We’ll see. They are certainly losing voters, in part because they literally have no platform other than white Christian male supremacy and tax cuts, but also because of the fringe of the party.
However, if they can successfully suppress various groups from voting in a majority of states, either via laws or violence/threats of violence, they can retain power nationally and locally. The problem for them is even with voter suppression, you have a motivated and organized opposition starting to work with the Democratic party to ensure that voting does matter. Violence will be their last resort.
My feeling is that most of these people were attracted to the party for not caring about democracy (or governance for that matter) to begin with. Power and money is their goal. I doubt they will be convinced. They need to be replaced, but how do we do that?
I think it depends on when they came into the party, though. Even now, i don’t think everyone in the party is like this or agrees with it. It sounds like at least some of the people in congress who ended up voting against the certification did so under duress (or so they were telling reporters anonymously). Plenty of people went along with all this because it won them votes. Just look at Loeffler. That’s precisely what happened with her. Anyone could see that she was putting on a show for votes. I’d say that the post-Tea Party GOP has been getting ever more toxic and extreme.
To be fair, that’s a problem in both parties. There are most certainly people who come to politics for the money and power who are Democrats, too. It’s a problem of our political system, especially post Citizens United.
The GOP has to do that by looking at their party and cleaning house. That only happens if they experience consequences for all of this, which includes legal consequences, as well as them getting voted out of office. That means organizing primarily via the Democratic party, especially on the local level.
My son quoted something to me that he saw online this morning: “McConnell calling Taylor Greene cancer is like prostate cancer calling ovarian cancer cancer.”
I feel like McConnell is signaling an early retirement, or … something. In any case, something seems wrong with him, speaking up like this about a fellow Republican. Even a few months ago, I’d bet he would have deflected or defended her.
I listened to the embedded podcast series about McConnell recently, and it seems his one enduring trait is to see where the party is headed and kind of pre-empt it. It’s the explanation they give about how he rose to and then stayed in power.
Maybe he’s planning to retire, but I’m inclined to see him as the wind sock pointing the direction that the “main” part of the party is headed, and watch with interest and fear as the other parts begin splintering off.
He clearly did not do that in this case, though. Trump’s authoritarian tendencies were never hidden. Who he attracted to the party was never a secret. And McConnell did his level best to enable Trump’s worst tendencies when it got him what he wanted (tax cuts and far right judges).
True, but he’s not very prescient. So if the tides are just now starting to turn, because of the recent shitstorm, Mitch will be just ever so slightly out in front.
Mind you, I don’t give him credit for any kind of conscience or morals. Just maybe one of those innate talents for finding power/safety. Like the protagonist in “Perfume.” He waits for the exact right moment to squall.
Probably so, and he’ll get away with his role in all this with no consequences because he turned at just the right time.
But I think we should remember that who trump was was very much on display during the 2016 campaign (and well before, of course) and for his entire presidency. McConnell did nothing but enable him from the day he got into office. It really should have been beyond the pale to support him, but Moscow Mitch is power hungry and will do whatever he can to accrue power to himself and to rake in the big donations. He was willing to empower a wanna-be autocrat, and everyone should endlessly call him out on that.
Exactly. Not arguing any of that at all. I’m pretty sure we’re on the same page re: Mitch.
Mitch is a scourge on humanity. His one talent seems to be discerning the change in the wind one nanosecond before it shifts, and positioning himself to weather that shift in the best position.
That’s what I got from the series anyway. And ever since then, I’ve been trying to view his actions through that lens. So his current posturing tells me that the GOP are going to try to pretend like they are against all this horrid mess they enabled and propped up. At least the main part of the party. The fringe will lag, but his actions indicate a slow slogging shift.
I’m not really in a position to do so, but for political operatives I think reading his signals could be super helpful to craft strategies to, for example, make sure they don’t get away with the stuff you’re talking about.
Yep. The bottom line is that a stable, predictable, and profitable country will gain you more $, even if a larger percentage of it goes out as taxes. And… you can always pull shenanigans like offshoring, etc…
Nah. That’s giving Yertle too much credit. He was the turtle behind the throne, as shamelessly enabling Toadstool as he undermined the Obama administration by, among other things, abrogating his oath to the US Constitution.
Unfuck him. MTG is a cancer Mitch helped metastasize.
This has nothing to do with the right and wrong and looniness of things. Greene’s whole movement is not giving up on insurrection. I think Mitch is distancing because of things that WILL happen, and probably kicking back against threats he and other Republicans are receiving from these people.
I think it is possible we’re looking at the birth of an American ISIS, and the people who were thrusting in the group conception want to get as far away as possible.
