Republicans Burn the Republican Party Down to the Ground

[allison22]

The decision should have been easy: Do you want to stick by an overwhelmingly unpopular former president who potentially has both civil and criminal liabilities, or do you want a fresh start for a party in need of new ideas? Republicans, remarkably, chose the former.

Quinnipiac’s most recent poll highlights the Republicans’ dilemma. By a 75 percent to 21 percent margin, Republicans “would like to see [former president Donald Trump] play a prominent role in the Republican Party.” However, overall, “Americans say 60-34 percent that they do not want Trump to play a prominent role in the Republican Party.” Even worse: “A majority of Americans, 55-43 percent, say Trump should not be allowed to hold elected office in the future. Republicans say 87-11 percent that Trump should be allowed to hold elected office in the future.”

Further, a majority of Americans (54 percent) think Trump was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. An even higher percentage (55 percent) think the assault would not have happened without him. An astounding 68 percent think the former commander in chief did not do enough to stop the siege.

Republicans are bound to a figure who is toxic and utterly unacceptable to a significant majority of the country. Republicans in 2022 will be tied to him or will rush to embrace him, rendering candidates repugnant outside of deep-red areas. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might like to distance himself from the disgraced former president, but after saving Trump from conviction, it will be difficult to disentangle the party from the man who instigated a violent coup, no matter what McConnell said on the Senate floor after voting to acquit him.

The groups that ran from the GOP in 2020 — women, young people, non-Whites and the college educated — are the same voters who are most adamant about getting Trump out of public life. Only 26 percent of women, 37 percent of young voters, 18 percent of college-educated Whites and 28 percent of non-Whites want him to be a major figure in the GOP.

The party’s leader is a red flag for these groups, which will be incentivized in 2022 to defeat his enablers. All those Republican House swing districts who ran to embrace the insurrectionist in chief will face the wrath of anti-Trump voters without him on the top of the ticket to drive turnout. Democrats chasing Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and even Ohio will ask a simple question: Do you want someone who supported the instigator of a deadly insurrection, or someone who thought that such conduct should be punished?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/16/republicans-tied-themselves-an-anvil/

 

[Dribble]

Follow the money. Boycott the companies that donate to the GOP. You can't fix stupid...but you can yank their teeth

 

[CornusKousa]

More progressives who think it's Democrats who elect and support Republican politicians.....LOL

 

[bodysong]

The war is over, but Trump Loyalists continue as if it is not over-
The vote was true, and Grandpa Joe is leader of our nation.

In his day, states devoted to slavery caused President Lincoln's life
to be miserable. White Supremacists of 2021 desire the same lifestyle
as their ancestors- the right to torment, torture, and kill members of minority
communities. Their solution to the Constitution is to burn it, and burn human bodies.

The pity of the situation, is only a small minority of Republicans have converted into
Trump Loyalists and Conspiracy Theory Fanatics.

Some Republicans have decided to revert, to begin behaving as true, real Republicans.

Trump Loyalists are punishing him-

Though the notice didn't specifically mention Toomey, four party insiders
said Monday that there's growing momentum behind a push to censure the senator."

Washington County GOP Chair Dave Ball went even further during an interview
with KDKA-TV.

"We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there
to do the right thing or whatever he said," Ball argued.

https://www.rawstory.com/republicans-censure-impeachment-2650548308/

PA County GOP Official Lashes Out at Pat Toomey for Voting to Convict Trump:
We Did Not Send Him to DC to ‘Do the Right Thing or Whatever’

“We sent him there to represent us.”

“This is a matter of magnitude beyond a simple up or down vote
on some trade policy or something,” Westmoreland County GOP
chair Bill Bretz added.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/pa-co...-him-to-dc-to-do-the-right-thing-or-whatever/

Pat Toomey is facing a Republican backlash in Pennsylvania for voting to convict Trump

Philadelphia Inquirer

Westmoreland GOP censures Toomey while Allegheny chair urges caution

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Republican senator who voted to convict Trump was not sent to DC to
'do the right thing', his party complains

The Independent

 

[YDB95]

I still think it's plain old fear. They've seen what happens to any incumbent who openly opposes Trump in any way.

