More Republican Party Fracturing

[David G]

Gotta say that having Ryan look good in comparison to Trump really shows what a vile creature Trump is.

Precisamente'

He's making a LOT of numpties look good in comparison...

[LeeG]

Another way to think of this is that America’s fractures are being expressed by the Republican Party, it’s not that everyone else is hunky dory and all that needs to be done is smear them 3 microns thick. 74 million chose the orange stain. About 40 million think there’s something amiss about the election and about 20 million believe in Jewish space lasers and pedophile pizza rings. Ok maybe less than that but 20 million are entertained by the thought.

[Garret]

Today's vote on the commission showed that not only is the Rep. party not fracturing, it's in damn good shape. McConnell "allowed" a few tame outliers to vote for it so it'd look better - but made damn sure it wouldn't happen.

That kind of control shows the party is far from fractured.

[LeeG]

Today's vote on the commission showed that not only is the Rep. party not fracturing, it's in damn good shape. McConnell "allowed" a few tame outliers to vote for it so it'd look better - but made damn sure it wouldn't happen.

That kind of control shows the party is far from fractured.

Yep, quite the foundation for bipartisan cooperation. “oh ok, we understand you have a delusional white nationalist base to appeal to. No problem”

[Osborne Russell]

Yep, quite the foundation for bipartisan cooperation. “oh ok, we understand you have a delusional white nationalist base to appeal to. No problem”

"Delusional white nationalism is a good thing if not overdone."

[Rich Jones]

So the GOP refuses to let the truth come out.
Time for the House to go full Benghazi on the GOP.
Have the House hold their own hearings and blast the truth out there.

The GOP is scared to death of Trump. As long as that man lives, he'll be a millstone around their necks.
I wish him a long life.

[elf]

Not at all. The Regressives in the Senate are terrified that their complicity with January 6 will come out, as well as with all the money coming from Russia into their accounts.

And, of course, of their Trumpist voters.

[C. Ross]

This is well-reasoned and well-written.

https://apple.news/AIRN315zeTaSwadPSdcI0Ig

The GOP Now Stands for Nothing

A party that doesn’t believe in anything ends up believing only in its right to rule.
The Republicans in Congress are blocking a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Their spines crushed by years of obedience to Donald Trump, the members of the GOP have once again retreated from civic responsibility, with one more humiliation of those last few in the party who thought that the Senate Republicans might mimic something like statesmanship.
However, this effort is more than the usual cynical mendacity and crass careerism (or, as one might say, “Elise Stefanik”) that characterize the current Republican Party. This latest insult to the rule of law and the Constitution was possible only because the Republicans have already lost confidence in their own principles. The GOP now stands for nothing. The party of Lincoln has become, in every way, a political and moral nullity.
American conservatism once meant something definite and tangible. You could fight those beliefs and policies, you could argue with them, admire them, or hate them. But they existed. Strom Thurmond, Ronald Reagan, Howard Baker, and Edward Brooke were not necessarily deep thinkers, and they didn’t all agree on everything. But the GOP held clear lines of thought that stood as alternatives to liberalism.
Most of those ideas were predicated on some basic beliefs about human beings themselves, including the conviction that human nature is fixed rather than malleable, that intellect is a better guide to action than emotion, that tradition is valuable, and that religious faith is a cornerstone of a healthy society. On policy, too, the conservatives moved along broad but common lines. They believed that incrementalism is better than sudden change, that America is exceptional, that patriotism is honorable, and perhaps most important, that government is a necessity to be controlled, rather than a teacher to be revered.
These principles gave the Republican Party several decades of an almost preternatural self-confidence in the eventual triumph of their ideas. After all, if human nature is eternal and rationality is unassailable, then emotional schemes and government overreach that deny these realities are bound to fail. America is exceptional, and therefore America can do what its citizens believe they can do—especially if they treat government as an instrument rather than a master.
This confidence once attracted young voters (such as me, back in the late 1970s) to the party. The country then seemed to be falling apart—faced with riots, political assassinations, bombings overseas and at home. My colleague David Frum has called the ’70s “strange, feverish years,” a time of “unease and despair, punctuated by disaster.” The liberal Columbia University professor Mark Lilla would later write about how difficult it is “to convey to anyone who wasn’t alive and politically aware at the time what a dreary place America seemed in the late 1970s, how lacking in direction and confidence.”
The Republicans stepped forward in 1980 as optimistic warriors. Joined by some disaffected Democrats, they were certain that they had the intellectual and moral strength to claim victory over domestic chaos and foreign challenges. Reagan and the resurgent Republicans fought the narrative of an America in decline after years of “stagflation,” urban decay, and rampant Soviet aggression. (The Cold War was still raging then.) Republican solutions—including laissez-faire economics at home and a confrontational foreign policy abroad—were born from an ideological conviction that led a prominent liberal Democrat, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, to warn his colleagues in 1981 that the GOP “has become a party of ideas.”
The self-assurance of the Republicans who emerged from the post-Watergate wilderness might seem impossible to comprehend now that the modern GOP is rife with know-nothings and apocalyptic hysterics. But their confidence in their own ideas was unassailable—indeed, often to an unhealthy degree.
All of that is gone. Today’s Republicans exist only to stay in power, not least so that their elected officials can avoid what they dread most: being sent home to live among their constituents. The conservative writer George Will is right that the Republican Party in 2021 has become “something new in American history,” a “political party defined by the terror it feels for its own voters.”
Republican legislators should be scared. Their base is an angry white minority that cares nothing about government; its members want their elected officials to rule by hook or by crook, the Constitution and democracy itself be damned, and they don’t want any guff about namby-pamby ideas or policies. They want the elections controlled, the institutions captured, and the libs owned. The rest, to them, is just noise.
The survival instinct that this white-minority rage has triggered in craven Republican politicians is how the GOP mutated from a party championing individual liberty into a movement pushing monstrously statist authoritarianism. It is how the party of limited government began agitating for government truth ministries. It is how the party of exuberant free marketeers became a cabal of crony capitalists and knee-jerk protectionists. It is how the party that once fought Kremlin expansionism provided top cover for Russian intelligence attacks against U.S. institutions.
Republicans have tried to argue that if they are not in power, the Democrats and their ultraliberal allies will destroy our system of government and create a majoritarian nightmare. We must stay in power, they mewl, so that democracy itself will survive long enough to outlive the encroaching authoritarianism of the left.
These defenses are risible nonsense in the wake of Trump’s constitutional mayhem and the GOP’s descent into conspiratorial lunacy. But even on their own terms, Republican excuses are little more than lightly veiled defenses of minority rule. The GOP long ago abandoned any effort to convince women, people of color, immigrants, and others that the party had a place for them. Instead, Republicans in Congress have surrendered to the ignorance and racism of their most extreme voters in exchange for a continued life of privilege inside the comforting embrace of the Capital Beltway.
The Republicans, facing an investigation into an insurrection provoked by their own leader, have armored up and gone into armadillo mode. They will protect their own—rather than their nation and the Constitution they swore to defend. This behavior should serve as a warning: A party that doesn’t believe in anything ends up believing only in its right to rule. And a movement that believes only in its own power is a deadly enemy of constitutional democracy.

