Officer Goes From ‘sadness’ To ‘rage’
Sicknicks partner on the Capitol police, Sandra Garza, wrote an essay about the attack and the aftermath in which she said in part, I saw officers being brutalized and beaten, and protesters defying orders to stay back from entering the Capitol. All the while, I kept thinking, Where is the President? Why is it taking so long for the National Guard to arrive? Where is the cavalry!?
She added, As the months passed, my deep sadness turned to outright rage as I watched Republican members of Congress lie on TV and in remarks to reporters and constituents about what happened that day. Over and over they denied the monstrous acts committed by violent protesters.;
For example, when Gosar called the Jan. 6 attackers peaceful patriots.
During the Benghazi hearings, Republicans were laser-focused on trying to place blame on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But after four years of investigations, most of them purely partisan affairs, they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on her part.
Republicans dont want anything close to that type of scrutiny on the Capitol attacks of Jan. 6. In fact, they dont seem to want any scrutiny at all.
Almost as if they know what will be found.
Almost as if I didnt have to use the word almost.
Reach Montini at .
Trump Is Here To Stay And Republicans Should Be Worried
There are Republican office holders who genuinely embrace Trump. For other leading GOP politicians and strategists, it’s a calculation: placate Trump and his crazy stuff now, win the Congress next year and start to move on.
That’s a fantasy.
The narcissistic former president is incapable of just going away. The Trump brand hardly suffers though it seems every week a new book comes out on his tragic governance and those from people without subpoena power.
Start with the 2020 election, which should be history; Biden won the popular vote handily and the electoral college with several states to spare. That has been validated by Republican state officials, dozens of court cases, Congress and Trump’s own attorney general and vice president. It was more clear-cut than Trump’s victory four years earlier and two other presidential elections in this century.
Time to move on, right? Trump won’t allow it.
Trump is an effective demagogue. Six years ago, he had many Republicans questioning whether Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaWhere is Joe Biden’s ‘red line’?Newsom recall spurs unprecedented turnout campaignBiden is steering America to lose asymmetric warsMORE really was born in the United States, even though Obamas 1961 birth in Hawaii was in the newspaper.;
Actually, the former president could take credit for the rapid development of the extraordinarily effective vaccines but this might help Biden, avoiding which apparently motivates Trump more than the lives he might save.
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.
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John Kasich Says Republicans Are ‘afraid’ Of Trump
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Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks with NPR’s Leila Fadel about the GOP’s unwillingness to stand up to President Trump, who still refuses to accept the results of the presidential election.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Last night, President Trump received another loss in court. A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the campaign’s attempts to stop the certification of Pennsylvania’s votes. This is just the latest of more than two dozen failed challenges brought by the Trump campaign to overturn the election results. President Trump refuses to concede, and for the most part, his party has supported his efforts to pursue legal challenges based on false allegations of widespread voter fraud.
Very few high-profile Republicans have publicly acknowledged Joe Biden as the winner, but one of them is John Kasich. He’s the former governor of Ohio and a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, and he joins us now.
Governor Kasich, welcome.
JOHN KASICH: Thanks, Leila. Glad to be with you.
FADEL: So you endorsed President-elect Joe Biden. He won this election. What do you make of President Trump’s attempts to overturn the results?
KASICH: It’s just absurd. The whole thing is – it’s just – it’s ridiculous. I mean, he has clearly won this election. And it is just sort of amazing to me that Republicans just keep sitting on their hands. It makes no sense.
FADEL: That was the former Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich.
Governor Kasich, thanks for speaking with us.
Republicans Still Scared To Death Of Trump
Trump went on yet another unhinged rant this weekend during a speech to donors in Florida, attacking Mitch McConnell as a “stone cold loser” for refusing to go along with his attempt to steal the election, but you won’t find any profiles in courage in the GOP willing to stand up to him.
Case in point, on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday, South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune was asked about Trump calling him “weak and inneffective RINO” earlier in the year and saying he might back a primary challenger to Thune. Thune responded telling host Chris Wallace that “I’ve been through wars in South Dakota, political wars, with my own party when I ran the first time, with the Democrats in a couple of hotly contested Senate races, so being afraid of a fight or somebody coming after me is not something that’s going to influence that decision,” but Thune refused to admonish Trump for his rhetoric, and refused to stand up for McConnell when asked about him as well.
Which is pretty much the equivalent of “I support Trump, but I really don’t like the tweeting” that we heard from so many of them over the last five or six years.
As the Fox article discussed, Trump called Thune “Mitch’s boy” when urging Gov. Kristi Noem to challenge Thune in 2022, but no amount of insults are apparently ever breaking point for these jellyfish.
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Why Republicans Are Scared Of Texas New Abortion Ban
For years, conservative legislators have passed increasingly restrictive abortion laws, knowing theyd be struck down by the courts. Now, Republicans are going to have to defend their views at the ballot box. And that might not go well for them.
