I’m glad. Hopefully everybody will calm down and sleep at night.
Actually…yes.
The Republicans’ attitude towards Trump remind me of this line from Casablanca:
"I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!” ( The croupier hands him his money .) “… Your winnings, sir .” “Oh, thank you very much!”
Yes, I’ve mentioned those two candidates in other posts. They are trying to keep the Trumpists in the voting game. Has the GOP taken their tweets seriously? Has there been any real movement to remove the SoS?
Well, he’s had death threats from members of his own party. Does that count?
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said hand recount numbers are tracking towards Joe Biden as the winner in Georgia.
Raffensperger told the FOX 5 I-Team the hand ballot recount is mostly matching the computer count and mistakes they have found have not significantly changed the vote total.
Senior I-Team reporter Dale Russell said Raffensperger made the comment after discussing death threats and scathing political attacks he has received from members of his own party.
Or attacks from his fellow Republicans calling on him to resign. Does that count?
From President Trump’s tweets, to Senators Loeffler and Perdue calling for his resignation, and losing Republican Senate candidate and Trump’s recount director Doug Collins tweeting Raffesnperger was incompetent.
Deeg: The fact that Trump won’t succeed in overthrowing the election results doesn’t make his attempts any less of a reason to be concerned and anxious. He’s shitting all over our Constitution and the basic norms of our democracy. If nothing else, he’s potentially riling up a lot of already-angry gun-toting supporters and making them believe the election is being stolen from them. That’s very concerning and it doesn’t behoove us to just relax and turn off the news.
Death threats are a serious business and I am concerned for anybody who receives them but random idiots on the internet are not GOP officials. Sadly these days anonymous death threats are all too common.
I said “noted” not “thinks is in any way tied to reality and should be acted upon”.
Goalposts: Moved.
When they finally go too far, it will be too late. Hence the vigilance.
And for the record, I feel ya: I’ve never been a huge fan of slippery slope arguments myself, but I think what we’re observing is a dangerous exception.
I don’t know what news you’ve been watching, but a number of Republicans are rather openly supporting a coup, including the President of the United States, and a shocking number of Republicans - MOST of them - are at least giving silent consent. There is remarkably little vocal opposition among Republicans. Millions of their voters are openly disdainful of democracy.
The fact they will fail doesn’t mean that American democracy will not be considerably weakened by this. It is perfectly logical to point out that this is a dreadful trend and that it’s the nadir of the American republic in modern times. Hopefully it’ll get better after 20-1-2021, but things are weak as hell and that’s something to be concerned about.
In response to the two phrases I bolded in the above quote, the Michigan state GOP and the national GOP are calling for certification of election results to be delayed. The reason is because they want more time to investigate the fictional allegations of voter fraud. The GOP has had their shot at litigating the supposed cases of voter fraud and has had them tossed by judges every time.
If they aren’t trying to change the election results then why are they doing this? Delaying certification is all about pushing things past the safe harbor deadline because they hope this will at minimum get competing slates of electors sent to the Electoral College from MI and gum up the works. I’m not panicked by this but it would be foolish to say there aren’t attempts at shenanigans ongoing. And the national GOP is playing along with this, as are McConnell, Graham, McCarthy, Gym Jordan and plenty other leaders of the party.
That want democracy…among themselves.
I could foresee two different endings;
They continue to keep their base riled with one legal shenanigan after another, being obstinate and obstructive in the extreme. Only to find themselves repeatedly denied in court, a few Reps speak out, with right sounding words, but everyone is kept on the ledge, one step forward, one step back. Then…
a. …he just fucks off to Mar a Lago. (Or, goes to the inauguration like everything is fine maybe even?)
Or,
b. …all those right sounding words get reversed and Jan19, six officiants somewhere flip to Trump’s script, and attempt to overturn the vote. No inauguration, only court cases and trials over who now has authority, to do what? Which can only end at the Supreme Court, I expect. A regular constitutional crisis, as it were.
They want a democracy with a reliable go-to base of voters that has disproportionate power over the opposition. Now, the question is, how do they build a system in which that is possible? How can you build a system in which you can identify your voters, and their voters? Easy - target black and brown voters. They know where they live, so they’d be easy to target. They’re doing it now, but they will triple and quadruple down on that if they are in power long enough. Illiberal democracy will be a terrible time for black and brown voters. Women’s rights won’t survive very long in that kind of “democracy” either. Don’t let Amy Coney Barrett and Republican women fool you into believing that they support women’s rights and empowerment; when they’re really in power, it’ll be lack going back to the Victorian era.
What else do they want? A Court that is politically partisan and ideologically in alignment with their cause. A Court that is willing to selectively apply court doctrine in the grand tradition of Antonin Scalia and Roger Taney. Looked at the bench lately? Check!
Yeah, that Canine and Feline Sector Group is a menace!
Seriously ? You consciously chose not to go with Capybara ?
It didn’t come up on Google.
You seem to feel like there is still a real, grown up GOP back there somewhere, pulling the strings, using the Trumpists but not influenced by them. I don’t think there’s any compelling evidence that we have a functional smoke filled room back there. That’s what they thought would happen, fost with the Tea Party and then with Trump and the Alt Right. But they aren’t riding this tiger anymore. Tiger ate them up.
So yeah, individual Republicans may not be in favor of this, may think its madness, but they can’t speak up because they are terrified, because they don’t have the power to speak out they aren’t humoring the Trumpists, they are ceding to them. They don’t know how this is going to play out, not for sure, so they don’t want to take a stand and be on the losing side.
I don’t really think Trump is going to prevail, but his strategy of never say die has never really failed him. He just never quits, keeps the mark on the string. He’s lost every business he’s ever run . . . And still ended up functionally rich, whatever his real finances. He ended up president. Tat should make anyone a little nervous.
But the idea that the grown ups are sti) in charge, that they are using him? No way.
People being people, politics being politics, politicians being politicians, and – sadly – today’s GOP being today’s GOP … I wonder whether 1/5/2021 and the two GA runoff elections are doing as much to muzzle Republican congress critters who might possibly be otherwise inclined to speak out as anything else.
The election is over, but the two GA Senate seats are “not for nuthin.” I’d wager McConnell is rather preoccupied with those. I’d guess many other Republicans in office are, too.
Which doesn’t do anything to help resolve this unmitigated freak show that is the ‘contested’ Presidential election.
Many pundits are saying that DJT’s approach to GA has the possibility of serious blowback: calling into question the sanctity of their election processes risks suppressing their own vote in the runoffs, giving a potential advantage to the two D’s.
These things are high wire acts, and Trump has issues with both his weight and his center of gravity 