Originally published at: MTG dreams of a post-secession scenario | Boing Boing
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For all their acting like they are in charge, shit like this just shows how they know that if we have free and fair elections, they are going to lose. The Trumpist wing of the party isn’t even half the country, it’s a minority of a minority party.
Stacey Abrams showed us how we can win going forward in 2020. I suspect the table is tilted even further towards Democrats in GA since 2018, as the Democratic strong hold spreads out for urban areas like ATL. Where I live now (and have for about 20 years) used to be solidly Republican although a few years ago, we moved to the edge of a Democratic district. Our old district just flipped Democratic. The recent map shows that they’ve given u on this area and are trying to consolidate power north and south of the Metro area… but the people who run those areas are doing horrible shit, like the recent slave labor revelations in southern GA. It was this state which helped secure the white house and the thinnest majority in the Senate. And now they are doing everything they can to wrestle control back to the GOP in the state. But they will have to basically purge yet more voters (which they’re trying) and to cheat to win. And the party is split here in GA anyway, between the more moderate Kemp wing (and he was farther to the right than his GOP predecessors) and the Trump wing that MTG represents. Trump is going to split the GOP and likely help throw the gubernatorial election to the Democrats, because Abrams is incredibly effective at getting out the vote, and if Trump’s picks win the primary, we’ll likely see a repeat of some more moderate republicans sitting the election out or even voting for Abrams.
The danger of authoritarianism is very strong, but if we take it seriously, push back against it, and use ever legal means at our disposal to ensure a fair and safe election, they won’t win. They are getting so bold, because they are losing. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to do the work to ensure that they lose.
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Fomenting succession should lead to expulsion by Congress. Loss of any post employment benefits or pension & being put on the no fly list.
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Can you imagine how fucked the country would be if California cut the rest of them off? (Oh CA would have problems too but I think the rest of the country would be more worse off)
They really do live in an alternate reality fantasy world with no grounding in how shit currently works.
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I believe in 2016 that then Gov. Brown suggested we could build a wall on the Arizona/Nevada borders.
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I suspect the voting patterns across much of the US are moving against the GOP - which is why they are busy putting their cronies in as election officials to supplement the huge number of Trump-appointed judges who will be ready to rule in their favour even when there is no evidence of fraud. They are targeting toss-up seats to ensure their guys are in place next time round:
And whilst the UK doesn’t have the same history of politicising the judiciary, the Conservatives are busy following suit by putting in place voter ID laws and removing independent oversight of elections in favour of putting it under the control of ministers. Throw in their plans to change the law in order that the sitting government can determine the date of the next general election and the politicisation and deliberate dismantling of public service broadcasting and we are well on the way to living in a ‘managed’ democracy of one party rule.
I’d like to hope the GOP and Tories split, but the right in both the US and UK is incredibly good at hanging together to secure power even when they are outvoted and lack legitimacy. Both parties have been busy purging themselves of anyone who isn’t sufficiently subservient to the Dear Leader which is helping stifle internal criticism, so we can only hope they become sufficiently divorced from large parts of the electorate that their traditional voters sit on their hands or actively support the opposition.
Dark days for democracy. Australia is in much the same state, but they have the saving grace of a grown-up preferential voting system which could break the right if people only bothered to use it.
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She has about as much place in the federal government as her white supremacist predecessors from the south in the 1850s and 1860s did.
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Yes there are precisely zero conservatives in the states of California or New York and more so if they did exist they would not once in a million years consider moving into a red state.
Makes perfect sense.
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To paraphrase Jack Black: I’m fairly certain that National Divorce is just secession for stupid people.
(I though this was by Robin Williams, but I just looked it up).
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You don’t have to suspect. It’s a pretty well-established fact at this point.
Agreed.
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Stop referring to her as that please. Magic: The Gathering nerds don’t deserve to be associated with her.
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US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 3:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Emphasis mine, weird capitalization from the original.
Seems like fomenting secession is not supporting the Constitution, so Ms. Greene is clearly in violation of her oath of office, which gives the house not only the right, but the responsibility to eject her from office.
I’m not a constitutional scholar, so my interpretation may be off, but this does seem pretty clear.
(Edited to correct a typo.)
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It is. They are very intent on ending the constitution as it stands and ensuring white, minority rule. Rep. Cori Bush, has called for MTG and others to be expelled on those grounds…
But since we have such a close split in congress and there are none too few Democrats who are afraid to call what is happening by it’s name, that’s likely not going to happen.
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The 14th Amendment is even more clear:
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
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I suspect the voting patterns across much of the US are moving against the GOP
This is the funniest thing to me … the GOP has chosen a position that shrinks their voter pool - the use of “RINO” has exploded in the past 3 years … but nobody is forcing them to? They’re just making it harder for themselves for no reason.
Primarying Brian Kemp and Lisa Murkowski and Greg Abbott and Liz Cheney from the right is such a self-own.
Living for it.
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Because they no longer care about the rule of law or about convincing people of their political positions. They have enough members in their party who believe that they are correct and that they will use whatever means at hand, including violence and electoral subversion to get and retain power. The fascist wing of the GOP firmly believe that they are in an existential struggle for the “soul” of America making any tactics they employ morally correct to them.
And this will cause problems for more “moderate” members of the party (ie the ones who at least believe in a fig leaf of democracy), but if they accomplish their goals, it will make it far easier to create an authoritarian state.
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Which is why they’ve simultaneously been working so hard to ensure that the outcomes of elections are not determined by which side has the most voters.
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I live in Eastern Washington and work in a clinic, so I see a lot of people in my day to day. I can think of at least five occurrences where I spoke to people who have recently moved here from California, and NONE of them were liberal. Quite the contrary, they are hardcore authoritarian conservatives who were looking to get out of the “failed state”. Come to think of it, most moved to North Idaho. They are moving to red states and making them redder as a result.
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I had a friend who lived in Oregon for years, and she’s told me that there is none too few of people like that there, too. They’re the ones who want to create a new state, The STate of Jefferson, and break off parts of Idaho, WA, and Oregon…
But there really are no “solid” states. But it wouldn’t matter nearly as much if the conservative party had not gone full of authoritarian in recent years.
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