GOP seditionists are suddenly worried about divisiveness

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Kerry Eleveld

Republican lawmakers who have spent four solid years embracing Donald Trump's hate speech and targeting of Democrats, liberals, people of color, and women are suddenly very concerned about divisiveness.

It's a convenient time for Republicans’ craven conversion as they prepare to be relegated to minority status in Washington and spend the next few years pointing fingers and whining. And naturally they have zero shame about their hypocrisy, mainly using their unity calls as a club to chastise Democrats over their efforts to impeach Trump.

But the most glaring aspect of the calls for unity is who they are coming from. Naturally, it's the worst of the worst offenders—the GOP lawmakers who backed Trump at every turn, echoed his dangerous and deceptive fraud claims, and voted for his objections to certification in what amounted to a fascist effort to disenfranchise the will of the people.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy last week lamented that impeachment would "only divide our country more."

"I've reached out to President-elect Biden today & plan to speak to him about how we must work together to lower the temperature & unite the country to solve America’s challenges," McCarthy tweeted.

Save it, Kev. The only worthy thing McCarthy has left to offer the country is to resign his position and leave Congress after he poured gasoline on the fire that exploded at the Capitol last week.

Same goes for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was among the first Senate Republicans to say he would join GOP House members in opposing certification of the Electoral College votes. The very day of the violent assault, Cruz, who was uniquely responsible for stoking the unhinged fervor that ultimately cost lives, was blaming people who had no role in the incitement.

"Stop stoking division. Stop spreading hatred," Cruz tweeted last Wednesday at Beto O'Rourke after O’Rourke noted that Cruz's "self serving attempt at sedition" had helped inspire the attack and attempted coup.

Hearing these seditionists now make calls for unity after they nearly destroyed the country in a matter of four years is truly special. If there's one saving grace here, it's that calls for the resignations of McCarthy, Cruz, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri continue to flow.

Dem. Sen. Whitehouse (Judiciary): “The Senate Ethics Committee must consider the expulsion, or censure and punishment, of Senators Cruz, Hawley... Because of massive potential conflict of interest, Senators Cruz, Hawley, and Johnson need to be off all relevant committees."
— j.d. durkin (@jiveDurkey) January 11, 2021

Tomorrow, I’m introducing my resolution to expel the members of Congress who tried to overturn the election and incited a white supremacist coup attempt that has left people dead. They have violated the 14th Amendment. We can’t have unity without accountability.
— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) January 10, 2021

“We can't have unity without accountability” is exactly right. If people like McCarthy, Cruz, Hawley, and others who helped push Trump supporters into this frenzy escape without consequence, they will simply continue poisoning the well in perpetuity to their own benefit.

‘Lies, lies, lies’: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech about Trump and fellow Republicans goes viral

Posted on January 10, 2021 (Updated January 11, 2021) by Marissa Higgins

In the days since a group of pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., sending elected officials into temporary hiding and the nation into a period of shock and horror, a number of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump. Whether they’ve criticized his endless insistence that he actually won the 2020 presidential election (he didn’t), called for Trump to resign, both long-standing critics and newly vocalized GOP members are speaking out against Trump.

In a moving, personal video, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger succinctly described Trump as a “failed leader” and someone who “will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Direct jabs aside, however, Schwarzenegger also dove deep into serious matters and discussed intergenerational trauma, personal examples from his youth in Austria, and directed a very important message to not only Trump but the Republicans who enabled him. He also wished “great success” to President-elect Joe Biden for when he takes office in less than a month. Let’s check out the video below.

First, in reference to Trump, Schwarzenegger states, “President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Obviously, the extra layer of zing here is that Twitter (as well as a handful of other social media platforms) recently permanently suspended Trump from their platforms.

