When Only the Demented Remain

More reporting has revealed that Mitch had a come-to-Jesus meeting with Republican senators yesterday, and he told them they weren’t going to file any challenges to the presidential election results. So that’s that. Unless Ron Johnson or Rand Paul get the nerve to disobey Mitch, it won’t matter what the minority House Republicans might do. Congress will certify the election results on January 6.

Greg Sargent:

If no senator objects to the Biden electors from any given state, and only a handful of Trump dead-enders in the House do, the objections will go nowhere, because they must have the support of at least one senator. But if they do have that support, then both chambers must consider the objections and then vote on them.

Why might McConnell want to avoid this scenario? Well, as Politico’s Jake Sherman reports, McConnell said on the call that this would require Senate Republicans to vote down those objections and that this is a “terrible vote,” because it would make Republicans appear anti-Trump.

The rage of the MAGA-heads is falling on McConnell today, but McConnell probably doesn’t care. He may assume he can be the bad guy if it protects other Republican senators from having to go on the record for being for or against the election results.

See also QAnon Supporters Vow to Leave GOP After Mitch McConnell Accepts Election Result at Newsweek and MAGA Turns on Mitch at the Daily Mail (UK). Short term, Republicans are going to take a hit in support. With any luck that might impact the Georgia runoff elections in the Dems’ favor. Mitch is probably banking on everyone settling down before the 2022 midterms.

Even today Trump is tweeting that he won the election. And he is re-tweeting stuff from Breitbart and OAN and the Epoch Times and random people I never heard of with “proof” of fraud and whatever. He may or may not understand that it was Mitch McConnell and the soon-to-depart Bill Barr protecting his ass for the past several months. Without those two, plus Fox News and other part of  Murdoch Media, he’d have had a lot harder time of it. Their protection allowed him to get away with corruptions no other POTUS in history would have even thought about.

But now Barr is leaving early — presumably fired for insufficient obsequiousness — and Mitch is cutting Trump loose. Trump may not be able to comprehend that Mitch watched his ass only for the sake of Republican power, and that Trump’s value to Mitch is now considerably diminished. And I would argue that as long as Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, he’s the most powerful man in Washington. Mitch is the gatekeeper. Very little happens that Mitch doesn’t allow to happen.

Even Fox News is backing away from Trump (see also). And I checked today’s Murdoch-owned New York Post. I found not one headline or editorial about voter fraud or calls to “stop the steal.” Although elements of Murdoch media may continue to pay lip service to “stop the steal,” it seems to me Murdoch has moved on.

Trump has completely lost the Republican/right-wing establishment, in other words. All he’s got left are the crazies.

The crazies are going to be with us for a while, and they can be dangerous. The mayor of Dodge City, Kansas, resigned yesterday after being slammed with threats over her support for a mask mandate. “I do not feel safe,” she said. I expect we will see more episodes of street violence for the next several weeks. The question is, is this flareup of right-wing sedition going to fizzle out in time, or will it grow?

See Jeannie Suk Gersen at The New Yorker, Trump’s Coup Attempt Isn’t Over.

In the United States, the longer our representatives contest the result of the election, the more possible violent escalation seems. The threats against U.S. election officials are particularly chilling in light of examples such as that of Kenya, where, three years ago, a top election official was murdered, and Belarus, where, last year, a former police officer revealed that he was involved in the 1999 abduction and murder of the former head of the central election commission.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said on Sunday that “if you want to restore trust by millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that’s why you’ve got to have the whole system play out.” But it remains unclear how pursuing the goal of overturning election results, simply because one’s own side lost, bodes at all well for what happens when the legal process finally runs out. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who received a pardon from his former boss, insisted at a rally over the weekend, “We decide the election,” after having tweeted out, two weeks ago, a petition warning that “the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent,” and urging Trump to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and order a new Presidential election under military supervision. Those calls were swiftly condemned as dangerous by military leaders. That puts into relief the overarching question about what the Trump Presidency has meant for our laws and legal institutions. Are they weathering a particularly bad storm while doing what they’re supposed to do—namely, to channel the potential for violent conflict into peaceful if begrudging resolution and coexistence? Or are they truly beginning to crumble around us in Trump’s final weeks in office? We likely won’t know for years whether the emerging norms of today are merely testing democracy or destroying it.

