Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[LFC]

Republicans are already telling us what insane things they'll do if they control the House. Of course they knew they were going to impeach Joe Biden if given the chance before he was even the nominee. And Ted Cruz, for once, told the truth.

Impeach Biden and assorted Cabinet members

Republicans have been mulling impeaching Biden since before he was even the Democratic nominee.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said in February 2020 that “I think this door of ‘impeachable whatever’ has been opened” by conspiracy theories about Biden’s supposed role in the ousting of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. (These, you may recall, are the same conspiracy theories that Trump tried to extort Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate, an episode that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment.) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced articles of impeachment related to the same conspiracy theory the day after Biden was inaugurated.

Some Republicans have been explicit about the political motivations underlying such an impeachment push.

“I believe there’s a lot of pressure on Republicans to have that vote, to put that legislation forward, and to have that vote,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said on NBC last month.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on his podcast last winter that a Republican House would likely impeach Biden “whether it’s justified or not.”

Republicans have tended to be vague on exactly why they would impeach Biden, though some have tossed out their displeasure with his handling of the southern border, and others have pointed in Hunter Biden’s direction. They’ve frequently named Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as another likely target.

It only takes a simple majority of House members to impeach a President, but two-thirds of the Senate to convict him. Even if Republicans took over both chambers, there’s virtually no chance they’d take enough Senate seats to actually remove Biden or a Cabinet member from office.

[LFC]

The Republican brown shirts are threatening poll workers all over the nation. It became so bad in this county in Texass that everybody resigned.

With the 2022 midterms less than a month away, election administrators in Texas and elsewhere continue to face a level of harassment and threats that experts say had never been experienced before the November 2020 presidential election.

In August, the entire staff of the elections office in Gillespie County, about 80 miles west of Austin, resigned, citing threats, “dangerous misinformation” and a lack of resources. The same month, Bexar County elections administrator Jacque Callanen told KSAT, a San Antonio news station, that her department was confronting similar challenges.

“We’re under attack,” Callanen said.“Threats, meanness, ugliness.” She added that staff members were drowning in frivolous open-records requests for mail ballots and applications. Texas is one of several states targeted by right-wing activists who are seeking to throw out voter registrations and ballots, according to The New York Times.

Last month, angry activists disrupted a routine event in which officials publicly test voting equipment outside of Austin, swarming the Hays County elections administrator and Texas Secretary of State John Scott, a Republican, while alleging unproven election law violations.

The instances follow reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which last year detailed the case of Michele Carew, an elections administrator in Hood County, a staunchly Republican area an hour southwest of Fort Worth. Then-President Donald Trump received 81% of the vote in Hood County in 2020. But Trump loyalists mounted a monthslong effort to oust Carew, a Republican, alleging disloyalty and liberal bias. Carew defended herself from the attacks, surviving a motion to terminate her, before resigning from the position in October 2021.

[goldenvalley]

This op ed piece from Jamelle Bouie made me think and shudder.  The below is shudder part.

If we do see even greater democratic backsliding than we’ve already experienced over the past decade — since the advent of Donald Trump, yes, but also since the decimation of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder — there’s no reason to think that most elites, and most people, won’t accommodate themselves to the absence of democracy for many of their fellow Americans. After a time, that absence of democracy may become just the regular order of things — a regrettable custom that nonetheless should more or less be left alone because of federalism or limited government. That, in fact, is how many politicians, journalists and intellectuals rationalized autocracy in the South and reconciled it with their belief that the United States was a free country.

[LFC]

From the Republican Accountability Project. They're dubbing the GOP as the Big Lie Party.

[goldenvalley]

As a counter point to my earlier post quoting Jamelle Bouie and acceptance of a lack of democracy, here is a comment on the Bulwark+ site that is more hopeful in a grim sort of way.  Don't be fooled by the first sentence.  It's food for thought.

The think I keep finding myself coming back to, is that Donald Trump is also a liberal. So is Kari Lake. So is Kanye West, or whatever moniker he's using these days. These people live liberal lives. They get abortions, they have gay friends who are married and they're supportive of these marriages. The wouldn't know Barry Goldwater from Barry White from Barry Gordy. These people are left of center on just about every major issue of the day. So is Tucker Carlson.