 

[Jesus_Ateo]

Republican policies are unpopular.

For the past 40 years, we've watched as Republicans in power have enacted policies that have meant fewer jobs, lower wages for the working class, more violence against minorities, more student loan debt, huge tax breaks for the rich and wealthy criminals like Donald Trump get away with breaking the law with impunity.

The Republicans know that their policies are unpopular. So, the obvious next step is to CHANGE THEIR POLICIES!

We know from research that the voters would overwhelmingly support policies such as increasing funding for veterans’ mental health services, strengthening and preserving Medicare and Social Security, and reforming the student loan system. So, it would make sense for Republicans to adopt changes to their party platform and embrace those popular policies, right?

To most of us that would seem logical, but the Republican response has been to double down on unpopular policies and make it more difficult to vote. They push voter ID laws, close down polling places, engage in voter intimidation, remove voting machines from polling places, shut down post offices and remove mail boxes and mail sorting machines to make voting by mail more difficult, remove people's names from the voter rolls and in Florida they've even brought back poll taxes to discourage people from voting.

Republicans don't seem to give a damn what the voters want. But, they know that their policies are unpopular, so they try to stop the American People from voting.

 

[Jesus_Ateo]

By Tuesday morning, the residents of Colorado City, Tex., were getting anxious. More than 24 hours had passed since a deadly Arctic blast knocked out power across the state, leaving them without heat or electricity in below-freezing temperatures. To make matters worse, many also lacked running water, forcing them to haul in heavy buckets of snow each time they needed to flush their toilets.

Residents turned to a community Facebook group to ask whether the small town planned to open warming shelters, while others wondered if firefighters could do their job without water. But when Colorado City’s mayor chimed in, it was to deliver a less-than-comforting message: The local government had no responsibility to help out its citizens, and only the tough would survive.

“No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Tim Boyd wrote on Tuesday in a now-deleted Facebook post, according to KTXS and KTAB/KRBC. “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”

Boyd’s tirade, which also demanded that “lazy” residents find their own ways of procuring water and electricity, immediately drew backlash. Later on Tuesday, Boyd announced his resignation and admitted that he could have “used better wording.”

The controversy highlighted how one of the worst winter storms in decades is testing the limits of the embrace of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism in Texas. The state’s decision to skirt federal oversight by operating its own power grid is the one of the main reasons that close to 3.3 million residents in Texas still lacked electricity by early Wednesday morning, while outages in other hard-hit states had dwindled to less than one-tenth of that size. As of late Tuesday, grid operators still couldn’t predict when the lights might turn on, and advocates were warning that Texas’s poorest and most vulnerable residents were at risk of freezing to death. At least 10 deaths in Texas have been linked to the winter storm since Monday, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The failure to deliver basic services has angered countless Texans, including top-ranking elected officials. But in Colorado City, Boyd rejected the notion that municipal governments or utility companies had any obligation to provide paying customers with necessities like heat and running water during a catastrophic winter storm.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ages-colorado/

 

[YDB95]

Silly mayor, Republicans only vote for that kind of thing for those other people, you know the ones - wink wink, nudge nudge - not for themselves!

 

[CornusKousa]

Republican policies are unpopular.

For the past 40 years, we've watched as Republicans in power have enacted policies that have meant fewer jobs, lower wages for the working class, more violence against minorities, more student loan debt, huge tax breaks for the rich and wealthy criminals like Donald Trump get away with breaking the law with impunity.

The Republicans know that their policies are unpopular. So, the obvious next step is to CHANGE THEIR POLICIES!

We know from research that the voters would overwhelmingly support policies such as increasing funding for veterans’ mental health services, strengthening and preserving Medicare and Social Security, and reforming the student loan system. So, it would make sense for Republicans to adopt changes to their party platform and embrace those popular policies, right?

To most of us that would seem logical, but the Republican response has been to double down on unpopular policies and make it more difficult to vote. They push voter ID laws, close down polling places, engage in voter intimidation, remove voting machines from polling places, shut down post offices and remove mail boxes and mail sorting machines to make voting by mail more difficult, remove people's names from the voter rolls and in Florida they've even brought back poll taxes to discourage people from voting.