On a personal note, Schwarzenegger discussed growing up in the long-term wake of Kristallnacht (also known as the Night of Broken Glass). Schwarzenegger described Kristallnacht as “a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” and said the insurgent’s attack on the Capitol last Wednesday was “the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted [and] trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”

Schwarzenegger talked about how intergenerational trauma (though he didn’t use that term) can affect an entire society. In his case, Schwarzenegger described being a child and watching his father come home drunk once or twice a week, hitting and scaring his mother. He said it felt normal because he knew it happened at neighbors' houses, too. Why? According to Schwarzenegger, this behavior tied to collective guilt and horror after World War II, saying these men were “in emotional pain for what they saw or did.” In his words, he grew up “surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history."

“It all started with lies, lies, lies, and intolerance,” Schwarzenegger stated. “Being from Europe I’ve seen firsthand how bad things can spin out of control.”

In terms of his fellow Republicans, Schwarzenegger called out those who “enabled” Trump’s “lies and his treachery.” He also quoted former President Teddy Roosevelt to them, saying, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

“To those who think they can overturn the United States constitution, know this: You will never win,” he stated, asking for the people responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol to be held accountable.

Here’s the video on Twitter, which has garnered more than 6 million views at the time of writing. It’s about seven minutes long, but honestly, is worth the full watch.

My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week's attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

You can watch the full video on his YouTube channel below.

YouTube Video

There are currently 159 House members, and 24 senators who are on record supporting impeachment & removal. Regardless of where your members of Congress stand, please send them a letter.

Siege of the Capitol the culmination of the GOP’s long embrace of anti-democratic authoritarianism

Posted on January 7, 2021 by David Neiwert

Republicans scurried to distance themselves Wednesday from the horrifying takeover of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., by a riotous mob of fanatical Donald Trump supporters. “Those who made this attack on our government need to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham. Those storming the Capitol need to stop NOW,” chimed in Sen. Ted Cruz. The Senate Republicans’ Twitter account posted: “This is not who we are.”

This is, however, exactly who they are. What happened Wednesday was the apotheosis of the GOP’s two-decades-and-longer descent into right-wing authoritarianism, fueled by eliminationist hate talk, reality-bereft conspiracist sedition, anti-democratic rhetoric and politics, and the full-throated embrace under Trump of the politics of intimidation and thuggery. It came home to roost not just for Republicans, but for us all.

This radical authoritarianism was evident not just in the intent of the Capitol siege—an insurrectionist attempt to force Congress to overturn the known results of the November presidential election—but in the faces and voices of the men and women who comprised Wednesday’s mob.

In the crowd of rioters invading the Capitol building while chanting “treason” and “our house.”
In the grinning young white man who offered a Nazi salute to the invading rioters.
In the mobs harassing journalists and destroying their equipment, telling them: “Every corner you set up now, we’ll be there.”
In the voice of the man chanting inside the Capitol: “Traitors get the rope!”
In the zip ties and handgun carried by one of the Capitol invaders, suggesting that these insurrectionists intended to take hostages, and perhaps to execute them.
In the voice of the woman from Knoxville, Tennessee, who explained why, despite being maced, she had attempted to enter the building: “We’re storming the Capitol! It’s the revolution!”

There is little question that one man is primarily responsible for the unleashing of this kind of proto-fascist politics: Donald Trump. As I explained a few months ago:

Predicated by his mutual embrace of the far right in the 2015-2016 campaign, Trump’s election to the presidency unleashed a Pandora’s box of white-nationalist demons, beginning with a remarkable surge in hate crimes during his first month, and then his first two years, in office. Its apotheosis has come in the form of a rising tide of far-right mass domestic terrorism and mass killings, as well the spread of armed right-wing “Boogaloo” radicals and militiamen creating mayhem amid civil unrest around the nation.

Trump’s response all along has been to dance a tango in which, after sending out a signal of encouragement (such as his “very fine people on both sides” comments after the white-nationalist violence in Charlottesville in August 2017), he follows up with an anodyne disavowal of far-right extremists that is believed by no one, least of all white nationalists. Whenever queried about whether white nationalists pose a threat—as he was after a right-wing terrorist’s lethal attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, when he answered: “I don’t really, I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems”—Trump has consistently downplayed the threat of the radical right.

