The Oregon Republican Party Issues a Condemnation
The Oregon Republican Party Issues a Condemnation
You have to read it to believe it. An excerpt:
Whereas history tells us that after George Washington appointed Major General Benedict Arnold to command West Point, Arnold conspired to surrender the fort to the British; and
Whereas the ten Republican House members, by voting to impeach President Trump, repeated history by conspiring to surrender our nation to Leftist forces seeking to establish a dictatorship void of all cherished freedoms and liberties….
Whereas there is growing evidence that the violence at the capitol was a “false flag” operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans; this provided the sham motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democrat goal of seizing total power, in a frightening parallel to the February 1933 burning of the German Reichstag….
That we condemn the betrayal by the following ten Republican members of Congress who voted in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi to support a second sham impeachment….
Wow. Benedict Arnold, the Reichstag Fire: they sure know their history. And I like the false flag bit: the people who gathered outside the capitol were patriots defending their country against a monstrous conspiracy to undermine democracy and impose tyranny, but the ones who actually went into it were Antifa rabble.
Typical right-wing GOP bafflegab. Sad.
Wow. The Republican party project so powerfully they could serve as the projectors at a drive in theater.
This is truly sick. To be distorting reality this much shows how deep into a mental illness this nation is. Even if those who wrote and signed on know it’s all lies, and are presenting it for “political” spin, the nature of these lies are powerfully dangerous. That they would lie in such a way means we are dealing with a sociopath party.
Donald Trump got 40.7% of the Oregon state popular vote in the 2020 POTUS election and Joe Biden got 56.9%. There was also a Libertarian, a Progressive, and a Green party candidate on the ticket. That is a large margin for them to be that hopeful. This is further evidence of the opioid crisis in rural counties.
Well Ron:
And trump lost by 154,000 votes in Michigan. Repubs are whining about voter fraud like they are going to overturn 154,000 votes. That is just plan stupid and only meant to aggravate.
Dan will delete my comment and I hope I do not offend you Peter.
We had Cruz and Jordan amplifying the false-voter-fraud-claims-narrative and fomenting the attack on the capitol with their rhetoric. We have McConnell threatening the majority of the Senate with stymieing the function of the Senate again if Democrats do not kiss his ass. Then there is the lock stepping Oregon Republicans condemning those who would not lock step with them.
At the Oregon GOP didn’t refer to Trump as the “Great Helmsman.”
“Oregon House Republicans disavow their party’s position on Capitol attack”
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/01/27/anti-defamation-league-slams-oregon-gop-for-calling-capitol-attack-false-flag/
Arne:
The MI Repubs are too busy chirping at Whitmer because her health department has shut down the state. What the Repubs don’t tell you is after the court forced her to repeal her state order, the numbers of cases increased moving the state up to 31st in the nation. When the health department shut the state down again, the number of Covid cases dropped and the state ranking decreased to 42. Our Repubs are in trumps pocket. At least OR legislators said “no.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/us/politics/pennsylvania-republicans-trump.html?smid=tw-share
Hey Fred:
Nice NYT article. Did you read some of the comments? Kind of says it all. Repub legislation before the election which voted “for” mail-in voting, rejected starting the count before the actual election day, and then whine about it all. They had the power and did nothing. They are also Gerrymandered. Like Michigan, PA has more Dems than Repubs. An approximate 83,000 votes put Biden in the White House. In Michigan, we experienced 154,000 vote edge for Biden.
In 2018 by a two to one vote, the constituents approved same-day voter registration, no-reason absentee voting and more sweeping changes to Michigan’s election law was approved by voters Tuesday by a better than two-to-one margin. And provided all registered voters access to an absentee ballot for any reason. Here again and in MI, a Repub controlled legislature the same as in PA, GA, AZ, WI would not allow the mail-n vote to start until election day.
trump had issues with every swing state that had a Repub Legislature.
The G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro
NY Times – Paul Krugman – January 28
Here’s what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing will.
What isn’t clear yet is who, exactly, will end up facing doom. Will it be the G.O.P. as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.
About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.
On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he’s no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)
Continue reading the main story
On Thursday Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader — who still hasn’t conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on Congress — visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends.
In other words, the G.O.P.’s national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.
And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. The Arizona state party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus. The Texas G.O.P. has adopted the slogan “We are the storm,” which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation.
How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News.
Editors’ Picks
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Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something, by the way, that I’ve seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates; what remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates; and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.
This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump’s reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head. And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America’s two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it’s not coming back.
What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic supermajority.
But it’s not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme they have lost broad support; the G.O.P. has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.
Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and he came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a seven million vote deficit. The Senate is evenly divided even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans.
And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn’t to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state’s electoral votes and Senate seats. So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting.
The bottom line is that we don’t know whether we’ve earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn’t getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years.
Fred:
You could make a post out of this or put it on the Open Thread too. What do you think? It is a good article.
(IMO, the new ‘user interface’ is annoying and goofy.)
http://Republican Ties to Extremist Groups Are Under Scrutiny https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/republicans-trump-capitol-riot.html?smid=tw-share
… Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him. But Mr. Gosar and a handful of other Republican members of the House had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Continue reading the main story
Their ranks include Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who like Mr. Gosar was linked to the “Stop the Steal” campaign backing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election’s outcome.
Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado has close connections to militia groups including the so-called Three Percenters, an extremist offshoot of the gun rights movement that had at least one member who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents were among the most visible of those who stormed the building, and she appeared at a rally with militia groups. Before being elected to Congress last year, she used social media in 2019 to endorse executing top Democrats and has suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was a staged “false flag” attack.
Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared last year at an event also attended by members of the Proud Boys, another extremist organization whose role in the Jan. 6 assault, like those of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, is being investigated by the F.B.I. …
Fred:
You have too many links. This used to happen with the old system too.
Ok, I just posted some more NYT pieces,
the Krugman op-ed and an article on
deranged GOP members in Congress.
Also, a comment about this strange new
user interface, at least when you are trying
to post from media. Where did those comments go?
Republican Ties to Extremist Groups Are Under Scrutiny
NY Times – January 29
A number of members of Congress have links
to organizations and movements that played
a role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
The GOP Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro
NYT – Paul Krugman – January 28
Comments from Donny Deutsch on MSNBC this morning
that the GOP is trying to make ‘MTG’ into an AOC-like
copycat icon of their very own. Pretty shrewd move, no?
Fred,
Keep up the good work. THX.
‘You have too many links’
Hmmm. That’s a ‘feature’ of your new user interface,
which I avoid as much as possible. Sometimes it comes
up & is mandatory, sometimes not. (Not often enuf tho.)
The new fancy-version presents the links as they appear
in the published form. Sometimes there are a lot. That is
considered good I guess. When I have to do it manually,
I leave out most.