Guardians Of Lincoln’s Legacy
There are no longer two healthy parties in America. The catastrophic mistake for our nation is to continue to see the fight as Democrats vs. Republicans, left vs. right. We are at war with an authoritarian movement fueled by former President Donald Trump. It includes many of the 147 Republicans who signed on to treason with their Jan. 6 votes objecting to Joe Biden’s win,;and it has grown since then.;
The authoritarian movement now holds so much power within what was the Republican Party that officials of goodwill are either purged or held hostage out of cowardly fear for their political careers or even out of fear for their safety.;Its what the rest of us do now that matters. It’s time to choose sides and take action:;to fight this authoritarian movement and become;one of President Abraham Lincolns guardians making sure that government of the people, by the people, for the people;shall not perish from the earth.;
The truth matters. Many have been lied to, and many have come to believe those lies. They are not the enemy for them we must offer the truth and to join us as Americans to find a way forward together.;
Republicans Are Suddenly Afraid Of Democracy
Were not a democracy, Republican Senator Mike Lee tweeted in the middle of Wednesday nights vice-presidential debate. He was reacting to something hed heard onstage there, in his home state of Utah. Another tweet: The word democracy appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. Its a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few. Hours after the debate Lee was still worrying the thought: Democracy isnt the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.
Why did Lee choose this momentless than four weeks before an election in which his party seems likely to suffer defeatto make the familiar, even pedantic, point that we live in a republic rather than a pure democracy? Why did he insist on the point so vehemently that he neglected to mention that power in the American system ultimately lies with the people, which means that our system could also be called a representative democracy? Did he mean rank as in foul, rancid, or outright? If the last, does that mean the tyranny of the majority leading to perverse rule by the few? What did this short, misleading course in Civics 101 have to do with anything?
Republicans Can Govern Without Winning A Majority That Threatens Our Democracy
So, lets talk about why Cheney is once again on the chopping block and what that means for the Republican Party moving forward that is, can we finally stop debating whether the GOP is Trumps party now?;
But first: the role of the Big Lie. For a while now, refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election has proven a fealty test of sorts to Trump, and its one Cheney has refused to take. How much of that is responsible for Cheneys current situation versus her politics being increasingly out of step with the rest of the party?
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nrakich :Its the entire reason for her current situation, Sarah.
Ideologically, Cheney is a faithful conservative at least as conservatism used to be defined. According to DW-Nominate, which uses voting records to quantify the ideology of every member of Congress on a scale from 1 to -1 , she has a score of 0.515.
And according to FiveThirtyEights Trump Score, she voted in line with Trumps position 93 percent of the time. Instead, her main transgression appears to be not going along with the Big Lie .
micah : Yeah, agreed. The idea that Cheneys troubles are about policy the argument that her hawkish foreign policy views or her free-trade-y views are behind her split with the bulk of the GOP is a bit silly?
Americans are living in two different realities right now.
micah: Yeah, agreed.
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Time To Reckon With Gop Radicalization
The lies about 2020 and the increasing dedication to destroying democratic institutions in the quest for power are inextricable from one another. As Jay Rosen says, the press is comfortable calling out the former it can be packaged as a fact check. But being forthright about the latter requires depicting one party as far and away the only primary threat to our democratic stability. Thats accurate, but its uncomfortably adversarial.
Relatedly, describing Republicans as cowards who fear Trump casts their machinations as mere reluctant efforts to cope with externally imposed circumstances theyd prefer not to be dealing with. This lets Republicans off the hook in a very fundamental way. It risks misleading the country about the true depths of GOP radicalization and the real dangers it poses.
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Trump Is Creating His Own American Republic Of Fear
This is a column about American cowards and an American hero, and what their behavior tells us about the future of democracy in this country and its reputation abroad.
First, let us look at the cowards, the congressional Republicans so fearful of President Donald Trump that they are unwilling to call out his rejection of a peaceful transfer of power, the bedrock of American democracy.
Just 27 of 247 congressional Republicans in the House and Senate were willing to acknowledge that Joe Biden was president-elect in a December poll by the Washington Post. They were too terrified of Trump to reject his lying rants about election fraud. Or to denounce the threats his fans are making against election officials of both parties around the country.
Unlike many of those fans, GOP legislators know Biden has won. Yet they are acting as if they live in Belarus, or Russia or China, where opposing an autocrat gets you jailed or poisoned, or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where it got you killed.
“Republic of Fear” is what they called Saddam’s Iraq, and despite the huge differences between his murderous tactics and Trump’s, the term seems apt for the bubble of fear in which GOP leaders live. Unless congressional Republicans bust that bubble soon, the American republic will face a grim next few years.