More recently, the appearance at the very least that Trump is deliberately encouraging a violent response to his political opposition has been growing. When far-right militiamen have gathered in places like Richmond, Virginia, and Lansing, Michigan, to shake their weapons in an attempt to intimidate lawmakers and other elected government officials, Trump has tweeted out his encouragement. When a teenage militiaman in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot three Black Lives Matter protesters, two fatally, Trump defended him while mischaracterizing the shootings. When far-right conspiracy theorists created a hoax rumor that antifascists and leftists were responsible for the wildfires sweeping the rural West Coast—resulting in armed vigilantes setting up “citizens patrols” and highway checkpoints, sometimes with the encouragement of local police—Trump retweeted a meme promoting the hoax.

The reality currently confronting Americans is that the extremist right has been organizing around a strategy of intimidation and threats by armed “Patriots”—embodied by street-brawling proto-fascist groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, American Guard, and the “III Percent” militias, along with their “Boogaloo” cohort, all of them eager to use their prodigious weaponry against their fellow Americans in a “civil war.” And what we have seen occurring as the 2020 campaign has progressed is that the line of demarcation between these right-wing extremists and ordinary Trump-loving Republicans has all but vanished.

However, Trump never could have accomplished this kind of empowerment of the radical right, not to mention his ceaseless underhanded attacks on our democratic institutions, without having been enabled at every step by an enthusiastic Republican Party, both its establishment wing and its far-right “populist” bloc, as well as an army of authoritarian devotees in right-wing media and social media.

People like Cruz and Graham, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, all have played major roles in enabling Trump’s multiple depredations. At every step, Republicans have avidly empowered Trump as he has ravaged our international alliances, our national security apparatus, our courts, our Justice and Education and State departments (not to mention Interior, Energy, Treasury, and multiple other departments, notably the Environmental Protection Agency).

The problems with the Republican Party and the conservative movement generally extend well beyond the past four years, and well beyond Trump himself. Indeed, the man the party empowered and enabled to undermine our democratic institutions is the embodiment of conditions created within the GOP for the previous four decades and longer, all of them profoundly anti-democratic and authoritarian.

The strands of authoritarianism that conservatives wove together for many years to create the noose that is Donald Trump are all clear and on the record:

Ronald Reagan’s abiding anti-government sentiments (“Government is not the solution to our problem, it is the problem”) became deeply embedded as a fundamental approach to governance within the conservative movement—guaranteeing not just its incoherence and cognitive dissonance, but inevitably its antagonism to democratic institutions, particularly voting rights.
Bill Clinton’s presidency—or rather, the conservative reaction against it—begat the far-right “Patriot” movement that Trump now essentially leads, borne of “New World Order” conspiracy theories, Bircherite nationalism, and hysterical fearmongering. It also established what became a permanent right-wing ethos in which any kind of Democratic presidency is characterized as illegitimate, and the Republican Party became the vehicle for pushing this claim (as in the Javier-esque impeachment effort the GOP then undertook).
During the Bush years, any questioning of the Republican administration’s conduct of the Afghanistan and Iraq post-9/11 invasions (thanks in no small part to a relentless drumbeat of fearmongering after those terrorist attacks) was summarily attacked by its defenders as “on the side of the terrorists” and “helping the terrorists win”—that is, disloyal and treasonous. Not just war critics but anyone who dared question Bush policies would find themselves summarily subjected to a barrage of smears and eliminationist rhetoric. “We don't want to get rid of all liberals,” Rush Limbaugh was fond of saying. “I want to keep a couple, for example, on every major U.S. college campus so that we never forget who these people are."
John McCain’s presidential nomination in 2008 gave us Sarah Palin, who more than any Republican politician previously normalized the know-nothing “populist” politics that now completely dominate the party. It also unleashed the tide of nativist bigotry—manifested especially in the expressed world views of her adoring fans, who had no hesitation in pronouncing Barack Obama a Muslim, a terrorist, and a man who “hates white people”—on which Trump would later surf into the White House.