[WI-Tom]

^^^ Yep. That seems like an intelligent summary of today's Republicans to me.

Tom

[Hugh Conway]

And what was Tom Nichols advice last November? Vote against every Republican, from President to dog catcher.

[John Smith]

Well said, but widely understood my most Americans.

It gets us back to the big question: how to convince the 20-30% of registered republicans that the future of the country depends on them voting for democrats. I know several lifelong republicans. Some like what Trump's done, although if you ask them what he's done for them, they get angry.

Others don't like what Trump's done and miss their father's GOP. Those seem to be possible democratic voters next election.

The only way to get something close to their dad's party back is for this party to lose elections.

[Corvida]

Well said, but widely understood my most Americans.

It gets us back to the big question: how to convince the 20-30% of registered republicans that the future of the country depends on them voting for democrats.

You don't get them to vote for Democrats. First off, they won't. Secondly it's not needed.

Do the same thing to them Russia did to us in 2016. Destroy their motivation to vote in the first place. Every republican that stays home, is half a vote for a Democrat, and far easier to get.

[Keith Wilson]

'I won't vote for a Democrat, but I just can't bring myself to vote for that @#&^ing lunatic.' - that's good enough, if there are significant numbers of folks who say that.

[John Smith]

You don't get them to vote for Democrats. First off, they won't. Secondly it's not needed.

Do the same thing to them Russia did to us in 2016. Destroy their motivation to vote in the first place. Every republican that stays home, is half a vote for a Democrat, and far easier to get.

Aim high and settle for a near miss.

[John Smith]

'I won't vote for a Democrat, but I just can't bring myself to vote for that @#&^ing lunatic.' - that's good enough, if there are significant numbers of folks who say that.

My one republican friend is going to vote for democrats. It's not impossible.

[David G]

Yes, leaving those who would tend to vote R uninspired to get out and do so is at least a short-term win.

[David G]

Another example of the divisions --

Conservative Pundit Hits GOP With A Scathing Question


Conservative commentator S.E. Cupp on Friday pondered the purpose of her party ― the GOP ― after Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan probe into the deadly Capitol riot.

“My question to the Republican party would be, what are you here for? What is your function if not to preserve the republic and protect American democracy?” Cupp told “The Lead” anchor Jake Tapper.

“If you have no curiosity about what happened on Jan. 6, first of all, I think it’s just because you believe it will implicate you … But also, I’m not sure what you stand for as a party,” she said......

