Well over sixty-five percent of Republicans don’t think. They just do whatever they’re told and believe it was their own idea.
What’s happening right now is the leaders of the Republican party are looking things over and making a decision. They’re deciding if Trump is worth the cost. He rouses up some of the flock but he also rouses up opposition. And Trump hasn’t shown he can actually get enough votes to win an election.
So I feel the decision will be to abandon Trump. (And either way, Trump won’t be in the room when the decision is made about his future.) If the leaders of the Republican party decide Trump’s time is over, they’ll put out the word to the right wing media network. The “Trump is over” message will be delivered and the mass of Republican voters will accept it. They’ll even believe they arrived at the idea on their own.
I do not share your optimism that the “RW media network” takes orders from the traditional R party bigwigs.
I also think it’s a lot less monolithic than all that. They’re singing in mostly harmony now, but that’s because each of the major players sees their own bread best buttered by pushing the “Pwn the Libs, Trump is Messiah, Uneducated White Males and Low taxes Forever, …” line.
If somehow some hunk of the RW media does decide Trump is irretrievably past his sell-by date, whether by R party action or their own chancers, you can rest assured there will be plenty of competitive RW media outlets loudly taking the other side of that bet.
And that’s before Trump and his enablers (read China, Russia, and probably Koch) get their bots and goons and millions of flag-waving US patriotic dupes making supportive noises.
Trump will announce at some point. He’s announced that he’s going to announce. The reaction to that will tell the tale. Who can be worse than Trump? I saw an article that Tucker Carlson is making some noise.
For a lot of Trump fans it’s an identity to be a Trump fan. A friend of mine is from a small rural town. She loves Trump. She is also on SNAP Benefits (food stamps) and MediCal (California ObamaCare). I was with her when she got her mail several weeks ago. In the mail was her voting pamphlet and her MediCal statement.
She said that she wished that she could vote for Trump now (I didn’t take the bait). Then she said something like, “I hate seeing Gavin Newsom’s name on my MediCal statement.” I told her that if the Republicans were in charge she wouldn’t even have MediCal or SNAP. She angrily said, “I get that but… I don’t want to talk about politics!” She also smokes our fine legal weed, dates women on occasion and had made use of Plan B. There is no convincing some people. She just gets off on being a Trumper.
Exactly. She’s an example of what I was talking about. She didn’t arrive at her strongly held political beliefs because she followed a train of thought to them. She believes Republicans are better than Democrats for the same reason she believes Coke is better than Pepsi and Marlboros are better than Camels. And if the people who are telling her these things change the message, she will follow along and believe the new message just as fervently. If the right wing media stops telling her that Donald Trump is the Messiah and starts telling her that Ron DeSantis is the Messiah, she’ll believe it.
No. She doesn’t watch or read the news. When Trump is gone, she’ll stop voting unless Tucker Carlson runs. She won’t vote for a party insider. She’s never been to church in her life. She thinks that the disruption is hilarious and doesn’t care about the short or long term implications.
I’m not sure I follow. In fact, I’m sure I don’t follow.
Do you think the R Party owns Fox news? Or controls enough of their revenue that Fox will listen when they “order” Fox to start dumping Trump for e.g., Cruz or De Santis or, better yet, some truly Establishment boring WASP Republican like Sen. Hiram Schmutz IV (R-ME)?
Yes, a talking head will do as their employer directs. No debate there. Very few of those are on the level of e.g., Tucker Carlson who have enough brand on their own to flounce off to a different network if they get orders they don’t like.
But one heck of a lot of Fox, or WSJ or … talking heads can move if need be; they’re not that beholden to their current employer as the only game in town.
The thing that has impressed me the most by the RW media-sphere since the early days of Limbaugh has been the shear entrepreneurial zeal of the whole thing. It's NOT about politics. Most of it is about SELLING politics, and political news, and books, and magazines, and paraphernalia, and ..., to the public. And then in turn selling those lovingly cultivated and clueless, highly politically engaged, but equally politically duped, eyeballs *to* the politicians.
The best part is anybody can play. If the Marvel Comic Universe was hot, I could start writing fanfic using their characters & story line. The moment I got some traction and made some money, the copyright owners (Marvel) would be in my shit with both feet. And rightly so.