That’s what we don’t know.

The Republican establishment, including the media infrastructure anchored by Murdoch media, supported Trump as long as he was useful. But he has proven to be a treacherous ally for them. I believe that if he tries to run again in 2024 the Republican establishment will have him kneecapped. And I think that once he is no longer POTUS, mainstream media, even CNN, will leave him alone. Whether he can maintain any significant support or power with the backing of looney-tune media like Breitbart and OAN alone is questionable.

I doubt Trump is capable of processing what is happening to him now. He is too damaged. See When the Narcissist Fails at Psychology Today; it’s fascinating. Going by this, the one thing we can predict about Trump on his way out is that he will do as much damage to everything and everyone around him as he possibly can.

 

8 thoughts on “When Only the Demented Remain

  1. Well, I think Rand Paul gets his rocks off on being a contrarian…So he might present a problem.

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  2. If the Republicans all fall in line maybe a Democrat (Manchin?) should "object" just force them to take that vote.

     

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  3. Mitch and Murdoch calculated that it's over for Trump – and so they moved on. Trump will continue to make noise, but he could well get buried in lawsuits. Just as no one really knew how the election would play out, so no one really knows what Trump's fate will be after Jan 20.

    What's scary is not Trump, but his ample, over the top demonstration of Autocrat 1.0 to the Republican Party. They've been heading this way since Reagan, and Trump showed them how easy it is. They liked what they saw, a lot. Any number of right wingers less nuts and more politically savvy than Trump, are more than ready for 2.0.

    Only when the Republican Party becomes willing to play by the rules will we ever be out of danger with these people.

    Great article in the Atlantic about this:

    …America’s constitutional order, the political scientist Gregory Weiner argues, depends on a style of politics that the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott called “nomocratic.” Nomocratic regimes hold themselves accountable to public processes (such as voting) whose outcome no one can be sure of in advance. They commit themselves to the rule of law and democratic decision making, even if the other side wins. Teleocratic politics, by contrast, is accountable to particular outcomes. Legitimacy comes not from following the agreed-upon rules but from obtaining the desired result. In other words, the election is valid—provided our side wins.

    Trump has placed himself explicitly in the teleocratic camp. Teleocracy is incompatible with democracy and the rule of law; Trump’s position would once have horrified Republicans. Now, by acquiescing to Trump, they have made it their de facto creed….

    The country now has not just two political parties but two political regimes, one nomocratic and the other teleocratic, cohabiting but incompatible. The closest modern parallel might be the South in the days of Jim Crow. Ostensibly, the South was part of American democracy, but in reality it was a separate polity—undemocratic because so many voices and voters were excluded, teleocratic because its permissible outcomes were bounded by white supremacy.

    …Trump’s reorientation of the GOP as the party whose guiding principle is “Heads we win, tails you lose” is likewise unfair and unsustainable. With so few national Republicans willing to renounce Trump’s electoral Calvinball, it is hard to avoid concluding, as the political historian Geoffrey Kabaservice told The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein, that the Republican Party, “without acknowledging or realizing it, has become an antidemocratic force.”

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  4. tRUMP is testing the legal guard-rails of American democracy to see whether those rails will stop a speeding car careening around a curve, or will they break, allowing the vehicle to plummet down the cliff.

    That's because he's like a psychopathic 3 year-old, who, when told it's someone elses turn to play with that toy, does everything he can to destroy it.  If he can't have it, no one else can!  Even if he doesn't really want it.  Because if you let him keep it, he's probably never going to play with it again.  But try to take it away because he's ignored it for months?  OH, HELL NO!!!!  It's HIS!!!  HIS, and no one elses!  HIS!!!!!

    I don't know enough about psychology to be able to determine whether this is a conscious or subconscious action or need.  Maybe, even probably, both.

    As for Ol' Moscow Mitch, well, he can go do sexually the anatomically impossible to himself!!!

    But despite his warning to the other RepubliKKKLAN Senators, one of them us going to want to stand out to tRUMP by doing the opposite of what Moscow Mitch wants.  At least one  broken-down old draft horse will try to look like a dressage pony.

    I'll end this medium-sized word-turd with the following thought:  Yes, it appears that tRUMP's KKKrazy KKKoo-KKKoo KKKoup has failed.