Republicans don't seem to give a damn what the voters want. But, they know that their policies are unpopular, so they try to stop the American People from voting.

Yet they gained ground everywhere except the US senate and WH....which Democrats won by thin margins.

And the federal (R)'s siding with (D)umz are getting excoriated by their states, voters and party.

I don't think just being democrats is going to get the (R)'s re-elected....because the people electing (R)'s, the people sending them money?? Don't want Democrats or their politics. You fucking retards.

 

[jaF0]

The Atlantic chimes in:

The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages

The Atlantic|15 minutes ago

Ironically, the GOP is indeed replicating another political party in another time, but not as the heroes they imagine themselves to be.


https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...blican-party-is-now-in-its-end-stages/618132/

 

[SecretSapphic]

On Thursday, writing for The Atlantic, Naval War College professor and Trump-skeptic conservative Tom Nichols compared the current state of the Republican Party to the decline of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1970s — not in terms of ideology, but in terms of the corruption and stagnation thereof.


"The Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes," wrote Nichols.

"No one thinks much about the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, and no one really should," wrote Nichols. "This was a time referred to by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as the vremya zastoi — 'the era of stagnation.' By that point, the Soviet Communist Party was a spent force, and ideological conviction was mostly for chumps and fanatics. A handful of party ideologues and the senior officers of the Soviet military might still have believed in 'Marxism-Leninism' but by and large, Soviet citizens knew that the party's formulations about the rights of all people were just window dressing for rule by a small circle of old men in the Kremlin."

This kind of decline, wrote Nichols, is exactly what the GOP is going through now.


"The Republican Party has, for years, ignored the ideas and principles it once espoused, to the point where the 2020 GOP convention simply dispensed with the fiction of a platform and instead declared the party to be whatever Comrade — excuse me, President — Donald Trump said it was," wrote Nichols. "Like Brezhnev, Trump has grown in status to become a heroic figure among his supporters. If the Republicans could create the rank of 'Marshal of the American Republic' and strike a medal for a 'Hero of American Culture,' Trump would have them both by now."


There is no coming back from this kind of decay, Nichols argued.

"Another lesson from all this history is that the Republicans have no path to reform," wrote Nichols. "Like their Soviet counterparts, their party is too far gone. Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Communist Party, and he remains reviled among the Soviet faithful to this day. Similar efforts by the remaining handful of reasonable Republicans are unlikely to fare any better. The Republican Party, to take a phrase from the early Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, should now be deposited where it belongs: in the 'dustbin of history.'"

https://www.rawstory.com/end-of-the-gop/

 

[Articulate_and_Analytical]

Today’s GOP base is increasingly rural, dominated by evangelicals who are anti-gay and anti-science, and by angry, pro-Confederacy whites who are strangely preoccupied by the Second Amendment and Mexicans. Party leaders have stood silently as Trump placed Hispanic babies in cages, told congresswomen of color to “go back” where they came from, and tear gassed protestors supporting racial equality and justice.

Today's GOP has become anti-science, anti-Democracy and anti-education.

Instead of embracing Democracy and science, they've embraced QAnon, conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, the Proud Boys, domestic terrorism and Donald Trump.

They've basically become an anti-American, anti-immigrant, pro-fascism religious cult.

How long can something like THAT survive in America as a political party?

 

[PaxNurgle]

I WAS a Republican once. A long time ago. I believed in the principles of free markets, personal liberty, efficient government, and a live-and-let live ethos. I wanted a strong foreign policy but was against needless intervention in foreign wars. I proudly voted for George H.W. Bush in my first ever presidential election when I was a fresh-faced 18 year old and he was running against some crusty old guy, can't even remember his name now, Dukmejian or something (some Democrat anyway.) I did not agree with either of the Iraq wars, and held that against Bush (and his son, 12 years later) but I still believed the Republicans had something to offer that I could support.