Dent echoes that thought, saying, “If 100 of them today said ‘game’s over’ it would have an enormous effect on the base.”
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Why Are Gop Lawmakers Afraid To Stand Up To Trump This Race Offers A Clue
WASHINGTON ;A nasty primary runoff in Georgia this week helped explain why congressional Republicans are so afraid of taking on President Donald Trump.
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle had maintained a lead for the GOP nomination in the states gubernatorial race since May, when he fell short of getting the 50 percent of the vote needed to win the nomination outright. He was considered the front-runner in the race, the one who had the best chance of taking on rising progressive star Stacey Abrams in the fall.;
But it all fell apart when, in a surprise move, Trump endorsed Brian Kemp, Georgias secretary of state and Cagles GOP rival in the race. The announcement blindsided;Cagles campaign and other GOP officials, including the leaders of the Republican Governors Association.;;
A leaked internal tracking poll for Cagles campaign that was obtained by a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed how the lieutenant governors poll numbers nose-dived after Trump endorsed Kemp, who cruised to victory Tuesday.
The dramatic boost for Kemp is a testament to Trumps enduring sway on the Republican electorate, despite growing criticism from GOP officials about his trade policies and his disastrous summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The president did not change the outcome, but it significantly impacted the margin, which means he had a very positive effect, Sen. Jonny Isakson said Wednesday of Trumps endorsement.
Richard Burr North Carolina
Burr, who has said he will not seek re-election, had previously voted to dismiss the impeachment trial on constitutional grounds. Burrâs term expires in 2022.
âI have listened to the arguments presented by both sides and considered the facts. The facts are clear,â explained Burr in a statement.
âBy what he did and by what he did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,â he explained, adding that he didnât come to âthis decision lightly.â
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Senior Republicans Should Recoil In Horror At Trump But Too Many Still Fear Him
The fate of the United States now rests on the stark choice the divided party faces: Trumps way or democracy
Surely this would be the moment. Surely the sight of a horde storming the US Capitol, smashing windows and breaking down doors, determined to use brute, mob strength to overturn a free and fair election, surely that would mark the red line. After five years dismissing those who warned that Donald Trump posed a clear and present danger to US democracy, branding them hysterics suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, surely this moment when they saw the citadel of that democracy overrun by men clothed in the slogans of neo-Nazism , waving the Confederate flag of slavery, racism and treason and carrying zip ties, apparently to bind the wrists and ankles of any hostages would, at long last, make Republicans recoil from the man who had led them to this horror.
Hours into the attempted and planned insurrection, Trump again made plain the bonds that connect him to the men of havoc. We love you, he told them in a video message, gently suggesting they go home. Youre very special. None of that is a surprise. They were only there for him, summoned to Washington by Trumps big lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen through fraud that they had been robbed of their champion by a wicked conspiracy that took in everyone from the Chinese Communist party to his own vice-president.
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Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Did Trump Damage American Democracy
Did Trump permanently damage American democracy? This question has spawned a veritable cottage industry of hand wringing over the state of American democracyunderstandably so. Never before have we had a president who schemed to overturn legitimate election results, who attacked the press and the civil servants who worked for him, who admired dictators, who blatantly profited from his public office and who repeatedly lied to the public for his own selfish purposes. But while Trumps four years of rhetoric have been a shock to democratic norms, did they inflict permanent damage on our democracy? My answer is a qualified no. The guardrails of democracy held. The institutions designed to check autocracy are intact.
Successful democratic systems are not designed for governments composed of ethical men and women who are only interested in the public good. If leaders were always virtuous there would be no need for checks and balances. The Founding Fathers understood this. They designed a system to protect minority points of view and to protect us from leaders inclined to lie, cheat and steal. Fortunately, we havent had many of those in our 200-plus years of history, which is why the Trump presidency sent such shock waves through a large part of the body politic.
Did Trump weaken the powers of Congress? No.
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Todays Republicans Really Hate Democrats And Democracy
1) Trumps supporters have embraced anti-democratic ideas
This chart shows results from a two-part survey, conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, of hardcore Trump supporters. The political scientists behind the survey, Rachel Blum and Christian Parker, identified so-called MAGA voters by their activity on pro-Trump Facebook pages. Their subjects are engaged and committed Republican partisans, disproportionately likely to influence conflicts within the party like primary elections.
These voters, according to Blum and Parker, are hostile to bedrock democratic principles.