There isn't anything conservative about anything that these people live for.

In short, even the authoritarians aren't committed to authoritarianism. For every single one of these people– Vance, Trump, Hawley– all of them...their primary motivation is something other than their political beliefs. They're latching onto what they believe to be the zeitgeist so they can ride it to their own personal power. They don't believe in it and they aren't committed to it.

Lake may as well be straight out of Don Henley's Dirty Laundry. She wants the fame and fortune of an actress, but instead, she's a low-level news personality. Same with Trump. He never could cut it as an actual Wall Street player...so he played one on TV. Kanye is having the midlife crisis of realizing the a poor gangster from Atlanta will never ever truly be Kim. And he never had the acumen of Sean Combs or JZ. Vance and Hawley and Cotton and Stefanik hate who they are and where they're from. They think they belong with the Bushes and the Kennedys and have no problem allowing someone else to own their dignity if it means having a membership at the Congressional, and never having to do the grunt work of upper middle class affluent citizenry in the suburbs of Buffalo or Kansas City or Cincy.

But I see this authoritarian project failing for the same reason Putin's project is running into snags, the same reason conservatism has slowly died out in the US over the last two decades: Its proponents aren't committed to it. Last week, David French pointed out how liberals con seem complacent and weak to outsiders, until they're actually put to test. At which point, the risks and virtues that led to their affluence, in the first place, start being applied to conflict.

Call me an optimist, but I see a struggle that takes the better part of the 2020s decade, but with the liberal democrats prevailing in the end– mostly because they're actually committed to their cause. Meanwhile the Vances and Lakes and Trumps, like fashion of the day, pass on.

I'm don't think he's correct about Putin. Putin had the power already; he is being ideological...just his unique verse of an ideology.

[LFC]

The Federalist Society is now openly admitting that they are neither federalist or interested in a functional society.

[pnwguy]

Oct 21, 2022 21:21:35 GMT LFC said:

The Federalist Society is now openly admitting that they are neither federalist or interested in a functional society.

My first time reading their website.  Holy cow, they are almost worse than The American Conservative.

[goldenvalley]

Oct 21, 2022 21:21:35 GMT LFC said:

The Federalist Society is now openly admitting that they are neither federalist or interested in a functional society.

They're not wrong.  They are neither conservative nor are they really Republicans.  Way back in the early '80's my poly sci professor said he didn't understand how Reagan could be called a conservative when he wanted to change so many things...like Social Security.  He was right and his view has stood the test of time well. 

PS I think the Federalist is just a reactionary online magazine, not an arm of the Federalist Society but I can't find anything definitive on that.

[AnBr]

Oct 22, 2022 0:02:56 GMT goldenvalley said:

PS I think the Federalist is just a reactionary online magazine, not an arm of the Federalist Society but I can't find anything definitive on that.

There does not seem to be a connection in the Wikipedia articles on either topic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_(website)

The article on The Federalist is pretty dark with references of disinformation and falsehoods. Also the funding for the site is unknown.

[indy]

No, I don't believe there is any connection. The Federalist is, and always has been, just another right-wing online rag.

[LFC]

Brown shirts in Arizona.

Militia types in tactical gear monitoring ballot drop off boxes to make sure nothing seems fraudy to them.

[LFC]

If Republicans win power they're virtually guaranteed to impeach Biden. Josh Marshall asks, "who cares?"

As a strong GOP midterm showing looks more plausible, there are more and more threats and claims that Republicans will impeach President Biden or perhaps the DHS secretary or — who knows? — maybe everyone. I see people looking at this the wrong way. Who cares? Really, who cares? I do not care. Over the last quarter century Republicans have drained impeachment of any meaning or taint – first by impeaching a President over a triviality and then twice summarily dismissing an impeachment trial over grave presidential wrongdoing. People tell me that even if Biden would never be removed from office it still somehow taints his presidency. I disagree. And it is wrong to make it something Republicans somehow gain by, even if that gain is merely the psychic injury it imposes on their political opponents. The proper response to any threats about impeaching Biden or any of his appointees is to remind Republicans to definitely be sure to get a 67-seat majority in the Senate. Because otherwise, have at it and who cares?