But politics isn’t like that. I can add my made-up BS about how brave Trump is and how feeble Biden is to the media shitstorm and the character owners can’t stop me. Anyone with enough chutzpah can play. And does.
What we see now is a veritable shitstorm hurricane of blowhards each trumpeting what they think the audience wants to hear, because doing so is enormously personally profitable. And various media properties from the old InfoWars to QAnon to whatever is hot this week doing the same, often with big money behind them. Murdoch, Koch, to name just a couple of the most obvious contenders.
In that ecosystem, the R party officialdom clearing their throat and saying “Sen Schmutz is the only sensible path forward. Back him alone.” will produce an instant backlash. I and all the other media hucksters are free to take our independent readings of the popular wind and keep spewing our profitable crap in whatever direction we deem most profitable. And if some meaningful fraction of we judge that Trump-adoring BS will keep selling, we’ll keep pushing that line. With no small amount of help from Trump’s team’s media buys. All the better if we’re being paid by the Chinese through something called the “American Patriot’s Foundation” or whatever.
The baying horde of RW talking heads and wacko websites can switch horses away from Trump. It is not physically impossible.
But it seems to me to be very, very unlikely to happen. And the more Trump is “persecuted” by the sitting US government between now and 2024, the more his story will resonate with all the losers who most closely associate with him as the bright spot in their dismal defective lives. Like @hajario’s smalltown friend described in the last few posts.
Separately to all the above, the real contest is right now in 2022 to install corrupt electoral scorekeepers in as many statehouses as possible. Along w raging RW state legislative majorities that will deliver an R win in 2024 in almost every battleground state regardless of those states’ citizens’ desires.
That battle is going very well just now. Along with the pliant courts to wave it all through.
Do you think Fox News slants its coverage in order to support the Republican party over the Democratic Party?
I think it does. I think Fox News sees its mission as promoting the conservative cause. If it feels Donald Trump is helping the conservative cause, it will slant its coverage in support of him. And if it feels Donald Trump is hurting the conservative cause, it will slant its coverage against him.
Ashli Babbitt went from voting for Obama to dying for Trump. My mother has largely been apolitical her entire life until Trump came along. It’s been an amazing ride.
I think it slants its news to support a right wing worldview. Which is utterly NOT synonymous with the Republican party.
Could they or their owners decide to support a different wacko authoritarian, e.g. DeSantis over Trump? Certainly. IMO it’d take a LOT of routine stumbling by Trump to make that happen, but if, e.g., DJT suffered a debilitating stroke next week, pivot to e.g., DeSantis they would, and smartly too.
But I really do NOT see them ever backing an Establishment Republican ever again. They’re waaay too far out on the fake news / Authoritarian limb for that pivot.
If an Establishment Republican gets the nomination in ‘24, do you think Fox News could pivot (a) not so much to backing the Republican, exactly, but (b) merely to demonizing the Democrat to get to pretty much the same place? You know, declaring loudly and often that this is the most important election of our time, say by talking about — well, the future of the Supreme Court, if the Enemies Of America get their way; and so you’ve got to get out there and vote against that, see? Why, he said with dewy-eyed sincerity, the only hope for this country and your way of life is for you to stand up to the Democrats by voting [checks notes] Republican!
I think the odds of a non-Authoritarian R nominee to be so low as to be dismissible out of hand. Frankly I expect any serious effort that gets close to anointing an Establishment R as the nominee apparent will spilt the party. IMO the Authoritarians will not be denied their run in 2024, even if they hand the popular vote to the Ds by their overweening aggression.
But yes, clearly Fox will shill for the RW over the LW every time. They may be loudly holding their nose and talking a LOT about all the down-ballot races where the true red-meat-&-fangs Real RWs are, not the RINO they (the party) picked as their (champion). Or they’ll be backing the new Trump party or whatever euphemism they’ll be using for Naked Authoritarians.
But back the Right over the Left? You bet. 100%. I still don’t think that does much for any younger Romney lookalike sizing up his chances in 2024 via leveraging the traditional pre-Gingrich Republican machine and its backers.
I think there’s a lot of agreement between our positions. We may just be using different terminology.
