I’ll grant that I didn’t look at the cites in the post that you were replying to but, I’ll note, I suspect that you did not either.
If you’re standing in front of the door to a room and you’re spouting off about how you believe that the room has orange walls - that’s pretty dumb to do when you’re not basing that on anything, the door is literally five feet away from you, orange walls aren’t anywhere in evidence, and the door isn’t locked.
Maybe they’re hoping that Bolton will change his mind and come testify. They really, really, need to force Giuliani to appear, even if all he does is invoke the Fifth.
That is indeed a big difference. Thanks for the explanation.
That was addressed to asahi. I don’t want to get confused here.
But that is a loaded statement, as they say. I cannot respond to it at all unless you define to what lengths you think they would go to to “enforce” that.
Another off topic issue. It was discussed as the blue wave that wasn’t. My sources were saying comparable losses to the other party to recent other first termers would have left him with less party members in both the senate and the house. I didnt dig into it though.
Does anyone want to dig up party affiliation counts in the house and senate before and after recent first term midterms?
I think a substantial portion I would go so far as to fix elections and forcibly suppress of dissent.
I think at this point they would prefer to hold power the old fashioned way, and realize that going to the extremes I suggested would not be possible without risking complete revolt of the populace, but if such actions were required to hold power and they could get away with it, I haven’t seen any evidence on the part of the Republicans in the Senate or House that they would feel it was their moral obligation to stand against such actions.
You might get a few resignations, who will later write OP-eds to the Washington Post (before it gets shut down) decrying what the Democrats have driven their party to do, but that’s about it.
Since we’re just talking number of Americans, here are the numbers from Wikipedia for the Congressional elections:
2018 – Democrats win approximately 60.5 million votes, Republicans approximately 50.8 million
2014 – Republicans win approximately 40.1 million votes; Democrats approximately 35.6 million votes
2010 – Republicans win approximately 44.8 million votes; Democrats approximately 40 million votes
The Democrats increased their vote count in raw voter numbers, from 2014 to 2018, by over 25 million votes.
Once again, there’s absolutely no evidence the Democratic party is weakening, and plenty of evidence for the opposite. Wherever you’re getting your information on this from is fake news.
I think it is possible to overstate the desire of Republicans for a dictatorship. There’s probably some small number in power today, and certainly some percentage of their supporters, that would want single-party Republican rule. But most Republicans are simply your bog-standard politician. Which means they’re power-hungry, greedy, and corrupt. They want to be in power because it is better to be in power than not. And of course, there’s some percentage that legitimately believes that Republican policies are better for the country. It isn’t something that will happen in America instantly, it will be an erosion of democratic ideals over time. Republicans are flirting with authoritarianism, not jumping whole hog into putting in a dictator into power. If Republican voters don’t insist that they stop, if they continue to cheer them on, that’s how American democracy will fail. That why I said to Peebles, that at some point he’s going to have to choose party or country, and it applies equally to other Republican supporters on this board and elsewhere. And I get it, it is hard to accept that democracy is being eroded in the United States of America (which supposedly invented democracy, freedom and liberty). It is so easy to believe that it could never ever happen here. It is so hard to accept that the party you support is increasingly becoming hostile to democratic ideals. It is much easier to say, no way, I would never support such a party so it cannot be true.
And that’s why my confidence on American democracy continuing is fading. You look at the posts here, on Facebook comments, or other social media, and it is very clear that Republican supporters will believe everything the Republican party tells them. If you look at what is being said, posted, etc. over time, then it is perfectly clear that whenever the Republican party sinks lower, their supporters sink right along with them repeating their talking points. Look just at the Ukraine thing, the posts here have been exactly in line with Republican talking points every step of the way. There was no quid pro quo, well there was but we do this all the time, well maybe not this sort of thing exactly but the President has considerable leeway, well and so on.