Republicans Voting For Mrs Clinton
- Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state
- Ex-President George HW Bush
- Richard Hanna, New York congressman
- Hank Paulson, former treasury secretary
- Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser
- Chris Shays, former Connecticut congressman
- Meg Whitman, prominent Republican donor; CEO of Hewlett Packard
- William Bennett, former secretary of education
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Why Are Republicans So Afraid Of Voters
There is no both sides do it when it comes to intentionally keeping Americans away from the polls.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstandingvalues. It is separate from the newsroom.
As of Sunday afternoon, more than 93 million Americans had cast a ballot in the November elections. Thats about two-thirds of the total number of people who voted in 2016, and there are still two days until Election Day.
This is excellent news. In the middle of a global pandemic that has taken the lives of nearly a quarter of a million Americans, upended the national economy and thrown state election procedures into turmoil, there were reasonable concerns that many people would not vote at all. The numbers to date suggest that 2020 could see record turnout.
While celebrating this renewed citizen involvement in Americas political process, dont lose sight of the bigger, and darker, picture. For decades, Americans have voted at depressingly low rates for a modern democracy. Even in a good year, more than one-third of all eligible voters dont cast a ballot. In a bad year, that number can approach two-thirds.
Why are so many Americans consistently missing in action on Election Day?
For many, its a choice. They are disillusioned with government, or they feel their vote doesnt matter because politicians dont listen to them anyway.
Republicans Who Voted To Convict Trump Face Censure At Home
North Carolina Senator Richard Burr is the latest to be censured by local Republicans for his impeachment trial vote.
State Republican leaders in North Carolina voted to censure Senator Richard Burr over his vote to convict Donald Trump during last weeks impeachment trial, making Burr the latest to be rebuked for opposing the former United States president.
Burr, a third-term North Carolina Republican who has said he does not plan to seek re-election in 2022, was one of just seven out of 50 Republican senators to vote to convict Trump for inciting his supporters January 6 attack on Congress, which left five people dead.
The North Carolina Republican Party Central Committee voted unanimously to censure Burr, saying it agrees with the strong majority of Republicans that the effort lies outside the United States Constitution.
Trumps second Senate impeachment trial concluded on Saturday with a 57-43 vote in favour of convicting. The tally fell short of the two-thirds needed to secure conviction.
North Carolina Republican Chairman Michael Whatley condemned Burr for voting against the former president, calling the move a shocking and disappointing abdication of his duty to voters.
The Central Committee of the released a statement following their unanimous vote to censure Senator Richard Burr for his impeachment vote. #ncpol#ncgov#ncsen
NCGOP
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Names That Explain Why Republican Politicians Are Afraid Of Criticizing Donald Trump
While President Donald Trump was busy rhetorically destroying Americas neighbor to the north and disrupting the broader G7 conference over the weekend, you could have heard a pin drop among congressional Republicans.
And while the President was in Singapore meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a meeting that Republicans had decried when then-President Barack Obama said he would be open to sitting down with Kim the response from the bulk of Republicans back home was largely celebratory.
Why so quiet and respectful? Two names: Martha Roby and Mark Sanford.
Those are Republican members of Congress from Alabama and South Carolina, respectively. And both have been on-again, off-again critics of aspects of Trumps behavior and approach, both as a candidate and while in office. And both seem to be paying a political price for that willingness to criticize the President. Roby was forced into a runoff earlier this month with a Republican who cast her as insufficiently loyal to Trump. And now Sanford, a South Carolina Republican in the House, faces a serious primary challenge in his Charleston-area House seat from a state legislator portraying him as wait for it insufficiently loyal to Trump.
Trump endorsed Arrington in a blistering tweet on Tuesday afternoon, accusing Sanford of being unhelpful.
This, from CNNs own Harry Enten, captures why breaking with Trump in any real way creates real political peril for a GOP incumbent:
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Trump Aides Aim To Build Gop Opposition To Afghan Refugees
WASHINGTON As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban arrive in the U.S., a handful of former Trump administration officials are working to turn Republicans against them.
The former officials are writing position papers, appearing on conservative television outlets and meeting privately with GOP lawmakers all in an effort to turn the collapse of Afghanistan into another opportunity to push a hard-line immigration agenda.
It is a collaboration based on mutual conviction, said Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trumps most conservative immigration policies and among those engaged on the issue. My emphasis has been in talking to members of Congress to build support for opposing the Biden administrations overall refugee plans.
The approach isnt embraced by all Republican leaders, with some calling it mean-spirited and at odds with Christian teachings that are important to the white evangelicals who play a critical role in the partys base. The strategy relies on tactics that were commonplace during Trumps tenure and that turned off many voters, including racist tropes, fear-mongering and false allegations.
And the hard-liners pay little heed to the human reality unfolding in Afghanistan, where those who worked with Americans during the war and many others are desperate to flee for fear they could be killed by the new Taliban regime.
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