They gave it away years ago. They will impeach Biden for ... something.

[LFC]

How far has it gotten? Prison rape of journalists to force them to give up their source is now both acceptable and funny to the MAGAts. Our Overton Window has moved so far right it's in the next town.

[pnwguy]

Oct 24, 2022 17:21:34 GMT LFC said:

How far has it gotten? Prison rape of journalists to force them to give up their source is now both acceptable and funny to the MAGAts. Our Overton Window has moved so far right it's in the next town.

Cruelty IS the point. Give him full power and he’d bring back burning at the stake to whoever he declares his enemy. And the Christian Right would gladly bring the wood and matches.

[LFC]

This. One million times this.

[LFC]

Beware the Republican fascist state.

[LFC]

The fascists are supporting one another internationally. This is the Republican Party, Russia, Hungary, Brazil, etc. attempting to form a new world order where democracy is the enemy.

[LFC]

Truth Social, your number one source of insurrection and fascist information!

Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__

By now, you've seen some of these "tailgate parties," where Trump supporters hang around ballot drop boxes standing watch for "mules," some in tactical gear.

My colleague @vaughnhillyard
and I spent the week finding out the origin of this plan.

We found it. It was Truth Social.

Read the thread to see how it started.

[LFC]

Fascists gotta' fasc.

[LFC]

Violence against Democrats is now completely normalized in the GOP. I posted before about Chris Sununu taking a little blame for the origin of the political rage but then going full metal false equivalence. That's now an extreme position in the Republican Party with most ignoring, denying, supporting, or mocking it. Loud, outright rejection? Yeah, that's not happening.

Here's one piece on the source of the violence and the acceptance / political cowardice of the right-wing in the face of it.

“Reasonable” Republicans like New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu say America has a problem with political violence “on both sides of the aisle.” That isn’t true. America has a problem with political violence against Democrats.

The proof lies in what unreasonable Republicans have been saying since Paul Pelosi, 82, got his skull cracked at 2:30 a.m. Friday morning by a hammer-wielding QAnon enthusiast shouting, “Where is Nancy?” Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a photograph of a hammer and a pair of underwear—an early news report, since corrected, said the attacker was stripped to his underwear—captioned, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” Representative Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, posted and then deleted a tweet saying Pelosi’s assailant was a male prostitute whom Pelosi had hired (which of course wasn’t true). Elon Musk, who is not a Republican but appears drawn to the GOP’s more fetid precincts, tweeted along the same lines, later removed the tweet, and still later joked about it rather than apologize. Charlie Kirk suggested the whole story was intended “to smear millions of conservatives.” (For a fuller review of such stomach-turning statements, see Michael Tomasky’s piece, “Paul Pelosi Almost Died, and Most Republicans Don’t Have A Big Problem With That.”)

The GOP has become so extremist that a substantial portion of its leaders and more prominent sympathizers make light of or deny political violence committed against Democrats. There is no corresponding such behavior by leading Democrats when Republicans are threatened or attacked—and yes, there have been some horrific instances—because Democrats don’t count violent insurrectionists as a political constituency they dare not alienate.

The numbers aren’t discussed as often as they should be because most nonpartisan news organizations think it’s bad manners to document their lopsidedness. But let’s get real: “Domestic terrorism” has become a polite euphemism for “right-wing extremism.” The Anti-Defamation League counted 29 people killed in the United States by political extremists in 2021; of those, 26 were killed by right-wing extremists.

This is not a new trend. Indeed, it’s amazing how far back the pattern has held. According to an April 2021 tally by The Washington Post and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, right-wing extremists have since 2015 been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities. The comparable figures for left-wing extremists are 66 and 19. A study released this past summer by the University of Maryland reached back to 1948, thereby capturing the era of left-wing turbulence in the late 1960s and early 1970s—the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and so on. Yet even this longer timeline showed the likelihood of right-wing violence to be nearly double that of left-wing violence.

