I’m going to throw out here an edited version of a comment I posted to The Hartmann Report Nov. 8 post “Why Is America So Vulnerable to Charlatans Like Trump?”, because it follows some of the fracture thinking of Georgia’s series of posts. I’ll apologize up front if I’ve offended anyone’s religious beliefs….
There’s definitely a cult mentality following amongst tRump’s base. What’s unforgivable are his enablers, the spineless Republicans in Congress, with the exception of Liz Cheney and a few others most of whom paid a price for their integrity, the spineless have bowed to their master out of fear of his wrath and threats of his cult base.
The part I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around is the far-right evangelical Christian haters. The biggest hypocrite bunch of all time. Based on tRumps lack of morals and virtue, he’s not a poster child of the ideal Christian. (I wish spell check would stop the capitalization. These haters aren’t worthy of the big C.). I think the far-right evangelical Christian haters, with their barely hidden racism, fear of a vengeful God, hate for anyone other than their view of an Aryan Christianity, without sin, made for easy taking by the Republican makeover of the 1960’s through 1980’s with an ever growing political powerhouse of a movement since Jimmy Falwell and Billy Graham got the ear of Richard Nixon. TRump is an ends to their means, but definitely not their savior.
Also indirectly avoiding tRump but taking full advantage of the moment is Koch and the like. They’ve never bought into the carnival barker, investing their time and money with Congress and down ballot races. Similar with the “thank you for letting us pick your judges” Federalist Society. Similar with the Heritage Foundation. They see tRump as one of many means to an end, expendable. They’re playing the long game. And that’s where it gets really scary. Scarier than tRump. They have a chosen one, or maybe more than one. And that’s where the unholy allegiance between the far-right evangelical Christian haters and this dark side of Conservatism, the billionaire-funded Operation REDMAP/Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 merge. That chosen one, groomed for the long game, might by circumstance and fate have emerged early - James Michael Johnson.
The Christo-Fascist Totalitarian State. The merged church-state in complete control over every American’s private and public life. 99.9 percent of the population serving the 0.1 percent of the church-state hierarchy and the Oligarch rulers.
They have been playing the long game for quite a while. In some sense we got lucky with Trump because he was so inept at moving their legislative program forward. It was easier to get the judges and justices in with Trump because the Federalist Society did all the leg work and Trump only had to initial their choices. If Trump had been more effective, or more controllable, we might have already passed the tipping point to autocracy. We got an extra 4 years to wake up to the danger, which still has not passed.
I like your descriptions of the chaos, grievance, and remnants factions of the FRP. Those divisions run deep and may help the Democrats in 2024 IF we stay united and stop throwing bricks at the best President we have had in ages. Be grateful for what we have and run with it.
Georgia, Mostly agree on your synopsis of the current state of the FRP, but not quite in agreement with DeSantis emerging with the nomination. Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are definitely running for VP exposure. What is for certain is if there are one or more felony convictions of TFG pre convention, all hell and chaos could break out at the Republican National Convention that will make the various House Speaker votes look pale in comparison. In this scenario, all bets are off.
That is definitely a possibility but one thing that keeps unsettling me is how every Republican in the conference suddenly shut up and voted 100% for Speaker Johnson. When that happened, followed almost immediately by the press talking about his far right views, there was all this talk that he was "an unknown." HE WASN'T. He wrote the amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting Ken Paxton's attempt to get swing state results tossed in the 2020 election and got 145 Republicans to sign on to it. He was on Trump's impeachment defense team in the Senate. He was elected to the House in 2016.
What makes the most sense to me was that people with clout made it clear who they wanted as Speaker. It was all a charade to get Johnson into position. And these days political clout is money, and EVERY Republican got the message. That must have been a sh*t ton of money or the threat of money withheld as the case may be.
I think there is a not insignificant chance that the Republican National Convention has everyone fall in line as well.
The cracks were certainly showing on Tuesday and the responses by the Republican mouthpieces on Wednesday.
As Heather Cox Richardson noted on her Wednesday November 8 Letters From An American:
“Yesterday was a bad day for extremism in the United States of America."
“As Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post, right-wing culture wars appear to be losing their potency as opponents emphasize American principles. “
“After such a rejection, a political party that supports democracy would accept its losses and rethink the message it was presenting to voters. But since the 1990s, far-right Republicans have insisted that election losses simply prove they have not moved far enough to the right. “
Never thought I'd see the day Chris Christie represented the rational wing of the FRP. Love that term, btw. Excellent breakdown of what the former Republican party has become. Just going to keep leaning until the thing falls over.
You call the largest faction the ”Grievance faction.” I don’t think they’re grieving; they’re following their path towards (disguised) totalitarianism. They are firm in their convictions, even if they don’t realize that they are part of a decades-long evolution of an “inverted totalitarianism,” as Wolin has identified it.
Outstanding assessment of the party that was of Lincoln and Eisenhower - now the party of relgio-fascist puppets being manipulated by the Oligarchs.
May they divide and be conquered.
That being said, the nation could resume sanity and reasoned debate if there was a new center right party.
Too bad the remnants are so intimidated.