I would disagree, for example, on there being a distinction between the wacko authoritarians and the establishment Republicans. Nowadays, nutjobs like DeSantis and Abbott and Cruz are the establishment Republicans; the future of the party belongs to them.
The difference between these guys and Trump is people like DeSantis and Abbott and Cruz know politics. They understand when to tell a lie and when to shut up. They understand how to do what it takes to win an election (including how to rig the outcome).
Trump, on the other hand, is lazy and stupid. All he does is say whatever drifts through his head and expect other people to deliver what he wants to him. He’s essentially a toddler.
Trump couldn’t get himself elected mayor of a small town. He needs a political organization like the Republican party to handle all of details of getting elected (or getting appointed after losing an election).
So the leaders of the Republican party are asking themselves, “Why are we carrying this idiot? Why don’t we drop him and get a guy who will carry his own weight and then do what he’s told?”
I don’t think he’s stupid. He’s just… average, and as George Carlin observed, “Think how stupid the average person is. Half the world is more stupid than that.”
Add the emotional maturity of a toddler and you’ve got a real winner.
I’ll buy the vast majority of your post w no quibbles. Clearly said and clearly compatible with the facts we can see.
The other authoritarians (DeSantis et al) are in a quandary. Trump gets out the kinds of voters they need. But he only (so far) gets them out for himself. Trump’s record to date as a powerful and decisive endorser of down-ballot candidates is weak at best. And the idea of Trump sitting out running for Prez and handing, (handing I tell you!!) the presidency on a silver gold platter to somebody else is simply unthinkable to the Orange Traitor. Whatever other moves he has, playing nice with others is not one of them.
Where I differ a bit from you is I still hold there is an Establishment rump of the R party which are not authoritarian. There are certainly many R voters who aren’t that, and candidates with matching sentiments. Nowadays many of those are non-voters or reluctant D voters. The residual bit of the R who’ve not imbibed the authoritarian Kool-Aid would like those voters and that electability back.
Are those folks now mostly in the R party’s cheap seats on the periphery, not at the head table making policy? In many ways yes; the authoritarian inmates have taken over much of the asylum. Certainly, the younger ones are on the outs looking in.
But IMO there’s still a lot of traditionalist R leadership and followership out there and there’s a nasty fight happening under the blanket right now. People that care about the real Constitution, real foreign & economic policy, and our real society (albeit with a flinty white R slant) more than they care about handing our country to an oligarch in the style of the Philippines or Russia in exchange for their slot at the trough.
These folks are comparatively quiet. As, frankly, are a hell of a lot of Ds. The loud braying (wrong mascot, but whatever) of the R authoritarians drowns out the public awareness of a lot of real politics that’s still going on.
Back in 2016 I predicted that if Trump almost won the R nomination he’d claim fraud and launch a 3rd party that I labeled the “T party”. Which I predicted might actually do well enough to start the long overdue revamping of our current 2-party ossified system. That didn’t happen then. It might happen now. Only a selfish nihilist like Trump would be willing to cast the Rs adrift for a decade or more in his pursuit of vainglorious power.
One might actually hope for this RW schism, if all the nearby “almost” scenarios weren’t so intrinsically dangerous. And the fear of that outcome is what is driving the rump Establishment Rs to try to take back the wheel before it’s too late for their party.
From Ginsberg’s Wiki page:
In September 2020, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Ginsberg that criticized President Donald Trump for encouraging supporters to commit voter fraud and for making false statements claiming fraud was widespread when it is not.[13] Ginsberg wrote, “The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process.”[14]
But according to most posters here, only Republicans are low information voters and only Republicans are guilty of hive mind - where a preconceived notion can never be challenged.
As linked above (with many more proofs available elsewhere), these people have been resisting the madness since before the last presidential election. Your insistence that anyone who is not already a part of your tribe must be evil is disheartening to me. It reminds me exactly of how some think all Democrats are Socialist pedophiles.
The case you are trying to make – is exactly what they are saying. You are the ones not getting it.They expressly are saying they have looked and tried to give the administration the benefit of the doubt-- and still, even twenty months later they have nothing!. You keep assuming these are the guys who were supporting Trump. Not all Fucking Republicans are the same!!!