This tide soon swelled to mass proportions during Obama’s presidency under the aegis of the Tea Party phenomenon, which was portrayed in the press as a populist uprising for conservative values but which in reality was a major conduit for the revival and ultimate mainstreaming of the far-right “Patriot”/militia movement of the 1990s, and all of its attendant conspiracist fearmongering and bigotry (manifested especially in the “Birther” conspiracy theories). Trump, who built his political power by promoting that theory, declared himself the personification of the Tea Party in 2011, and by the time he announced his campaign in 2015, he was broadly perceived as just that.

By winning first the GOP nomination and then the presidency, Trump culminated all these long-developing trends into a genuinely authoritarian politics fueled by ignorance and bigotry and resentment, filtered through the prism of paranoid conspiracism. All of which has led us to the pass we reached this week.

The conspiracist authoritarianism has long ceased to be merely a fringe element. Over 80 percent of Trump voters believe that Joe Biden won the election fraudulently. In one poll taken yesterday, 45 percent of Republicans approved of the Capitol siege, and 68 percent said it posed no threat to democracy. This is who they are.

The Republican Party’s hostility to democracy—embodied by conservatives’ running refrain that “America is not a democracy, it’s a republic”—has become its official policy over the past decade, manifested most apparently in its egregious voter suppression policies and court rulings that reached a fever pitch in recent years. It’s now a commonplace for Republican politicians (notably Trump himself) to fret that a high voter turnout is nearly certain to translate into Democratic wins as a reason to even further suppress the vote.

As David Frum (a never-Trump conservative) noted in his book Trumpocracy: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” On Wednesday, that rejection became undeniably, irrevocably manifest.

Rather than taking a hard look at what they have become after the mob their president ginned up stormed the Capitol, today’s lame attempts by conservatives to gaslight the public about what happened Wednesday (with figures like Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks trying to gaslight the public by claiming the invaders were actually “antifa”) make all too clear that the Republican Party, now consumed by right-wing authoritarianism, has ceased to be a viable partner in a working democracy. The problem the rest of us now face is how to proceed from here.

Mitch McConnell has presided over the ruin of the Republican Party. Congrats

Posted on January 6, 2021 by Kerry Eleveld

In four years, Donald Trump cost Republicans control of the House, the White House, and the Senate—so goes the celebratory refrain among liberals on Twitter. But the person who truly made the electoral demise of the Republican Party possible was the man who Washington reporters have praised for a decade as the GOP's master tactician—the puppeteer supposedly pulling strings behind the scenes while everyone else simply served as marionettes on his stage.

That man, erstwhile Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will almost surely be ordering new letterhead once all the votes are counted. In the two crucial Georgia Senate runoffs, Democrat Raphael Warnock has been declared the victor and the other Democrat, Jon Ossoff, felt confident enough about his growing lead to declare victory Wednesday morning. Sure, it was Trump's buffoonish domination of the spotlight over the past four years made the glare of the GOP's moral bankruptcy burn too bright for many moderate-to-conservative voters to ignore. But Trump was simply the outward manifestation of McConnell's inner decay.

In his relentless pursuit of power and securing a lasting legacy in the courts, McConnell happily abandoned his oath of office and any inkling of patriotism to play footsie with Trump throughout his grotesque tenure as de facto head of the GOP. In fact, McConnell helped clear the way for Trump's corrupt elevation to office when he refused to sign on to a bipartisan statement revealing Russian interference in the 2016 election. When Trump declared neo-Nazis "very fine people" in 2017, McConnell led Republicans in declining to condemn the comments. And after a mountain of evidence showed Trump had extorted the leader of Ukraine in his bid to smear a political rival and win reelection, McConnell lined up the Republican votes to acquit Trump of impeachment charges without hearing from a single witness in the Senate.

So when it came time for McConnell to shoot down Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election results before it blossomed into a full-blown coup attempt, it came as no surprise that McConnell spent more than five weeks diddling around before finally acknowledging Joe Biden as the country's rightful president-elect.