I’m going to throw out here an edited version of a comment I posted to The Hartmann Report Nov. 8 post “Why Is America So Vulnerable to Charlatans Like Trump?”, because it follows some of the fracture thinking of Georgia’s series of posts. I’ll apologize up front if I’ve offended anyone’s religious beliefs….
There’s definitely a cult mentality following amongst tRump’s base. What’s unforgivable are his enablers, the spineless Republicans in Congress, with the exception of Liz Cheney and a few others most of whom paid a price for their integrity, the spineless have bowed to their master out of fear of his wrath and threats of his cult base.
The part I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around is the far-right evangelical Christian haters. The biggest hypocrite bunch of all time. Based on tRumps lack of morals and virtue, he’s not a poster child of the ideal Christian. (I wish spell check would stop the capitalization. These haters aren’t worthy of the big C.). I think the far-right evangelical Christian haters, with their barely hidden racism, fear of a vengeful God, hate for anyone other than their view of an Aryan Christianity, without sin, made for easy taking by the Republican makeover of the 1960’s through 1980’s with an ever growing political powerhouse of a movement since Jimmy Falwell and Billy Graham got the ear of Richard Nixon. TRump is an ends to their means, but definitely not their savior.
Also indirectly avoiding tRump but taking full advantage of the moment is Koch and the like. They’ve never bought into the carnival barker, investing their time and money with Congress and down ballot races. Similar with the “thank you for letting us pick your judges” Federalist Society. Similar with the Heritage Foundation. They see tRump as one of many means to an end, expendable. They’re playing the long game. And that’s where it gets really scary. Scarier than tRump. They have a chosen one, or maybe more than one. And that’s where the unholy allegiance between the far-right evangelical Christian haters and this dark side of Conservatism, the billionaire-funded Operation REDMAP/Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 merge. That chosen one, groomed for the long game, might by circumstance and fate have emerged early - James Michael Johnson.
The Christo-Fascist Totalitarian State. The merged church-state in complete control over every American’s private and public life. 99.9 percent of the population serving the 0.1 percent of the church-state hierarchy and the Oligarch rulers.
They have been playing the long game for quite a while. In some sense we got lucky with Trump because he was so inept at moving their legislative program forward. It was easier to get the judges and justices in with Trump because the Federalist Society did all the leg work and Trump only had to initial their choices. If Trump had been more effective, or more controllable, we might have already passed the tipping point to autocracy. We got an extra 4 years to wake up to the danger, which still has not passed.
I like your descriptions of the chaos, grievance, and remnants factions of the FRP. Those divisions run deep and may help the Democrats in 2024 IF we stay united and stop throwing bricks at the best President we have had in ages. Be grateful for what we have and run with it.
Georgia, Mostly agree on your synopsis of the current state of the FRP, but not quite in agreement with DeSantis emerging with the nomination. Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are definitely running for VP exposure. What is for certain is if there are one or more felony convictions of TFG pre convention, all hell and chaos could break out at the Republican National Convention that will make the various House Speaker votes look pale in comparison. In this scenario, all bets are off.
That is definitely a possibility but one thing that keeps unsettling me is how every Republican in the conference suddenly shut up and voted 100% for Speaker Johnson. When that happened, followed almost immediately by the press talking about his far right views, there was all this talk that he was "an unknown." HE WASN'T. He wrote the amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting Ken Paxton's attempt to get swing state results tossed in the 2020 election and got 145 Republicans to sign on to it. He was on Trump's impeachment defense team in the Senate. He was elected to the House in 2016.
What makes the most sense to me was that people with clout made it clear who they wanted as Speaker. It was all a charade to get Johnson into position. And these days political clout is money, and EVERY Republican got the message. That must have been a sh*t ton of money or the threat of money withheld as the case may be.
I think there is a not insignificant chance that the Republican National Convention has everyone fall in line as well.
That bugs me too. Has the smell of the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 writers/The Federalist Society/ Koch all over it.
The cracks were certainly showing on Tuesday and the responses by the Republican mouthpieces on Wednesday.
As Heather Cox Richardson noted on her Wednesday November 8 Letters From An American:
“Yesterday was a bad day for extremism in the United States of America."
“As Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post, right-wing culture wars appear to be losing their potency as opponents emphasize American principles. “
“After such a rejection, a political party that supports democracy would accept its losses and rethink the message it was presenting to voters. But since the 1990s, far-right Republicans have insisted that election losses simply prove they have not moved far enough to the right. “
Never thought I'd see the day Chris Christie represented the rational wing of the FRP. Love that term, btw. Excellent breakdown of what the former Republican party has become. Just going to keep leaning until the thing falls over.
You call the largest faction the ”Grievance faction.” I don’t think they’re grieving; they’re following their path towards (disguised) totalitarianism. They are firm in their convictions, even if they don’t realize that they are part of a decades-long evolution of an “inverted totalitarianism,” as Wolin has identified it.
I meant grievance as in they have a grudge--not that they are grieving.
Sorry, I should have said it’s not a “grudge” it’s a commitment to their (disguised) totalitarianism.