Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[goldenvalley]

Oct 27, 2021 15:15:10 GMT LFC said:

From prior posts I made:

The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that ex-Trump legal adviser John Eastman works for as a senior fellow, on Monday defended Eastman’s memo to then-President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence that laid out how the latter could hijack the 2020 election certification process to keep Trump in power.

snip

As a side note this is what James O'Keefe and Project Veritas would like to be able to do except that they're royal f***-ups who desperately try to create narratives out of thin air and then deceptively splice video to support their lies. I guess getting the sensationalism you want using accurate and honestly presented quotes is hard.

Project Veritas doesn't have to careful to make airtight cases.  They make a splash, agitate the easily agitated, and then move on.  The debunking of their video never reaches the eyes/ears of their audience and the audience wouldn't believe it anyway. Between the confirmation bias and the fact that humans never want to admit that they've been had (because that might mean they are dumb) Project Veritas can afford to be thin and sloppy.

Regarding the latter (people don't want to admit they've been had) I wonder if that is a particularly strong American trait.  Given the ethos of individualism and self reliance which includes the idea that anything bad that happens is your own fault, is it particularly difficult to admit that your all powerful knowledge, instincts, and general smarts didn't keep you out of a situation in which you lost money, etc or were simply duped?

[LFC]

I wonder if Charlie realizes how much he and his organization have done to help get America to this point. I doubt it.

Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, has denounced a question asked by a member of his audience over when Republicans should use guns and "kill these people" over false election fraud claims.

Kirk, a Newsweek contributor, was taking questions at the Nampa Civic Center in Nampa, Idaho, as part of his Exposing Critical Racism speaking tour when a man warned him that he wanted to ask him something "a bit out of the ordinary" and that he should "prepare himself," before openly calling for the killing of Democrats.

The man asked Kirk when should people start shooting those who stole the 2020 Election, pushing the so-called "Big Lie" that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. The false claims are still being peddled by Trump and his supporters, including Kirk, despite no evidence proving the election was rigged nearly one year since the vote took place.

"At this point, we're living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns?" the man asked, prompting cheers and applause from the crowd.

"That's not a joke, I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?"

In response, Kirk immediately condemned the comments while urging those who cheered the remarks to stop.

"Now, I'm going to denounce that and tell you why. Because you're playing into all their plans, and they're trying to make you do this," Kirk said.

"They are trying to provoke you, and everyone here, they are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen," he added.

"We are close to having momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have. To answer your question, and I just think it's overly blunt, we have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side."

Wait, "get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have?" So the use of an outrage machine and the pushing of voter suppression, election stealing, court packing, 100% obstruction, along with a constant stream of propaganda and outright lies are OK but he expects the line to magically stop short of violence. Hey, Charlie. To quote Republican mocking of Obama, "you built this."

[goldenvalley]

The NRA has been peddling this be armed in case the government comes after you BS for a long time now. This episode also reminds me of the story about the folks going to Kenosha WI to help out the police in protecting private property...we have the guns so why not? You can bet most of them wouldn't have gone there at all if they didn't have firearms and cool looking tactical gear they got on Amazon.

[LFC]

DeSatanist had to be sued, again, to schedule special elections that would likely put Democrats into state seats. Republican fascists will use every lever of power possible to deny power to those who don't support and obey them.

This Wednesday, Florida's GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis scheduled special elections for three South Florida legislative seats that are being vacated this January, the Miami Herald reports. The move comes after he was sued for not taking action for months.

The three districts are Democratic strongholds.

"The district vacancies, which will become effective in January, were created in July when Sen. Perry Thurston and Reps. Bobby DuBose and Omari Hardy, all Black Democrats, resigned to qualify to fill Florida's 20th Congressional District vacancy left by the death of Congressman Alcee Hastings," the Herald reports. "The governor's executive order set the primary date for the three legislative seats for Jan. 11 and the general election for March 8. This means Democrats, who are in the minority in the Florida Legislature, will have fewer members in each chamber for the 60-day legislative session next year, which starts Jan. 11 and ends March 11."

It took DeSantis 87 days to schedule the elections after the vacancies popped up. According to the lawsuit, this is the second time DeSantis has been sued to call a special elections.