I disagree with the next paragraph on several points. First, I don't think the majority of Republicans in positions of power reject violence, at least not out loud. Second, I think the poll is undercounting Republicans who approve of violence. I suspect if you got them talking about specific acts, like Jan 6 or the attack on the Pelosi home, the number approving or at least refusing to reject it would be much higher. If I had to bet 20 bucks I'd bet it was a majority. After all, 70% believe there was widespread election fraud against all evidence to the contrary.

“Up against the wall motherfucker” notwithstanding, political violence enjoys much greater social sanction on the right than on the left. Thankfully, it remains true that a majority of Republicans and Democrats reject violence. But nearly three times as many Republicans as Democrats approve of political violence, according to a November 2021 poll by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. Thirty percent of Republicans agreed with the statement, “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Incredibly, that view was also shared by 26 percent of evangelicals. Only 11 percent of Democrats agreed. (And yes, that’s 11 percent too many.)

[LFC]

This is the Michael Tomasky piece from the above.

Nothing in particular was happening on July 31, 2021, that should have given Kevin McCarthy’s words any special weight. It was a Saturday. The House of Representatives was on summer break. McCarthy was in Nashville at a fundraising event, and the state’s House Republicans presented him with an oversize gavel. Then he “joked”: “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It’ll be hard not to hit her with it.” You can hear the audio here, and listen as the crowd laughs.

This is the man the voters of America are likely to make the next speaker of the House. But wait. The man in charge of this year’s House GOP effort, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, has gone McCarthy one better. Last week, with political emotions at a fever pitch, he posted to Twitter a video of himself firing a weapon at a range, under which he wrote: “Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights with @kellycooperaz & General @jackbergman_MI1. 13 days to make history. Let’s #FirePelosi.” Two days later, David DePape broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house, and you know what happened next.

On Face the Nation Sunday, host Margaret Brennan destroyed Emmer. “A tweet. Hashtag Fire Pelosi with a weapon. Wouldn’t a pink slip be more fitting if it’s about firing her? Why a gun?” she asked him. He hemmed and hawed, Second Amendment this, Steve Scalise that. Yes, his GOP colleague Steve Scalise was almost killed by a deranged person who was a Bernie Sanders supporter. But … remind me of that time when Sanders joked about shooting GOP House members. Oh, right. Didn’t happen.

In fact, Emmer stupidly conceded the above point without quite realizing what he was saying. When he invoked the Scalise shooting, he said, “Nobody is trying to equate Democratic rhetoric with those actions.” Well, no. That’s because there was no Democratic rhetoric about shooting Republicans or bonking them on the head with gavels. Brennan pressed on: “I’m not talking about your rhetoric. I’m talking about what you posted. You’re shooting a gun! Our viewers just saw it!” she said. “Republican candidates have spent more than 116 million on ads that mentioned Speaker Pelosi by name in their cycle.”

You’ve read, I’m sure, about Elon Musk’s sick tweet Sunday morning. I’m not going to help spread the conspiracy theory in question. It came from a “news source” that wrote years ago that Hillary Clinton had died and been replaced by a body double. And Musk, on the very weekend he took over Twitter and started firing people, decided that “free speech” includes peddling to his 112 million followers a tale with no basis in fact from a right-wing propaganda outlet. Behold our new public square.

This, friends, is a moment. I encourage you—especially if you’re younger, and you have five or six decades of life in these United States ahead of you—to remember and reflect on this moment, because if democracy dies in this country, and if violence overwhelms discourse and the bullet replaces the ballot, the beating of Paul Pelosi and the right-wing reaction to it will be noted as a signal event in that decline in the history books (that is, if the writers of honest history are still allowed to be historians and publish books).

