better world?
Some folk, do not want a better world. They want power and money for themselves, and to hell with the rest. They want short term gain and to hell with the future. This is just realty. Does not mean I agree with them.
The current crop of Republicans do not want a better world. They want perpetual power. And as has been pointed out, there are no moderate Republicans anymore. There is nobody left to retake control of the party.
Eisenhower, Rockefeller maybe even Nixon or Ford. It was the Southern Strategy, i.e. appealing to racists that turned the GOP rotten.
But the issue is that if you are an anti-trumper you will get death threats and be voted out by your own party.
But it did go for Gore and then the GOP orchestrated the Brooksbrother riot with help from Roger Stone. January 6 was the unsuccessful GOP coup, 2000 was the one that worked and demonstrated to Republicans that democracy was not in their interests.
I’m with you. Pizzagate, QAnon, lizard people … I don’t think that even John Birchers were at that nonsensical a CT level back in the 1970s (or before, but I was too young to have any awareness of the landscape before about 1972). Sure, there were a few loonies, but the looniness has become mainstream in the Republican Party.
I don’t know what brought our nation to this level of craziness. Fluoridated water? (Or maybe Floridated water? 
)
Also, the plane is piloted by a guy who says he’s the best pilot ever, but he’s never flown before.
I can certainly understand the fear and presence of actual threats, but imo the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s or so was much overplayed and is the earliest evidence to me that Republicans had at least a strain of extremism that has only grown in the years since.
I blame Reagan. It used to be things were judged on whether or not they were true. Reagan promoted the idea that what’s more important is whether or not things were believable. If something was believable, it didn’t matter if it was true or false.
Dana Milbank has a book out about how we got here. Trump is the output of Republican radicalism, not its cause.
There are lots of moderate Republicans. Read ‘The Dispatch’ if you want to find some. Mitt Romney is a moderate Republican.
Unfortunately, ten of them who voted to impeach Trump just lost their primary bids to Trump-affiliated candidates. Liz Cheney is not a moderate, but she’s anti-Trump and likely to lose her race tonight.
The Garland raid had the opposite effect than what might have been hoped: it’s driving the moderates even further from the center and towards Trump. Trump was thankfully fading in popularity with Republicans, and there was a good chance he wouldn’t be the nominee in 2024. But Garland’s actions have invigorated him, and have turned him into a martyr in the eyes of many in the party. As one commentator said the other day, Merrick Garland may have just handed the Republican nomination to Trump.
And make no mistake - from my point of view another election with Trump in it will be a very bad thing for Republicans and for the country. And if Trump wins again in 2024 it might tear the country apart or at leadt bring about the kind of civil unrest we saw in 1968-1975. I really, really want him to go away. Garland’s actions make that unlikely.
That sentence assumes that the DOJ raid was done with “hope” that it would have negative political outcomes for Trump. I believe it was done in the “hope” that the rule of law still matters and applies to everyone.
I don’t deny that there are many people, myself included, who have hopes based on our political views about what happens next with Trump. But it’s pretty clear that Garland and the DOJ have been taking a very measured approach based on the law, not on politics.
I didn 't mean what Garland hoped. I meant what Democrats and moderates hoped. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
People hope that justice will be served, and that those who commit crimes will go to jail.
Which “moderates”? Mitt Romney, your only named example of a “moderate Republican”, does not seem to be in any way “driven towards Trump”, and nor does Liz Cheney. You say that moderate Republicans can be found at The Dispatch, a self-described “conservative” Substack publication founded in 2020 by anti-Trumper conservatives who also show no signs AFAICT of being “driven towards Trump”.
So who are all the actual Republican “moderates” who are being “driven towards Trump” by the DoJ pursuing their investigation of his possible crimes? We can all see that a bunch of decidedly non-moderate loony Trumpist conservatives who were getting a little bored with ex-President Trump’s lowered profile are now gleefully re-energized with a bunch of new and revived wackadoodle conspiracy theories about Trump being “persecuted”. But those are presumably not the “moderates” that you’re telling us there are “lots of”.
Can you cite which commentator you’re referring to?
Do you want the US Attorney General to just give up pursuing investigations into possible serious crimes on the off chance that that will result in Donald Trump magically just “going away”?
That didn’t seem to be your attitude towards FBI investigations of possible serious crimes the last time there was a similar sort of kerfuffle.
Like here:
Or here:
Or here:
Posts and posts in 2016 amplifying and analyzing all the hypothetical suspicions about the FBI investigation of Clinton possibly turning up evidence of serious wrongdoing.
A couple grumpy laments in 2022 that the FBI investigation of Trump’s potentially far more serious wrongdoing is misguided because it’s somehow interfering with the alleged likelihood of Trump just “going away”.
It should probably be pointed out that being honest, informed, and principled doesn’t necessarily mean “moderate”. Liz Cheney is not moderate. John Bolton is not a moderate. Trump is a moderate but willing to do and say anything to get votes and headlines.
This is really more of a divide between smart and dumb, than it is between moderate and hard right.
All apologies — didn’t Newhouse win his primary bid, such that he’s now up against Doug White (D) in the general? And isn’t Valadao likewise now up against Rudy Salas (D)?