"The strength of any democracy is the ability for voters to be represented and heard," said Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book, according to Florida Politics. "Sadly, the Governor has chosen to deny voters in Senate District 33 and House Districts 88 and 94 their constitutional right to be represented in Tallahassee during the 2022 Legislative Session. No Floridian's vote or voice should ever be silenced."

[LFC]

When attempted election theft becomes completely blatant.

Michigan State Police on Thursday opened a criminal investigation into the disappearance of election equipment in a rural township after the local clerk — who has boosted 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories and QAnon memes online — was stripped of her authority to run next week’s election.

A tablet that is a key part of how the voting machine operates was reported missing from Adams Township earlier this week, Bridge Michigan reported.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had banned Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott earlier from overseeing the municipal election next week after Scott refused run accuracy tests on or allow a vendor to conduct mandatory maintenance of the voting machine.

Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast, who the state tasked to replace Scott to run the election, discovered that the tablet was gone on Tuesday when she opened the tabulator case that she had collected from the Adams Township hall. She described the tablet to Bridge Michigan as the “brains” of the machine.

“I don’t know where it’s at or if it’s been tampered with,” Kast told the news outlet.

Of course the person in question is throwing the same kind of accusations back at the Michigan SoS, like a good little fascist.

[LFC]

The plaid shirts' threats against honest poll workers continue.

Testifying at a Senate hearing this week, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) detailed one of the many threats her office received in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Someone called the office, Hobbs recalled, said she deserved to die, and then asked what she was wearing that day — “So she’ll be easy to get.”

That was one of several such threats described by high-ranking officials at a Senate Rules Committee hearing Tuesday, part of a year-long trend kicked off by Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election.

But more than her own safety, Hobbs, who’s also a candidate for governor, said she was worried about public servants down the food chain: County supervisors who were mailed orange prison jumpsuits, or poll workers who faced armed crowds as they tried to count ballots.

“We’re already seeing high turnover among elections staff, and I fear that many more will reach a breaking point and decide that this line of public service isn’t worth it,” she said.

At Hobbs’ own office, the elections division team has had six full-time staff out of 11 leave since the 2020 election, Deputy Communications Director Sophia Solis told TPM. That’s compared to just two staffers who left in the year leading up to that election.

“Departing team members have shared that the primary reason for leaving was the stressful nature of the current elections environment, including post-2020 harassment, the pandemic, and a lack of resources to tackle the growing amount of work (which was compounded by the first two factors),” Solis said.

And they’re not alone. A year after the tumultuous 2020 election, states and localities across the country are now holding another round of elections, for everything from school boards and mayorships to governor’s mansions in New Jersey and Virginia. But election offices across the country have seen an increasing number of retirements, Donald Palmer, chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, told TPM in a statement.

[goldenvalley]

There is a nonpartisan, nationwide collaborative initiative of election community leaders to working together to support and defend U.S. election officials and election administration. It's not up and running yet and has no name but it has funding. Here's a report following the November elections.   Death threats etc. made against otherwise un-noticed, under funded public servants certainly erode democracy.

[LFC]

Oct 29, 2021 18:10:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

Death threats etc. made against otherwise un-noticed, under funded public servants certainly erode democracy.

Which is, of course, the entire point for the fascist party.

[LFC]

After becoming Georgia's governor with the help of several voter suppression techniques it appears that Brian Kemp just might not be nutty and fascist enough for the Republican Party.

Former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia -- one of the earliest promoters of the Big Lie while trying in vain to win reelection in 2020 -- has let it be known that he might launch a primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022.

A Perdue candidacy would center the race right where Donald Trump wants it: on continuing to hustle the Big Lie that the election was stolen in 2020. Kemp is one of Trump's major targets for having not sufficiently supported Trump's insurrection by overturning President Joe Biden's victory in Georgia.

The headline in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution summed it up succinctly: "Perdue challenge could trigger "scorched earth" GOP battle against Kemp."

[LFC]

Fascist anti-election propaganda comes pouring out of Wisconsin as up is declared to be down. This is now the Republican way.

Harassing election officials and working to undermine the integrity of Wisconsin elections has become a central part of Republicans' electoral strategy.

On Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters that it is “possible if not likely" that his election investigator, former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, will interrogate Meagan Wolfe, the beleaguered administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), even before Attorney General Josh Kaul's request to block that interview is heard by a judge.