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/secup...b0ead27968caca

[David G]

Former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock: If Trump went missing, not many Republicans would be 'in the search party'

Former Virginia Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock said Sunday that if former President Trump went missing, "I don't think you'd have many Republicans in the search party."

Comstock made the remark while appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" to discuss the recent Senate vote in which Republicans blocked the creation of a commission to look into the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Comstock has put her support behind the family of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died shortly after the attack, in its call to form a commission........

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-...ouldnt-be-many

[David G]

For those of you who still want to argue with the use of 'fracturing'...

Go ahead and take it up with no less a personage than President, and longtime savvy politico, Joe Biden --

Biden says Republican Party is 'fractured,' thanks to Trump

President Biden said Monday that the Republican Party is now “vastly diminished in numbers,” and that the wing led by former President Donald Trump represents “a significant minority of the American people.”

At a news conference held at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Biden was asked by Washington Post reporter Anne Gearan what assurances he could give to Western allies alarmed by the power Trump still wields among his supporters, even after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“What I’m saying to them is ‘Watch me,’” Biden responded. “They [the allies], like I do, believe that the American people are not going to sustain that kind of behavior.”

Biden went on to describe the Republican Party as a shrinking force in American politics.

“I think it’s appropriate to say that the Republican Party is vastly diminished in numbers,” he said. “The leadership of the Republican Party is fractured, and the Trump wing of the party is the bulk of the party, but it makes up a significant minority of the American people.”

A recent Gallup poll would appear to confirm Biden’s assessment. The GOP is facing its smallest share of Republican identifiers, down to 25 percent, since 2018, according to the poll, which was released in early April. While 49 percent of Americans identified as Democrats or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic Party, just 40 percent surveyed said they identified as either Republicans or leaned Republican, the largest gap since 2012.......

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-says-re...211951474.html

[johnw]

I hope he's right.

[David G]

I hope he's right.

Yes, me too. I suspect, he's giving voice to the positive side of reality. Still reality, but not speaking to the real dark possibilities.

[oznabrag]

I hope he's right.

As do I.

Yes, me too. I suspect, he's giving voice to the positive side of reality. Still reality, but not speaking to the real dark possibilities.

Those possibilities are very real, and very dark.

I gotta say that I'm liking Joe Biden better than I ever thought I would.

[David G]

The process continues --

GOP lawmaker in New Hampshire becomes a Democrat, saying anti-mask 'extremists' pushed him out

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-lawma...225654026.html

[Garret]

The process continues --

GOP lawmaker in New Hampshire becomes a Democrat, saying anti-mask 'extremists' pushed him out


https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-lawma...225654026.html

Good for him!

[Ian McColgin]

As a democratic self-governance radical, I'm fine with honest conservatives - conservatives, not right wingers - becoming Democrats. Big tent and all that.

[David G]

Another R stands down --

GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez: I’m Out for 2022 Because of Trump and ‘Toxic’ Party

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-re...f-donald-trump

[elf]

quitter.

[TomF]

Yeah, quitter. But the guy has a spouse and two young kids, who have periodically needed uniformed security because of credible death threats since he voted to impeach Trump.

I can understand deciding to take steps to not sacrifice my wife and kids.

[willin woodworks]

Soon enough we will hear reports of the GOP eating their young...

[TomF]

Soon enough we will hear reports of the GOP eating their young...

Survival of the fattest.

[elf]

Soon enough we will hear reports of the GOP eating their young...

They've been doing that metaphorically ever since the pandemic began. In fact, if you extend the metaphor to simply disaffecting their young, they've been doing that since the emergence of the Tea Party.

Only their duped religious are sticking around now.

[Hugh Conway]

Has a single Democrat quit because their base gives them death threats? Bothsideris, I’ll wait.

[John Smith]

I'm not at all sure where all this leads, but optimism isn't my thing.

I suspect our future depends a great deal of dems passing some stuff that most of the people like.

GOP doesn't seem to want anything that benefits the general public passed.

Most Republicans, according a poll, believe the election was rigged IN SPITE of failure to prove it in over 60 courts.

[TomF]

And, of course, the nominally atheistic or agnostic Trumpers who've joined the secular cult.

[David G]

Yeah, quitter. But the guy has a spouse and two young kids, who have periodically needed uniformed security because of credible death threats since he voted to impeach Trump.

I can understand deciding to take steps to not sacrifice my wife and kids.

Yes, and his further comments state that he feels he can be useful in other ways to combat Trumpism (presumably without the visibility that places his family in danger).

Remarkable, innit. "... that places his family in danger.")

From political opponents.

Is this the U.S.? Feels more and more like a race to compete with the worst 3rdWorld FailedState in our levels of dysfunction. Acton Dictum writ large.