Then they condemn the untrue charges and explicitly say that those false charges “corrode our democracy and leave a significant share of the population doubting the legitimacy of our system, seriously weakening the country” If you were not so eager to shoot every living thing with an R after their name, you could see they are in your camp speaking your truths, trying to rid all of us of the effects of Trump unleashed upon the electorate.
The need of this board to marginalize ALL Republicans and find fault with all of them defies logic the same way that assuming all Germans were NAZI’s defies logic.
No! That is not what they really said. That is what YOU really heard, but they said something very different and I highly recommend that you go back and read what they said AFTER you have taken off your RED means DEATH goggles. Try reading what they say without demonizing them because they are agreeing with you in fact, in law, in truth, and even in spirit.
Here is the core of a reasonable opposition party coming out waving white flags with their hands up in the air. Congratulations on shooting them dead because they are wearing the uniform of the enemy.
This line of thought would best be discussed in the Pit, but I refuse to lower myself to that. I had a response made yesterday, but before issuing it I wanted to wait to 1) Give other posters time to weigh in, and 2) Read through this again to see if it is as biased as I first thought. Upon second glance it is even more biased. I was determined not to go post to post offering rebuttals because it is rarely effective to tell others they are wrong and also because many don’t bother to read the rebuttals anyway. - - - Well I have determined that I owe it to each of you, and to myself to make a full throated defense of what seems to me to be an obvious truth. This is really tragic however in my opinion. How can you not see how similar you are being to the MAGAs (but flipped upside down)???
Republicans have acknowledged they did a terrible thing. Again, wrong. I bolded part of your quote (outside the quote box) to make a point. They didn’t do anything wrong and have been opposing Trump for years. They acknowledged that someone, that many someones in their tribe did MANY terrible things. And now they are calling on the rest of their tribe to QUIT DOING THE TERRIBLE THINGS!!!
These guys never benefited from the terrible thing, in fact they have always opposed it and in fact have now gone to the trouble of debunking the terrible thing. It is okay if you want to say the language is too soft or some small criticism like that. But to deny they are trying to debunk what their own people did and stop that insanity is absurd. Absurd!!
You are being the one who won’t look up!! Of course they want to go back to a time before Donald Trump! If you want to debate how great they were before then, I am likely to agree with you. But to blame these guys here for the lunacy perpetrated by others – lunacy they are trying to fight mind you, is just wrong. Please, please guys (and gals), do not be as shortsighted, petty and [word that means on the wrong side of history] as they are.
You now have allies from the enemy camp. Please quit trying kill them and discredit them just because they are from the enemy camp. Is the lesson from Schindler’s list that Schindler was a NAZI??? Because all I am hearing from most of you is that these guys are all Republicans so they must be guilty of all worst things any Republican has ever done. Right now I am still just frustrated, but the more each of you speaks – the more I think there really is not difference. They are all just warriors spoiling for a war and as long as they get to pile up bodies, it really doesn’t matter what the cause is. I have been holding you all in so much higher regard. But you all seem to be guided by this one principle: The only good Republican is a dead Republican. How do the Native Americans feel about that [slightly altered] phrase?? How do you feel about it.
Re-read the summary and try to give them a chance to be sincere and well meaning. If that is beyond your grasp (and I am speaking to everyone here, not any single poster), it will say more about you than it will about them in twenty or fifty years when history is finally canonized.
I am not going to reply to each rebuttal that offered to me, I assure you I have read them all and more than once. That said, this is the post I wanted to respond to when I pasted in the paragraph from Wikipedia above:
From Wikipedia:
In September 2020, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Ginsberg that criticized President Donald Trump for encouraging supporters to commit voter fraud and for making false statements claiming fraud was widespread when it is not.[13] Ginsberg wrote, “The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process.”[14]
In other words, he DID say it, very publicly, at the time. No one paid any attention. This is not some evil Republican villain stroking his mustache and planning evil. This paper was produced by a bunch of genuinely well placed and well respected republicans in order to debunk the fraud lies AND AGREE WITH YOU!! They went to the trouble of researching all the fraud claims and explaining in unambiguous and unassailable terms the utter lack of merit they ALL held. They are truly allies even if they are not Democrats!! Fucking get over it!! And now to my previous rant from yesterday - - -
This will be my last word on the matter, this is literally not worth my time.