In his press conference, Vos claimed that he has grave concerns arising from the Legislative Audit Bureau report on the 2020 election, which found no evidence of wrongdoing and which Republican state Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Allouez), who co-chairs the Legislature's Audit Committee, summed up by saying it had proved that the 2020 election in Wisconsin was “safe and secure."

“Basically, WEC is being mismanaged," Vos said, putting his own spin on the report. “And there were major problems during the course of the 2020 election."

Republicans seem to figure they can get away with distorting the audit bureau's findings because most people won't actually read the report for themselves. Specifically, Vos pointed to elections officials in Madison who “wouldn't even turn over the basic ballots to have the Legislative Audit Bureau — totally nonpartisan, totally respected — even do their job." But, as the LAB report itself states, the clerk in Madison who didn't turn over those ballots was merely following guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice, which warned that she could be violating the federal Civil Rights Act if she gave up physical custody of election records. “In part as a result of this guidance from the Department of Justice, the City of Madison clerk did not allow us to physically handle election records," the LAB report explains.

Rather than run afoul of federal law, the Madison clerk offered auditors the chance to view the ballots without taking physical custody of them. The auditors didn't take her up on that offer.

The audit bureau report made a series of recommendations for improving election processes and training, but it also noted a high level of satisfaction with WEC training among local election clerks, and found no evidence of significant problems with voting machines nor discrepancies in the vote count.

And yet, four days after the LAB released its report, Wisconsin Senate leaders announced they were launching yet another investigation of the 2020 election, claiming, “The audit findings released on October 21st paint a grim picture of the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) and their careless administration of election law in Wisconsin."

[LFC]

As expected Republicans are already starting to pregame their election fraud lies. This dipshit in Virginia has been lying her ass off and is now being called out by the state AG to put up or shut up.

Virginia’s attorney general has had enough, demanding that a conspiratorial state senator provide evidence for her “baseless” assertions that the upcoming election results will reflect Democratic cheating.

The senator, Republican Amanda Chase, has said for months that Democrats cheated to win the White House in 2020, and now, as a surrogate for 2021 Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, she’s rolling out the same playbook. Attorney General Mark Herring (D), apparently, is sick of it.

“Let’s be clear: these kinds of baseless, false claims are simply designed to undermine confidence in our democracy and our elections,” Herring, who himself is running for reelection this year, said in a statement Thursday.

“If Senator Chase has any evidence of cheating or voter fraud then she has an obligation to bring it to the attention of authorities who can do something about it rather than secretively sharing this supposed ‘evidence’ with political allies.”

An accompanying letter to Chase, from Herring’s office, asked her to share “evidence of ongoing election fraud, cheating, or misconduct” — if she has any.

In recent days, Chase has pushed such claims without details or evidence.

At this point every Dem ever mentioning her at any time should refer to her and every other Republican attempting the same stunt as the "the lying, anti-democracy [*fill in d-bag's name here*]."

[Bact PhD]

The Supreme Emperor of the State of Flori-DUH is apparently at it again. As if steamrolling the hiring of the State Medical Ideologue on the UF College of Medicine faculty weren’t enough, from this latest, I can conclude UF’s Prez is either under serious coercion/threat to comply, or he’s truly a fellow-traveler.

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/30/florida-voting-rights-desantis-lawsuit/

(Paywalled; I can’t get the gift function to work)

The University of Florida barred three faculty members from testifying for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging a voting-restrictions law enthusiastically embraced by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), which activists say makes it harder for racial minorities to vote. The school’s move raises sharp concerns about academic freedom and free speech in the state.


The public university said the three faculty members — political scientists Daniel A. Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Wright Austin — could present “a conflict of interest to the executive branch” and harm the school’s interests by testifying against the law signed by DeSantis in May.


“As UF is a state actor, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests,” school officials said, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.


Lawyers trying to reverse the Florida law, also known as Senate Bill 90, have sought to question DeSantis on whether he was involved in the decision to prevent the academics from testifying, according to the New York Times, which first reported on the university’s move.


The move to bar professors from being expert witnesses in public trials is highly unusual. In a letter to the university, lawyers representing the professors said that faculty members retain their First Amendment rights to free speech even if their remarks may “make a University’s relationship with funding sources more difficult.”


The attorneys cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings that protect the rights of individuals to disclose information acquired “by virtue of their public employment.”