Until the flagrant authoritarianism, racism, blatant self-serving corruption, reckless foreign policy, callous disregard for the poor and middle class, anti-environmentalism, anti-health, anti-science, and pretty much the OPPOSITE of personal liberty outside of the right to bear arms, became the rallying cry for the GOP. And with Trump, the worst elements of all these things seem to come to a head and be magnified ten-fold. So, as a result, I felt abandoned by the GOP, forced to vote Democrat by default. Because even as much flak as Biden gets, I would STILL vote for him in a heartbeat- because the alternative is clearly far, far worse.

I am not a progressive, not a liberal, not a conservative, neither right nor left wing. (though because I am not some whacko extremist I probably get labeled as a "Socialist" by the various Dmitri screen names and their ilk) I just look for rational, practical solutions to issues facing our country, and a government that runs this country efficiently, fairly and effectively. I have not seen that over the past four years.

 

[The_Trouvere]

The Republican Party remains the party for the rich. It has become the party of poorly educated whites and retired whites. The programs these people need are threatened by Republican tax cuts for the rich, but they are to stupid and ignorant to realize that. The Republican Party deserves to be called "the Old Stupid Party."

 

[Funit]

The Republican Party remains the party for the rich. It has become the party of poorly educated whites and retired whites. The programs these people need are threatened by Republican tax cuts for the rich, but they are to stupid and ignorant to realize that. The Republican Party deserves to be called "the Old Stupid Party."

The current Democrat President is a white haired old millionaire.

 

[jaF0]

The Good Ole National Socialist Movement Party:

 

[Schlank]

Republican policies are unpopular.

For the past 40 years, we've watched as Republicans in power have enacted policies that have meant fewer jobs, lower wages for the working class, more violence against minorities, more student loan debt, huge tax breaks for the rich and wealthy criminals like Donald Trump get away with breaking the law with impunity.

The Republicans know that their policies are unpopular. So, the obvious next step is to CHANGE THEIR POLICIES!

We know from research that the voters would overwhelmingly support policies such as increasing funding for veterans’ mental health services, strengthening and preserving Medicare and Social Security, and reforming the student loan system. So, it would make sense for Republicans to adopt changes to their party platform and embrace those popular policies, right?

To most of us that would seem logical, but the Republican response has been to double down on unpopular policies and make it more difficult to vote. They push voter ID laws, close down polling places, engage in voter intimidation, remove voting machines from polling places, shut down post offices and remove mail boxes and mail sorting machines to make voting by mail more difficult, remove people's names from the voter rolls and in Florida they've even brought back poll taxes to discourage people from voting.

Republicans don't seem to give a damn what the voters want. But, they know that their policies are unpopular, so they try to stop the American People from voting.

We are about to be hit with a tidal wave of voter suppression legislation by Republican legislatures throughout the country.

Republicans are doing this because they think they can gain an electoral advantage from making it harder for Black, brown and young voters to participate in the process. This is the reaction of a party that knows it can't compete for a majority of the votes. So it is acclimating itself to minority rule through a number of tactics. Gerrymandering is one piece of it. But certainly, voter suppression is a big piece of it.


The proposed measures largely aim to limit mail voting access, impose stricter voter ID requirements, slash voter registration opportunities and enable more aggressive voter roll purges.

 

[Champakian]

*chuckle*

It's always fun to see people who hate Republicans tell them who their
candidates should be because in their minds, they are always,

gracious losers...




Exactly how many times was President Biden a gracious loser?

In my mind, once a loser, always a loser,
and that's who voted for him.

Those people who truly believe that the USA is not, never was, and never will be -- great.

 

[Champakian]

Laurel



Exactly how many alts do you pull the strings for?

 

[Stephen_Coyle]

Former Congressman Joe Walsh ripped into former colleagues speaking at Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, noting that the the Republican Party of today is not the Republican Party he once belonged to.

Walsh repeatedly said the GOP is now "Trump's party" before singling out Republican Congressman Paul Gosar who spoke to a white nationalist gathering late Friday night.

"You mentioned, earlier in your show, a guy I served with in Congress, Paul Gosar," Walsh stated. "He missed that Covid-relief bill vote last night because he keynoted a white-nationalist event. Gosar ought to be censured, he ought to be removed from his committees. The Republican Party should, unequivocally, condemn white supremacy, but they won't because this is Donald Trump's party."