If you seriously cannot tell the difference between Ben Ginsberg and hacks like Ron Johnson or Jim Jordan then you are little different from those Republicans who cannot tell the difference between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (or Maxine Waters.)
In all seriousness, your own narrative that ALL Republicans are bad actors and equally evil is the exact flip side of the coin of the MAGAs who believe all Democrats are cannibal, sex trafficking pedophiles. It is interesting that one of you used the phase “teaching a pig to dance” (or a horse to sing- not going to look up which version you used) upthread. Because trying to have a reasonable discussion with any of you seems to be the EXACT equivalent of trying to get a Trump supporter to watch the Hearings.
This is one time when the Bible has something useful to contribute (and you should all know by now that I am a devout atheist – but just in case I state so here and now).
First attend to the plank in your own eye - - - and only then attend to the speck in another’s (it reads brother’s- but you are obviously beyond seeing fellow Americans from a different party as brothers) eye. The point is examine your own views and opinions – question your own suppositions, know the things YOU know - and as a result you will not care about how misguided the other side is- except to help them see truth for their sake, not for your sake or the sake of your tribe.
I genuinely have no interest in a flame war in the pit. That just isn’t worth my effort, but I want to congratulate many of you for making Republicans seem no worse than these narrow minded progressives who have a complete inability to see any other point of view than their own, or even try to understand what the other side is trying to say.
The fact that I CAN see your point of view, and mostly agree with it does not diminish the fact that I can also see and understand the moral arguments the right is trying to make also (not the election denier bullshit, the few points they do and have cared about traditionally). I no longer agree with most of them, but I do understand and I do discuss those things with them. Just yesterday I had a half hour conversation with a smart, capable woman- mother of two who owns and shoots an AR style weapon. We had a nice pleasant conversation, questioned each other on the ins and outs of the matter and parted on good terms. I do not agree with all of her conclusions and she does not agree with all of mine, but mutual respect and allowance was achieved. I have to sincerely doubt any of you would have done anything more than convince her she is more right than ever and those liberals are beneath contempt.
In summary:
Not all republicans are the same.
Republicans are not the enemy, they are the opposition. They are a rival, and even the ones who are full of shit (which IS many of them) are also American citizens and member of our society if we like them or not. I am asking us all (myself included) to not only be polite to them - but to respect their basic human dignity.
One last thought because I cannot help myself. Most of you saw Ginsberg and Luttig testify in one of the hearings. I do not recall any comments except that Luttig talked too slow. In fact many here praised their testimony. Why are they now such partisan hacks?? You people baffle me.
“Own the libs” is like crack to conserative voters, and he delivers these voters to the R column like no one else. The “Own the libs” and the “Stop the steal!” voters are essentially one in the same, so the GOP is unlikely to discharge him from his role of delivering millions of guaranteed votes, and they will continue to push “The Big Lie” for that reason.
However, I do agree this report at the very least can cast doubt on The Big Lie to some voters, such that in key purple states and other competitive areas perhaps the needle is nudged just enough in the right direction. Democrats should be using this in their campigns to dismiss Trump and sow division and doubt among rank-and-file R voters: “See, even prominent conservatives dont believe the election was stolen”. This is a gift to Democrats that they can use it as as way to neutralize the topic of “election integrity” without having to show any other cards.
Okay, apparently my last post was not my very last word, I seem to have other words left to spew:
Teddy Roosevelt caused all kinds of party problems even before launching his own Bull Moose party. He was pretty extreme himself and he did screw around with McKinley and others if I am remembering history accurately.
I would nominate Eisenhower. The rumor in my neighborhood was that the Democrats wanted to nominate him too. He was a boring clerk who, with lots of help from George Marshall won WWII mostly on logistics (he was far from a field officer and the the book Fifteen Stars has some great instances of him being better suited for paperwork than for combat.
As president, he oversaw the greatest economy in our history (which had a top tax bracket of 95%!!!) and many of the technological advances we enjoy today. His big downfall (which Reagan used to crumble the Soviet Union) was to build up a huge (not Yuge, genuinely huge) stockpile of nuclear arms that bankrupted the commies trying to keep up with us, and he let the Dulles brothers turn the CIA into a playground of spy novel espionage and complete corruption due to lack of oversight.