The academics will file a legal challenge against the university if it does not change its stance, said Paul Donnelly, a lawyer representing Smith, McDonald, and Austin.


As Florida’s governor, DeSantis has influence over the funding of the state’s public institutions of higher education. He also has the authority to name six of the 13 members of the university’s board of trustees. All appointed trustees are subject to state Senate confirmation.


In a statement provided to The Post on Saturday, the university denied it had violated the First Amendment rights of its faculty members. Representatives for DeSantis could not be reached for comment.

The only thing that might, just MIGHT, get their attention is if the NCAA were to yank ALL NCAA-sanctioned bowl games from the state, in a manner analogous to other athletic bodies yanking events from NC and GA in recent memory. If the state were to take a tourist hit of that magnitude…

Naaah, too much $$$$ involved for the NCAA. Not gonna happen

ETA: a little more from the local rag:

Another university official said in an email to Smith that “outside activities that may pose a conflict of interest to the executive branch of the State of Florida create a conflict for the University of Florida.”

[snip]

Two weeks ago, on the day he found out he wouldn’t be able to provide testimony, Smith tweeted an image of Hannah Arendt’s classic book “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”

“Dusting this classic off the bookshelf for some light weekend reading,” Smith wrote.

For his part, McDonald on Friday night tweeted a video of Tom Petty singing “I Won’t Back Down.” He and his colleagues “are the faculty being denied our constitutional right to free speech by the university,” he wrote.

[goldenvalley]

Wow that's a Liberty University or some other right wing school move.

[LFC]

Michael Flynn, American traitor and fascist. Thanks for your service? No, f*** your service if this is the vision of America that you served for. Note that this is from a Republican.

Everett Stern, a Republican candidate running to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate, revealed Sunday that aides to former national security adviser Michael Flynn allegedly asked him to "gather intelligence" on various lawmakers and judges for extortion purposes.

Speaking to a group of reporters, Stern said representatives for Flynn approached him through his Patriot Caucus group earlier this year with the objective to influence lawmakers to support election audits in favor of former President Donald Trump.

"They wanted to gather intelligence on senators, judges, congressmen, state reps, to move them towards the audit. The word 'move' was emphasized tremendously," Stern said. "What they wanted was to extort and to literally move people towards the audit with dirt."

[LFC]

Actual quotes from during the coup.

As then-Vice President Mike Pence was locked down in the capitol, hiding from a mob that was calling for him to be hung, conservative legal scholar John Eastman emailed a screed to Pence’s legal counsel, denouncing the VP’s failure to toss the election results, according to a sprawling new report in the Washington Post.

• “Thanks to your bull—-, we are now under siege,” the Pence aide, Greg Jacob, had written in an angry email to Eastman.

• “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman replied, referring to Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

• Josh Marshall on this exchange: “In real time, Trump’s message was the same as Eastman’s. You brought it on yourself and they’re my guys. The way to lift the siege is to do the right thing and support the coup.”

• Even after the attack, Eastman kept up his efforts to push Pence to throw the election, arguing in an email to Jacob that the mob’s attack had caused debate to extend past the allotted two hours, invalidating the whole proceeding. The Post’s Aaron Blake examines that element of the story.

From that last link:

But that’s arguably not even the most compelling evidence that Trump and Eastman tried to leverage the mob attack. Check out this section of The Post’s report about what happened after the Capitol had been cleared and Congress had reconvened:

Pence allowed other lawmakers to speak before they returned to counting the votes, and said he wasn’t counting the time from his speech or the other lawmakers against the time allotted in the Electoral Count Act.

Eastman said that this prompted him to email Jacob to say that Pence should not certify the election because he had already violated the Electoral College Act, which Pence had cited as a reason that he could not send the electors back to the states.

“My point was they had already violated the electoral count act by allowing debate to extend past the allotted two hours, and by not reconvening ‘immediately’ in joint session after the vote in the objection,” Eastman told The Post. “It seemed that had already set the precedent that it was not an impediment.”

This is all a bit dense. But what it basically amounts to is Eastman’s trying to use the fallout of a mob attack — one spurred by his and Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud and Eastman’s highly unorthodox plan to overturn the election — to then get Pence to reject election results based upon a technicality.

