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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe GOP's Just a Racket Now, and Trump Is Its Godfather, Barr Its Wartime Consigliere
Last edited Wed May 1, 2019, 10:36 PM - Edit history (2)
Michael Tomasky column in the Daily Beast this evening:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gops-just-a-racket-now-and-trump-is-its-godfather-barr-its-wartime-consigliere
Then, starting in the 1980s, it lost the liberals. Then, in the 1990s, it started to lose most of the moderates, as right-wing issue and interest groups and Koch money began to define what constituted conservatism, pushing it ever-further rightward so that today it really isnt even conservatism, but just a collection of grievances that they can use to piss off enough white people to stay in power.
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Their apologetics today are the natural consequences of their having marinated in these juices of resentment and rage for all the years they have. Its what the party has become. And of course its the party that produced and elevated a gangster like Trump. Its all of a piece.
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And all of it along the wayevery racist dog whistle, every Rush Limbaugh rant, every false, out-of-thin-air accusation against Bill and Hillary Clinton, every lie about easily liberating the people of Iraq, every accusation that the rest of us hated freedom, every joke about Obama serving fried chicken, every disgusting attack on immigrants and gay people and you name ithas brought us to this point. Brought us to today, when a sitting attorney general said in effect to the American people whose interests he is supposed to be defending, No, I truly do not give a fuck. Im up here for the president, and thats that. And naturally, we learned three hours after he left the Senate chamber that he will not deign to appear at the House, where the questioning would likely be tougher.
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This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways weve never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that hes the victim of a coup. What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eager help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them. Trump is an idiot, but on some intuitive level, hes a smart man, smart enough to know that to get away with staging a coup, the very first thing you have to do is to accuse your opponents of trying to stage one.
Barr and Graham and Mitch McConnell and everyone else around knows that theyve thrown in, and having thrown in, they cant throw out. Survival will require every kind of lie you can imagine, especially and exactly the lie of accusing their foes of that which they are doing themselves. And before this is over, theyre all going to be in on it.
Bradshaw3
(7,517 posts)I wrote that yesterday. It has everything to do with power, greed and corruption, and destruction of democracy in service of those goals. You could draw up a list of their crimes and have predicates for a RICO case.
spanone
(135,830 posts)hedda_foil
(16,373 posts)highplainsdem
(48,975 posts)hedda_foil
(16,373 posts)Poiuyt
(18,122 posts)VOX
(22,976 posts)And one by one, weve witnessed Republicans who had objections to Trump in 2016 go over to the dark side. Those who remained critical of the mid-administration have dropped out or died (McCain).
Its not your parents or grandparents GOP any more. Its all the historical worst aspects of conservatism: racism, sexism, xenophobia, de-regulation, militarism, use of political office for personal gain, greed, isolationism, etc. BUT now the partys corpse is up and running on nitro, sucking up to murderous world dictators, making enemies out of long-term allies, removing us from international treaties, separating families and traumatizing children, deregulation to the risk-point of systemic breakdown, and raising an extended middle finger at the law.
Whats not to impeach?