He warned about the military industrial complex AFTER refusing to fund an aircraft carrier (that rumor has was only proposed because the Air Force had so much funding for Strategic Defense the Navy was to have a pork barrel project they didn’t need to calm inter-service rivalries), saying he could educate an entire generation of American kids for the price of that one carrier.
They didn’t just sign it !!! UGGG!
This is not some Democratic document they got a few marginal Republican to sign on to!
The authors of this report, fed up with the election lies and what those lies are doing to their party, took the initiative to research every single claim of voter fraud and DEBUNKED them! Then they wrote a report about their research to reach their own party members. They are not concerned with risk, for the most part they are not elected (or if they were they are now retired). They are citizens of influence who have a desire to educate their own party about being lied to and condemning both the lies themselves – and the underlying false claims the lies are built upon.
How is this not remarkably obvious to all of us??
This question depends upon why you want to take the train (I believe your logic is unsupported, please- you decide if I am right).
If the purpose is to get to a destination – then one train is as good as any other. If you miss one, nothing is lost by taking the next one. If the reason for taking the train is to chat up the girl (sorry, woman) in the second car – then yes if you miss that train all is lost.
If the goal is to eventually tamp down the big lie (which has obviously gone on too long) then later is better than never. This is not disarming a bomb – it is not the case that once the counter reaches zero and the bomb goes off and all is lost. This is correcting a misunderstanding. A big one for sure, and one that should have never seen the light of day-- but stomping it out now is better than never stomping it out.
I agree with this completely (despite a denial below). Even if this woman is not typical, most of the MAGA crowd, in my experience, believe what they are told by those they trust (by which I mean NOT the lib-tards). Rupert Murdoch is a more effective advertiser than Chiet/Day ever dreamed of being. He runs hour long adds every night in prime time and he runs them one after another with only a different talking head delivering the same message. We have had whole threads dedicated to how our relatives are poisoned by it. Stephanie Ruhle, a news anchor herself, routinely admits her parents are FOX News junkies who cannot be reached with any amount of facts or reason.
But if they reversed course and started saying the opposite – there would only be two days of confusion before the new content is gospel truth and the old content is ignored. Just like in Animal Farm.
No, but Rupert Murdoch does, and he owns the Wall Street Journal also. If he decides to dump Trump – he has the power to do it fifty times more effectively than the Republican Party could even hope to.
He could completely end Trump in less than two weeks. But Trump increases his viewership and therefore his revenue so Murdoch is not chomping at the bit to dump the chump. Keep in mind that every arena needs a heel. When it suits the controlling interest, they can make Trump the villain and give the Dems a week or two off.
Also, everyone who is leaving FOX, has left. The remaining talent has a synergistic relationship with the network. Everyone gets more wealth and power if they work together than if they battle against each other. There are no ideals in broadcasting, only profit, only revenue streams. Sure politics can claim to have ideals and platforms – and occasionally they even do. But broadcasting has only ratings and margin shares.
Before 1/6, one could make the argument that the stated intention to oppose the democratic process was merely rhetoric and thus, not everyone who voted for Trump or any other national Republican is an enemy of democracy.
However, only 10 House Republicans voted for impeachment after 1/6. The rest are fine with the destruction of democracy. So anyone who votes for them is also fine with the destruction of democracy. Do you seriously contend that more than a few percentage of Republicans will not vote for these authoritarians again in 2022? Even if there is an unprecedented blue wave in 2022 caused by 10% or so of them changing their votes or staying home after the violence (along with the single digit or low double digit percentage of people voting for new candidates or for those who did not support the coup), it will still almost certainly leave a majority of Republicans voting for people who supported the coup.
But do they have any influence on these “I’d never vote for a Democrat no matter what because they have horns, but I don’t like Trump” voters? You are talking about two distrinct groups: Republicans who would never ever ever abandon their party, and who think Democrats are literal Satan, and Republicans who give shit about the findings of a bunch of “prominent” people who are neither elected nor media personalities. I’m suggesting that the overlap between those two groups is vanishingly small.