Pence had given lawmakers time to talk about the ugly scene that had just transpired, something which many of them were understandably pretty raw about. But, in this, Eastman apparently saw an opportunity.

[LFC]

Fascists with guns and badges. It wouldn't shock me to find out these storm-trumpers were "Oath Keepers", satirical quotes very intentional.

Just days before the presidential election, supporters of then-President Donald Trump ambushed a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway, leaving staffers fearful for their safety and repeatedly calling local law officials for help.

But the City of San Marcos “refused to help,” instead privately mocking the Democratic staffers stuck on the bus and calling them “tards,” according to text messages and 911 audio recordings detailed in an amended federal lawsuit.

The Oct. 30 “Trump Train” incident sent shockwaves across the country after videos showed cars with MAGA flags seemingly trying to force the bus off the road as it headed to Austin for a rally. Trump himself commented on the run-in, retweeting a video of it along with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS!” Videos showed a white SUV and a black truck colliding during the episode.

“For at least ninety minutes, including during the entirety of the stretch of I-35 inside the San Marcos city lines, the Trump Train pursued and terrorized” the bus, the lawsuit states, adding that occupants “tried to get help. They repeatedly called 911. They requested police escorts.”

But San Marcos cops and city officials “chose not to mount a response” from the moment dispatch received 911 calls pleading for help, the lawsuit alleges.

“Instead, according to text messages and 911 audio recordings obtained by Plaintiffs, they privately laughed and joked about the victims and their distress, including by calling them ‘tards,’ making fun of a campaign staffer’s ‘hard’ breathing, and retorting they should just ‘drive defensively’ or ‘leave the train.’”

The lawsuit, obtained by The Daily Beast, was filed by former state Sen. Wendy Davis, bus driver Timothy Holloway, campaign staffer David Gins, and volunteer Eric Cervini. It names a slew of city officials as defendants, including San Marcos’ director of public safety Chase Stapp, San Marcos Police Corporal Matthew Daenzer, and San Marcos assistant police chief Brandon Winkenwerder, and the city itself.

The lawsuit alleges San Marcos Police chose not to provide the Biden bus with a police escort despite multiple requests, and even refused “to take reasonable steps to protect both Plaintiffs’ safety and their foundational democratic rights.”

[Bact PhD]

Oct 30, 2021 18:39:29 GMT goldenvalley said:

Wow that's a Liberty University or some other right wing school move.

And for the latest from Flori-DUH…the tune has changed, only somewhat (bold mine):

www.gainesville.com/story/news/education/campus/2021/10/31/university-of-florida-spokeswoman-three-professors-could-testify-if-unpaid/6223947001/

The University of Florida would allow three professors to serve as expert witnesses in a case that challenges a new state law restricting voting access if they are not paid and don't use university time or resources, a UF spokeswoman said.

Hessy Fernandez, UF director of issues management and crisis communications, told the Gainesville Sun in a text message Sunday the university views the professors' request to do outside work for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit as harmful to the university's interests.

That allowance for unpaid work was not mentioned earlier when Gary Wimsett, UF’s assistant vice president for conflicts of interest, told two of the professors that “UF will deny its employees’ requests to engage in outside activities when it determines the activities are adverse to its interests.”

[snip]

Wimsett's statement does reflect a view the UF President Kent Fuchs expressed at a September Faculty Senate meeting. When the issue of a vote of no confidence in UF's COVID-19 fall plans arose, Fuchs reminded the group that the state government has authority over almost all areas of the university's operation.

"It is critical that UF as an institution and any entity within the institution that officially represents the University of Florida not rupture or fracture our relationship with our state government and our elected officials," he said. "If I as president or any other entity that officially represents the university becomes an adversary of state government and our elected officials, we'll lose that ability to influence those decisions that affect us."

Fuchs did note academic freedom as an example of one area where the state typically defers to university leadership and faculty.

Blocking the professors from serving as paid expert witnesses has raised concerns over academic freedom and the professors' First Amendment rights. It also highlights another facet of ongoing tension between university faculty and the higher education institution's ties to state government.

On Sunday, Smith said, he has previously served as an expert in federal voting rights lawsuits against the state.

"Over the past decade, I have been asked numerous times by plaintiffs to serve an expert in federal lawsuits dealing with voting rights. The defendants have included the Governor and the Secretary of State," he wrote in an email to The Sun on Sunday.