"Lindsey, I think it's done," Walsh pronounced. "I think the Republican Party is -- we are watching a dying political party. We're watching a political party die, before our very eyes. This Republican party is like one of those far-right, European parties. I think it's done as a national party. What used to be fringe in the Republican Party, this bigotry and this intolerance, the culture war, as you call it -- it's now the base of the party. It cannot be fixed. It cannot be reformed."

 

[Ireadforpleasure]

Have you seen them down at CPAC?

Right now the Republicans are worshipping a tacky gold-colored statue of Trump that's a cross between the Bob's Big Boy mascot and the golden calf idol the Israelites began to worship when Moses went up to Mount Sinai.

Oh, and on the same day the Republicans at CPAC rolled a literal golden idol of Donald Trump onto the floor, a Japanese cult leader viewed as a messianic figure from the planet Venus showed up to address the crowd for the tenth year in a row.

Yep, CPAC, a gathering of religious cultists, conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and the anti-science crowd.

Ike Eisenhower would throw up if he could see what his party has become.

 

[bondageanddiscipline]

For the foreseeable future, the GOP is a cult of personality headed by a vicious, dangerous authoritarian. Those with a conscience and love of democracy still in the party need to end the denial. They need to figure out how and when to separate themselves from a party that embraces American fascism, based on white supremacy, irrationality, ignorance, xenophobia, antisemitism, violence, and anger and dehumanization.

 

[JackLuis]

GOP Leader attacked Dems for passing survival checks late at night -- and it did not end well

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went on Fox News on Friday to complain about a late-night vote to pass the next round of coronavirus stimulus
McCarthy posted a clip of his appearance with a message attacking Democrats.

"Democrats just scheduled a vote for 2am tonight," he complained. "They are so embarrassed by all the non-COVID waste in their bill that they are jamming it through in the dead of night."
Tired of ads? Want to support our progressive journalism? Click to learn more.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain responded to McCarthy's complaints on Twitter.
"Democrats working late into the night to get you $1400 rescue checks; Republicans lining up to vote no," he posted.

Polling shows Klain's argument is resonating with voters -- even Republicans.

"While Republicans in Congress have balked at the overall price tag for Biden's proposed package, new Morning Consult/Politico polling shows that the public — including Republican voters — overwhelmingly supports the legislation," Morning Consult posted on Wednesday. "In the poll, which was conducted Feb. 19-22 among 2,013 registered voters and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points, 76 percent said they back the stimulus package, including 52 percent who said they 'strongly' support the bill. Only 17 percent of voters said they oppose it."

Rethuglicunts can they get even stupider?

 

[JackLuis]

Here's how white evangelicals found themselves worshipping a golden Trump

Social media was ablaze this morning with a video taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington of a golden statue in the image of Donald Trump. People right away associated the graven image with the golden calf of the Bible—when Moses took so long bringing Yahweh's Law down from Mt. Sinai that his brother succumbed to pressure to erect an idol to a competing god. "Mentioned in Exodus 32 and I Kings 12 in the Old Testament, worship of the golden calf is seen as a supreme act of apostasy, the rejection of a faith once confessed," according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. "The figure is probably a representation of the Egyptian bull god Apis in the earlier period and of the Canaanite fertility god Baal in the latter."

Now, there's more important stuff going on right now. The parliamentarian of the United States Senate, for instance, ruled last night that the provision in the president's covid relief package that raises the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour cannot pass by way of "reconciliation," which is a special budget rule requiring a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes. That, plus the reluctance of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to monkey with the rule, means the hard work of governance is becoming visible. By comparison, a statue of "the Golden Ass," as someone quipped, seems rather petty. I disagree. This image captures something important and dire about the forces that still threaten our republic. It's worth our time thinking about them.

Yep, a Golden Ass for the GQP to kiss!

 

[YDB95]

Exactly how many times was President Biden a gracious loser?

He ran for president unsuccessfully twice before getting the nomination in 2020. On both occasions he left without anything resembling the months-long tantrum we got from Trump. Other than that he's never lost an election. So I guess the answer is, twice.