I don’t know how the USA pulls itself out of this. Politics has become a sporting event. One side wins and one side loses. And there’s just this natural tendency to want my side to win AND the other side to lose. That’s just not healthy for a democracy. And again, I don’t know how you pull out of this.
So can someone explain to me what’s going on that Gym Jordan is being shifted between all the committees involved in the impeachment inquiry? Is it a coincidence or are they shuffling him around as the leading attack dog?
Not dictatorship, but feudalism. Close, but different.
Well, can you think of anyone better qualified to ignore obvious crimes?
I think the game they played with Supreme Court judges is evidence of that. And then Moscow Mitch saying that they’d confirm another Supreme in Trump’s last year if it came up just added more evidence.
To an extent, yes, that is exactly what I am saying. They’re more than just okay with it as long as they stay in power; they need to stay in power. The Republicans aren’t merely a political party; they are political faction that largely represents the oligarchical class. Consider the fact that Republicans gerrymander, they suppress votes, and yet they still lose elections because of the progressive backlash. Their gerrymandering is effective but not effective enough, so they will continue to find ways to suppress voters, which ultimately means suppressing democratic and libertarian values and behavior altogether.
He wouldn’t invoke the fifth so much as attorney-client privilege.
The problem with that approach is that Trump and him would then have to explicitly say Giuliani was acting as Trump’s lawyer in these shenanigans. But the big problem is that the acts we’re talking about can’t possibly be framed as the duties of someone’s personal lawyer. You can’t hire your lawyer to reno your bathroom and expect lawyer-client privilege. Especially when he finds that body in the wall.
from right before open hearings began:
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/08/jim-jordan-intelligence-committee-068049
and also:
Ha hahahaha!!!
Heh. Yeah, that, and the fact that Gym Jordan’s brand of high-volume fake outrage is popular both with the base and with Donald himself.
The Trump base considers noisy belligerence to be equivalent to Leadership, apparently.
This whole time I’ve been hoping that Trump’s GOP supporters were living in a grown-up Mean Girls situation. There are ways to deal with Mean Girls.
You know, the Mean Girl is the queen bee popular girl. She’s the ruler of the school. If you’re in her good graces you enjoy the reflection of her shine. If you cross her in any way she’ll destroy your reputation and social life. No one really likes the Mean Girl, but everyone is afraid to cross her because the consequences are too heinous. No one wants to be the unpopular social outcast.
Sometimes, though, some brave person steps forward and says what everyone else is thinking. They shrug off the Mean Girl’s petty reprisals. They show that crossing the Mean Girl can be done, that the fallout can be managed; before long she has lost her power over everyone and is simply regarded as a bitch.
Trump is the Mean Girl, the GOP is the rest of the school. I really thought some brave few would step forward and challenge him. I kept waiting for it to happen. Common word is that a majority of his party flat out can’t stand him, but they enjoy his reflected “glory”. It makes me sad that I overestimated the balls on some of the Republican Party members. I think it would only take a brave handful to start the mass exodus and show the world that Trump isn’t the Queen Bee, he’s just a bitch.
I think the only way to pry Congressional GOP lips from that flabby ass is to highlight things about him that their voters will hate.
That means: put aside the facts about Trump being an ignorant bully who’s reflexively vicious to women and people of color—the base loves that stuff.
What needs to be emphasized instead is Trump’s weakness and insecurity. The just-finished public hearings, for example, were fundamentally about Trump putting forth substantial effort and expense to get a foreign leader to say ‘we are going to investigate Biden’ … because Trump knows he can’t get re-elected without cheating.
He’s weak and insecure. He can’t win on his own–he needs MoscowMitch to sabotage all election-security efforts. He needs to make sure the Federal Election Commission is hamstrung by having too few members for a quorum. He needs to keep his anxious Republican handmaidens from saying that his Ukraine call was something less than Perfect.
Trump is weak. Trump is insecure.
That’s the fact his base doesn’t want to hear. And so it should be blared from every loudspeaker, until they can’t help but hear it.