"These approved outside activities, for which I am paid for my expertise, are on my own time. I am clearly speaking for myself, not UF, and Tigert Hall [colloquialism for UF Administration] has never before disapproved of my involvement in these cases. Quite the contrary, they have publicly celebrated my (and my colleagues’) involvement in these outside activities that are of great public import and that bring national recognition to UF," he said.

Got that? If you’re a UF Faculty member, you can speak out, but don’t you DARE piss off the Supreme Emperor or His Minions…

[Bact PhD]

Speaking of the Supreme Emperor of the State of Flori-DUH, what the HELL is Friedersdorf of the Atlantic smoking!?!!

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/ron-desantis-never-trump/620568/

Nevertheless, Trump remains more popular among the shrinking Republican base than anyone else. So in publications including National Review, The Dispatch, and The Bulwark, anti-Trump conservatives are now debating what to do. They all view the 45th president as an unacceptable leader, deplore the Trumpist turn in the GOP, and lament the dearth of promising strategies for reversing it. Alongside the options they’re considering, I’d add one more: uniting behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the GOP rising star who can boast both conventional political achievements and credibility on the Trumpist right. By failing to unite around any candidate in 2016, Trump’s opponents all but guaranteed that the celebrity businessman would coast to the nomination. In 2024, DeSantis may not be the president that Never Trumpers would choose. He’s too Trumpy for their taste. But their options are limited, and if beating Trump is their highest priority, as I think it should be, DeSantis may be their best bet.

DeSantis frustrates and disappoints me within normal parameters. He hasn’t yet frightened me, as Trump does, as being superlatively incompetent, divisive, morally degenerate, or authoritarian. As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough put it last June, when COVID-19 numbers were failing and DeSantis was peaking in the polls, “We’re going from the political heroin to the political methadone.” However bleak the analogy, that’s a significant step toward recovery!

At just 43 years old, DeSantis offers a sharp contrast with both Trump and Biden, two of our oldest presidents. The Florida governor grew up middle class… He graduated from Yale and Harvard Law, served in the Navy from 2004 to 2010 as a JAG officer, worked as a federal prosecutor in Florida, then ran for Congress in 2012, where he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus and opposed funding the Robert Mueller investigation, arguing that the Department of Justice’s approach “didn’t identify a crime to be investigated and practically invites a fishing expedition.” In 2017, as DeSantis prepared to run for governor of Florida, Trump supported him in that state’s Republican primary. He remains a plausibly acceptable candidate for anti-Trump conservatives, in part because winning narrowly in a purple state has all but forced him to moderate his populism. He has pursued substantive initiatives––such as expanding access to monoclonal antibodies and attracting successful businesses with a friendly regulatory climate––that appeal to moderates and traditional conservatives.

[snip]

The best way forward depends, in part, on how bad one believes Donald Trump himself to be for America. Is he no worse than any number of other populist demagogues who are capable of winning the White House, or is he sui generis, so that any likely alternative would damage America less?

Probably the latter.

Fridersdorf ignores, conveniently, the possibility that DeSantis isn’t just performing for the culture warriors when necessary, that he may truly be the smarter version of Trump, the “2.0” as it were. Granted, this piece was no doubt in the can before the latest kerfuffle with UF became known. Wonder whether Friedersdorf still believes DeSantis is “methadone” to DJT’s “heroin”??

[LFC]

Nov 1, 2021 20:05:20 GMT Bact PhD said:

Speaking of the Supreme Emperor of the State of Flori-DUH, what the HELL is Friedersdorf of the Atlantic smoking!?!!

What in the actual hell?

...in part because winning narrowly in a purple state has all but forced him to moderate his populism.

If this is moderation, making most of the same moves and spouting the same rhetoric as Trump, then what the hell does extremism look like?

[LFC]

A PPRI survey provides a snapshot of America. Here are two notable charts. 68% of Republicans are in on The Big Lie, 40% being all in. And then we have the question about patriots and violence. I'm actually surprised it's only 30% of Republicans but that's an enormous of at least violent insurrection-curious people in our nation.

[LFC]

CEOs apparently know that a coup tends to be bad for business.

According to a report from Time's Molly Ball, a Donald Trump speech right after the November election, where he claimed from the White House, "If you count the legal votes, I easily win," before adding "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us," set off alarm bells for many of America's top CEO's who panicked at the idea that he was beginning a coup.