    But so did Hitler's (not to compare the two, because Adolf was extremely smart, and to call Donnie a dolt is an insult to real dolt's).

    Hitler's first attempted coup, his Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, failed miserably.  He didn't try a second one.  Instead, he ran for offiice 8 years later and won.  He became Germany's Chancellor.   He then took ALL of the power and centralized it in one person:  himself.

    I don't know if tRUMP will try again.  Hopefully not.

    But he'll have a lot of time on his hands. 

    And he has tens of millions of supporters – millions of them, crazed.  There's now at least one Q-Anon House member.  Q has millions of followers.  And there are unknown numbers of White Supremacy/Neo-Nazi groups out there.  And there are several tRUMP-supporting mass communications mediums, hungry for attention, and money:  Just like tRUMP himself.

    I hope I'm wrong, but I see a lot of trouble ahead.

     

     

    MAGA2020

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  5. Whoooops!

    I forgot that I wanted to add that Russia was able to hack into tRUMP's Twitter account.

    It didn't take much work at all.  Apparently, a hacker decided to try to guess the presiDUNCE's password.

    Yup!

    You guessed it (and so did s/he): It was MAGA2020.

    And yet another example of our country's stupidity:  The Russians hacked into the governmental agencies they were able to by riding along on the updates of the US cyber-security company chosen to Protect them: SolarWind.

    The Russians were able to do that by breaking the security company's very, very tough password:  SolarWind 123.

    Ya can't make shit like that up.

    Btw: I simplified these two stories.  But from what I read, they're true.  And I got that info from the NYT's.

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  6. Nothing indicates the path forward will be easy.  The Pandora's box has been opened by Trump, and domestic terrorism is now a more common domestic terrorist weapon.  That the Mayor of Dodge City caved to domestic terrorists was not a surprise to me once I saw who the mayor was.  I worked with her some years ago as an administrator in two differing positions, as at that time she worked for the school system.  I was unaware that she had been elected mayor.  

    I was also unaware that she was a registered Republican, though now claims to have changed her political affiliation saying that she thought the party had changed considerably.  We have seen in Georgia and other areas that being a registered Republican offers little to no protection from threats from Trumps ad hoc storm troopers or harassment from Trump himself.  Every concession to their tactics will just bring more terrorist actions.  This we know.  We are going to require politicians that are true patriots and willing and ready to stand up to those who would stoop to manipulation through terror.  Not all will, unfortunately, be up to the task which is now at hand.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  7. I think the Proud Boys will make a showing in DC. The 6th seems like the date to make a stand but I'm reading Inauguration Day. Trump will probably be in Florida so they will be throwing a Tantrum for Trump when daddy's not there to see it. The US Secret Service will follow the Constitution which means at one minute after noon on the 20th, Trump is on his own. If DC Police show up with eviction papers, the Secret Service will stand aside. So Trump will leave on Air Force One. If it hasn't landed in Florida by noon, I'd love it if they ordered the plane back to Andrews AFB with Trump on it.

    IMO, Trump knows he's been protected legally by occupying the Oval Office. He knows he's gonna get hit with dozens of charges as soon as he leaves. And he's scared. I remember being scared as I reported to federal prison. This might not be a case of the loser taking the political loss hard – nobody has left with as many legal actions waiting as Trump has. He's desperate to keep the wolves at bay.

    Barr is not leaving until the 23rd and Trump praised Barr's tenure. That's not Trump's way of dumping someone. Barr may know where the bodies are buried and Trump may have learned from  Michael Cohen turning on him.  If Barr was approached with a scheme he won't be part of, that scheme happens between Christmas and Jan 20 Barr is leaving on his terms and he's out four weeks before the normal end of his term. I'm curious if Barr negotiated a pardon from Trump – if Barr is pardoned he can be compelled to testify and if he lies in his testimony in 2021 that's a felony that would not be covered by the pardon. Curiouser and curiouser.

    My guess is that at least one senator will bet that since Trump has not lost ground in the polls, the senator who defies Mitch in defense of Trump will be a hero. That's also a bet that Trump can keep the cult together until 2022 and primary the unfaithful or replace them with candidates from the Trump party. Mitch has moved on – voters have not. 

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