Careful. Could be a queer woman out there willing to take one for the team. What’s he gonna do then? Better to play it safe.
Reminds me of a sign posted at one place I worked:
Don’t start vast projects with half-vast ideas
Disassembling 200+ years of American government traditions would strike me as a vast project.
Bowers is catching a lot of flak in the Republican primary with ads – confessing in the fine print they’re entirely funded by sources outside Arizona – saying, “He is no longer right for Mesa,” which is weird because his district is entirely within Pima county, unless they redid the lines or something.
…
But something else, something even more powerful, was going on. Many Trump supporters grew to hate his critics even more than they came to love Trump. For them, Trump’s detractors were not just wrong but wicked, obsessed with getting Trump, and hell-bent on destroying America. Former Republicans who turned against Trump—“Never Trumpers,” as we became known—were particularly loathed. We were viewed as disloyal, even traitorous, having turned on Trump to win the praise of the liberal elite. For Trump supporters to admit that they were wrong about him—and especially to admit that Trump’s critics had been right about him—would blow their circuits. If they ever do turn on Trump, they will admit it only to themselves and maybe a few close intimates. I’ve said before that asking Trump supporters to focus on his moral turpitude is like asking them to stare into the sun. They can do it for a split second, and then they have to look away. The Trump years have been all about looking away.
…
My bold.
We’ve seen plenty of this. No matter how bad trump is (and some Republicans can see this and admit it), Hillary, Obama, Joe, Nancy are all worse.
That would be the great thing about Trump getting indicted and tried – it ought to put an end to this “both-sides-ism” when it’s clear to even the most jaded Republicans that their orange hero is not just maybe a little bit flawed, he’s a convicted criminal serving time. It won’t happen but it should, and I can dream.
He could be convicted of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and the most jaded Republicans would still not think he was even a little bit flawed. Convict him of witness tampering and attempting to overthrow the election and you’ll get nary a shrug.
YeahIdunno.
The last time one of their Most Admired got himself up on the cross … well … you know the rest.
His conviction for any and all crimes will not change the MAGATs’ minds one iota. They’ll believe he was railroaded by a deep state conspiracy that would have been thwarted had Pence simply done the right thing on Jan. 6.
Honestly, as much as I hate to say it, @Euphonious_Polemic’s take matches 100% with mine. We’ve had many, many threads including posters who previously identified as Republican, but got left behind as the party drifted ever further right / crazy during the Obama years. Those that truly looked for good governance, but who (as an example) wanted smaller government have found themselves as ‘conservative’ Democrats, or left leaning independents.
In 2016, there were plenty of Republicans who voted for Trump because party, because they felt the ‘establishment’ would control him, and were otherwise personally repelled by the man.
If they voted Trump and still support them after 2020, and especially after 1/6 (back to this thread), they are too invested to ever back out short of a massive, personal, and immediate loss to themselves, such as those who are currently testifying about their role in those 1/6 events. People who have lost spouses, jobs, and homes. And even THEN, they like a losing gambler, have to keep doubling down, because the next time they’ll be winners. They’ve invested too much to ever give up.
I’m not blaming @Temporary_Name, I have plenty of family that I cannot discuss Trump with, mostly the Israeli side of the family who are the traditional single-issue voters, and who care little for what happens here as long as they get the support they want/need. T_N’s friends sounds like this, their piety has made them utterly inflexible in their approach, so they block out everything else in favor of the special interest.
And thus, the 1/6 hearings IMHO are attempting to make sure that everyone who isn’t closed realize how darn close we came to a coup. It’s about getting people who agree, but aren’t motivated to get out and vote in the coming elections, both state and federal.
Because the fanatics will absolutely vote, and, like many democracies and republics before us, their last step is electing their new dictator.
I’m afraid you may be right. I was going to try to refute that by pointing out that, in the face of overwhelming evidence, almost no one believes the 2020 election was “stolen”. Then I found this (bolding mine):
Everyone who lives in objective reality understands that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 presidential election. He lost by 7 million actual votes and 74 electoral votes. His claim that the election was rigged has been debunked by numerous Republican state elections officials, and rejected by judges in both state and federal courts in more than 70 lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and its proxies. Trump’s own Justice Department as well as his former attorney general, William Barr, found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, two-thirds of GOP voters and just over one-third of all voters, now believe the 2020 election was stolen.
I give up!
The quote was from here:
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3263802-why-do-so-many-still-believe-the-2020-election-was-stolen/
Evidence is irrelevant.
The grand unifying principle behind the modern Right is “my inferiors cannot tell me what to do.” They won’t accept police reform because it’s promoted by Blacks and liberals. They won’t accept pronoun preference and alternative gender expression because it’s the agenda of those pervert weirdos. They won’t accept masks and vaccines because they come from overeducated ivory-tower types who choose science over God. And on and on, all down the line. “Those people want me to do something, and I refuse to allow them to have power over me.” It’s that simple.
The stolen election story is just more of the same, with the stubbornness cranked so hard to 11 that the dial gets torn off. “The damn left-wing media tells me to accept their version of the vote count and its integrity, and I just won’t do it. My refusal to surrender to people I don’t believe I should surrender to is a matter of absolute fervent faith, and my embrace of a fully wacko alternative reality is absolutely preferable to letting them impose their will on me.”
It’s demented. But I’m confident that’s what it all boils down to.
Yup. Bears repeating.
Yep, I know one such person. “I hate him as a person but like his policies” And there is no way in hell he would vote for a democrat. He thinks Joe Biden is OK though. So… why didn’t you vote for him?
The Hill article cited by @wolfpup asks “why do so many still…?”
The “still” utterly is misplaced.
It’s “still” believed because it’s still being sold daily by all the forces of highly profitable RW nutbaggery. They’re still shouting from the rooftops about it. All day every day. And they will not quit. Because it’s profitable not to.
And because it ensures that every election for significant office into the future can be declared to be tainted on no evidence and that claim WILL be believed by the faithful. In the total absence of evidence, and in fact in the face of considerable affirmative evidence of absence.
2nd set of hearings likely:
Good news. Sounds like there is more and more evidence emerging.
And in reference to the above commentary (which I agree with) that right-wing nutbars don’t care about evidence, in the final analysis it doesn’t matter because in the real world, there are real consequences for criminal behaviour. What the extreme right-wing nutbars think becomes irrelevant when they become increasingly marginalized.
Kinda. The gravity of the current situation makes it a little more like this IMO:
I wish like hell we were in the world you so calmly describe.
They redid the lines.
Bowers is running for the LD10 Senate seat - LD10 used to be in Pima county but most of it is now LD18. LD10 is now in the East Valley.
Unfortunately, even a criminal conviction won’t persuade Trump fans.
“Show trial! Fake evidence! False charges! He was innocent and wrongly convicted. Corrupt Biden socialist Marxist railroaded him. Release innocent Trump now!”
Excellent observation.
The only one who CAN tell them what to do is Jebus, and it is amazing just how often Republican Jebus’™ interests align with theirs.
When the talking heads on TV tell them what their interests are loudly enough and often enough, they quickly grow to believe them. Yep, a free-fire zone for billionaire oligarchs is gonna work out just great for Joe Rural Sixpack.
He’s been told it, he believes it, and that settles it.