The report notes that the phone of influential Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld immediately began to ring as corporate titans flooded him with questions about what they were seeing and hearing.

With the report noting, "The speech was so dangerously dishonest that within a few minutes, all three broadcast television networks spontaneously stopped airing it," Ball adds that "By the time Tom Rogers, the founder of CNBC, got to Sonnenfeld, 'he had clearly gotten dozens of calls,' Rogers says. 'We were saying, 'This is real—Trump is trying to overturn the election.' Something had to happen fast.'"

So early on November 6th a conference call was arranged at 7AM that included 45 of America's top CEO's who tuned in to listen to Yale's Timothy Snyder, a historian of authoritarianism.

As Ball explained, "Snyder did not beat around the bush. What they were witnessing, he said, was the beginning of a coup attempt."

According to the Time report, "A lively discussion ensued. Some of the more conservative executives, such as Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, wondered if the threat was being overstated, or echoed Trump's view that late ballots in Pennsylvania seemed suspicious. Yet others corrected them, pointing out that COVID-19 had led to a flood of mail-in ballots that by law could not be counted until the polls closed. By the end of the hour, the group had come to agreement that their normal political goals—lower taxes, less regulation—weren't worth much without a stable democracy underpinning them."

[LFC]

Well, duh.

A Holocaust and genocide historian believes that conservatives are taking a page out of the fascist playbook by rallying around Donald Trump's election loss and turning a slain U.S. Capitol rioter into a right-wing martyr.

The right is painting itself as the innocent victim of an oppressive "cancel culture" while aggressively pushing its hypermasculine, hyper-patriotic values onto others, and historian Waitman Wade Beor described in a new Washington Post column this tactic's alarming parallels in American and European society.

"In many ways, the 'lost cause' myth is simply a refiguring of the literal aggressors of the Civil War into the valiant victims," wrote Boer, a senior lecturer in history at Northumbria University in England. "In both the lost cause and the contemporary phenomenon, what is striking is that proponents attempt an inversion of power. Though holding most of the power, victim-makers claim to be victimized by forces beyond their control."

The Nazis turned stormtrooper Horst Wessel into a martyr after the 23-year-old street brawler was shot dead in 1930, just as conservatives are painting Capitol rioter Ashlii Babbitt as a victim and comparing coronavirus mandates to the Holocaust.

"When the right associates itself with Jews in the Holocaust, it is appropriating the space reserved for victims," Boer wrote. "It is, in a sense, pushing the rightful victims out and attempting to absorb the sympathy and compassion they are owed. It is a form of re-victimization, which has as its goal negating, relativizing or erasing real suffering."

That cycle can be addicting and energizing, Boer warned, and Republicans are eagerly pushing that narrative to regain power.

"Nearly the entire Republican Party attempted to scuttle any investigation into the causes of the Jan. 6 insurrection," he wrote. "This is the first step in turning extremists into victims and then into martyrs."

[goldenvalley]

Nov 1, 2021 20:11:14 GMT LFC said:

Nov 1, 2021 20:05:20 GMT Bact PhD said:

Speaking of the Supreme Emperor of the State of Flori-DUH, what the HELL is Friedersdorf of the Atlantic smoking!?!!

What in the actual hell?

...in part because winning narrowly in a purple state has all but forced him to moderate his populism.

If this is moderation, making most of the same moves and spouting the same rhetoric as Trump, then what the hell does extremism look like?

This is what lowering the bar looks like.  He can do and say all the same things Trump is but he isn't Trump.  Friedersdorf is out of material and facing a deadline so he writes this nonsense.  The Atlantic wants to look "balanced" politically and so runs it. 

[goldenvalley]

Nov 1, 2021 20:25:11 GMT LFC said:

A PPRI survey provides a snapshot of America. Here are two notable charts. 68% of Republicans are in on The Big Lie, 40% being all in. And then we have the question about patriots and violence. I'm actually surprised it's only 30% of Republicans but that's an enormous of at least violent insurrection-curious people in our nation.

How many of that 30% is armed to the teeth?  

[LFC]

Nov 1, 2021 21:52:08 GMT goldenvalley said:

How many of that 30% is armed to the teeth?  

Too many.