The reaction of course extends well beyond the vile Musk. In classic totalitarian fashion, figures on the right are interpreting the Pelosi attack as a moment of liberation. Dinesh D’Souza suggested—on Twitter, natch—that the Pelosi attack was a false flag operation, and then, of the discrepancy between the mainstream reporting on the incident (that is to say, the gathering of facts) versus the extremist conspiracy, he wrote: “The Left is going crazy because not only are we not BUYING the wacky, implausible Paul Pelosi story but we are even LAUGHING over how ridiculous it is. What this means is that we are no longer intimidated by their fake pieties. Their control over us has finally been broken.”

Substitute “Jew” for “left,” and that’s Joseph Goebbels in 1933.

Though he would obviously deny it, what D’Souza is doing there is telling his followers: This violence is all right. That was also the message from Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who thought it was appropriate to use the attack as a set-up to a punch line about sending Nancy Pelosi back to California. With his formulation—violence is wrong, “but…”—he was telling people there was no need to take this seriously.

Every Republican who went on Fox News over the weekend to talk about DePape’s attack as just another example of crime gone wild in liberal San Francisco was doing the same. And saying “but Steve Scalise” and “but Brett Kavanaugh” and “but Lee Zeldin” (two other conservatives who were targets of real or threatened violence this year) has the same effect. Not taking an absolute stand against political violence signals to deranged people that there is no moral standard against that violence, that we are just floating along on a vast sea of carnage that is indiscriminate and random and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, so go ahead, fire away.

Sure, “both sides” are capable of violence. But only one side is regularly inciting it. And some left-wing randos on Twitter don’t count. As if there is an equivalence between some guy with 300 followers and the man in charge of the National Republican Congressional Committee (that’s Emmer).

[LFC]

Meidas Touch brings us #ViolentGOP.

[LFC]

And this is where the Republicans have brought us, to the brink of a potential civil war. There's no sign that they're even slowing down as they speed towards the edge.

Grant predicted it. (Checked on Snopes.)

[LFC]

Here's are a core of "deep state" leaders of the anti-democracy, anti-constitution brown shirt brigades.

A sheriff in Arizona has reached out to other sheriffs across the country to encourage them to surveil drop box locations, a CNN investigation found.

Sheriff Mark Lamb out of Pinal County, Arizona, has been sending out emails to others in his cohort Uncle Sam-style: “Here’s how YOU can enforce election integrity,” he wrote, offering recommendations for how to increase “patrol activity around drop box locations” and use “video surveillance” with “access points directly on Sheriff Department computers.”

Lamb is the co-founder of Protect America Now, a group of about 70 sheriffs who claim to support members of law enforcement that “serve our people and protect our citizens,” according to their website. The group has been associated with the so-called constitutional sheriffs movement, an ideology based on the false belief that sheriffs have unconstrained power within their counties.

The movement centers on the belief that “ law enforcement powers held by the sheriffs supersede those of any agent, officer, elected official or employee from any level of government when in the jurisdiction of the county,” according to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which Lamb is also connected to.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 5, 2022 17:32:02 GMT LFC said:

Here's are a core of "deep state" leaders of the anti-democracy, anti-constitution brown shirt brigades.

A sheriff in Arizona has reached out to other sheriffs across the country to encourage them to surveil drop box locations, a CNN investigation found.

Sheriff Mark Lamb out of Pinal County, Arizona, has been sending out emails to others in his cohort Uncle Sam-style: “Here’s how YOU can enforce election integrity,” he wrote, offering recommendations for how to increase “patrol activity around drop box locations” and use “video surveillance” with “access points directly on Sheriff Department computers.”

Lamb is the co-founder of Protect America Now, a group of about 70 sheriffs who claim to support members of law enforcement that “serve our people and protect our citizens,” according to their website. The group has been associated with the so-called constitutional sheriffs movement, an ideology based on the false belief that sheriffs have unconstrained power within their counties.

The movement centers on the belief that “ law enforcement powers held by the sheriffs supersede those of any agent, officer, elected official or employee from any level of government when in the jurisdiction of the county,” according to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which Lamb is also connected to.

I will start pushing my state legislators to pass a bill making the sheriff's office a civil appointee job, not an elected office.  This concept that a sheriff is elected is some vestige of early progressive day political reform that needs to be ended.  I hope this happens across the country.