At a pro-choice rally in Texas in 2013, one sign reads “Republicans, your seats aren’t safe.” | AP Photo/Eric Gay
09/18/2021 08:41 AM EDT
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Sarah Isgur is a graduate of Harvard Law School who clerked on the Fifth Circuit. She was Justice Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration and is the host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for the Dispatch.
When the Supreme Court allowed Texas 6-week abortion law to stand earlier this month, it was presented asa major victory for anti-abortion conservatives. After all, Republican state legislators in deep red states have long been passing increasingly restrictive abortion laws, only to see many later get struck down in the courts. Finally, one law got through .
Whats going on? When considering the political ramifications of the Texas abortion law, Ian Malcoms famous line from Jurassic Park comes to mind, with a little social-wars twist: Your were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didnt stop to think if they should.
So the more relevant question is whether the abortion issue motivates voters in both political camps and which side it motivates more.
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As Gop Makes It Harder To Vote Few Republicans Dissent
ATLANTA In Arizona, a Republican state senator worried aloud that his partys proposed voter identification requirements might be too cumbersome. But he voted for the bill anyway.
In Iowa, the states Republican elections chief put out a carefully worded statement that didnt say whether he backs his own partys legislation making it more difficult to vote early.
And in Georgia, Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan left the room as Senate Republicans approved a bill to block early voting for all but the GOPs most reliable voting bloc. Duncan instead watched Mondays proceedings from a television in his office to protest.
This is what amounts to dissent as Republican lawmakers push a wave of legislation through statehouses across the nation to make voting more difficult. The bills are fueled by former President Donald Trumps false claims of widespread voter fraud and many are sponsored by his most loyal allies. But support for the effort is much broader than just Trumps hard-right base, and objections from GOP policymakers are so quiet they can be easy to miss.
Its a startling shift for a party whose voters in some states, such as Florida and Arizona, had embraced absentee and mail voting. Several Republican strategists note the party may be passing laws that only box out their own voters.
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An Effort To Investigate Was Blocked In The Senate
Its different with the Jan. 6 insurrection. After Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to investigate, the House decided to investigate on its own.
This time around, however, all but two Republicans in the House Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted against setting up a committee to find out what happened on;Jan. 6.
All of Arizonas Republican representatives voted no.;This would include Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar. You may recall that right-wing political activist Ali Alexander claimed that these two Arizona representatives worked with him to plan pro-Trump rallies, including the one that ended with an attack on the Capitol.
That kind of connection to the Capitol riot seems to be what Republicans are worried about. They;fear the exposure of possible;links between the rioters and Republicans, and the implications that may have for former President Donald Trump.
Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Brian Sicknick, said of the Republicans who voted not to investigate the event, I just dont believe anybody could vote no, it doesnt make sense.
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.
Thats scary!
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Is The Census Wrong
nrakich: I agree that its circular, Micah. The reason more Republican elites dont criticize Trump is that theyre afraid of his voters punishing them. But what they dont seem to realize is that they themselves also have power to shape those voters opinions! Theres a lot of evidence in political science that elites can shape public opinion.
sarah: Do GOP elites, though? So much of Trumps story in 2016 and 2020 was about the high voter turnout that he was responsible for driving. And although I think we should question how much turnout helped the GOP in 2020, there does seem to be an unspoken fear among GOP elites that these voters arent really Republicans now that is, they wont turn out for anyone other than Trump which is why so many GOP elites are scared to break with Trumps messaging.
micah: What do you all think would happen public opinion-wise if Republicans in Washington came out hard against the Big Lie but Trump and state-level Republicans kept it going?
nrakich: To be clear, it would be a political risk for Republican politicians to come out forcefully against the Big Lie. A solid chunk of the party would likely stand by Trump and continue to think the election was stolen. But it could lead to serious infighting within the GOP. At least, though, our democracy would be on a healthier path.;
But, hey, Im not staring down midterms.
micah: I think they are not long for this world.
I mean, how many are even left?
sarah: Or John Kasich.
Republican Party Faces Rage From Both Pro
By Peter Eisler, Chris Kahn, Tim Reid, Simon Lewis, Jarrett Renshaw
13 Min Read
WASHINGTON – After riots at the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trumps supporters, the Republican Party is facing defections from two camps of voters it cant afford to lose: those saying Trump and his allies went too far in contesting the election of Democrat Joe Biden – and those saying they didnt go far enough, according to new polling and interviews with two dozen voters.
Paul Foster – a 65-year-old house painter in Ellsworth, Maine – is furious at party leaders for refusing to back the presidents claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The party is going to be totally broken if it abandons Trump, Foster says, predicting Trump loyalists will spin off into a new third party.
I just wish he would run away with his tail between his legs, Cupelo says.
Though Republicans have now lost control of the White House and both houses of Congress in just four years, Trumps base remains a potent electoral force in the party. That base helped him capture more voters some 74 million than any Republican in history. The vast majority of his supporters, including 70% of Republicans, remain loyal, according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted days after last weeks riot at the Capitol, and many activists say theyre willing to abandon the GOP for any perceived slight against their leader.
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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?
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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