But now, suddenly, as McConnell faces a return to the Senate minority, he and his allies apparently think it's time to wipe off that Trump stench and start anew.

"Emotions running high among McConnell-aligned Republicans early Wednesday am — after reality of what transpired in Georgia settled in," National Journal columnist Josh Kraushaar tweeted early Wednesday morning. "May be the heat of the moment, but mood is for declaring war on Team Trump. Want to marginalize Trump as they marginalized Steve Bannon in 2017."

Wow—now that Trump simultaneously alienated suburban voters while failing to turn out enough of his cultists to deliver wins in Georgia, McConnell and his cronies are going to take a stand. Bold.

Sorry, fellas, that ship has sailed. McConnell & Co. aided and abetted Trump for four solid years, presiding over the destruction of America's institutions and democratic norms and leaving the country in tatters. But now that the GOP's electoral future is in peril and the party is descending into a bitter civil war, McConnell and his allies think they can just brush Trump off their shoulders like a pesky bout of dandruff.

Go ahead, declare war on Trump. History will remember. And in the meantime, McConnell and the Republican Party will now reap what they sowed—total fucking chaos with no end in sight.

Michigan County Board Throws Support Behind Impeaching Gretchen Whitmer

Posted on November 25, 2020 by LifeZette

Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer got some bad news this week when a county in the northern part of her state expressed support for a resolution to impeach her that was put forth by three Republican members of Michigan’s House of Representatives.

Michigan County Votes In Support Of Resolution To Impeach Whitmer

The Kalkaska County Board of Commissioners voted four to two in favor of supporting the impeachment effort, according to Michigan Live.

Whitmer has become known for imposing some of the strictest coronavirus lockdown measures in the country on her state. Commissioner David Comai stood by the board’s decision to support the impeachment effort, claiming that Whitmer’s “unconstitutional executive orders” were to blame for Kalkaska County’s current economic crisis.

This comes days after Republican Representatives Beau LaFave, Matt Maddock and Daire Rendon issued the impeachment resolution, alleging that Whitmer was guilty of “corrupt conduct in office and crimes and misdemeanors” over her latest COVID-19 guidelines.

Today I introduced Articles of Impeachment against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

The four articles of impeachment against Gov. Whitmer include failing to respect the separation of powers by exercising power granted to the legislative branch, violating the constitutional pic.twitter.com/tCr2KUZb3E

— Beau M. LaFave (@BeauMattLaFave) November 18, 2020

Michigan Speaker Of The House Defends Whitmer

Not all Michigan Republicans are behind this effort, however, as the state’s GOP Speaker of the House Rep. Lee Chatfield has spoken out against it. He described the resolution as a “distraction from the real things we have to get done in our state.”

“We’re not the party that impeaches someone because we’re upset with policies that they’ve enacted,” he said, according to Fox News.

“I thought it was shameful what the Democrats did to President Trump last year, and I would assume that any attempt by Republicans right now, with the current set of facts that we have to impeach the governor, would be on the same level,” Chatfield added.

However, Maddock said last week that he has a “growing list of Michigan Legislators” who are planning to begin proceedings to impeach Whitmer, according to The Hill.

When asked why he feels she should be impeached, Maddock claimed that the Democrat has “ignored court orders. Violated our Constitutional rights. Completely ignored due process and the legislature. Weaponized contract tracing databases to aid democrat campaigns,”

This piece was written by James Samson on November 25, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

The post Michigan County Board Throws Support Behind Impeaching Gretchen Whitmer appeared first on The Political Insider.

Michigan Lawmakers Push For Impeachment Hearings Against Gretchen Whitmer

Posted on November 17, 2020 by LifeZette

Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer got some bad news this week when state lawmakers called for impeachment hearings to be launched against her.

Republicans Move To Impeach Gretchen Whitmer

Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock took to Facebook on Sunday to say that he and several of his fellow colleagues in the GOP are seeking to hold “impeachment hearings for Governor Whitmer” in the state House of Representatives, according to WXYZ-TV. His posted listed out multiple reasons why Whitmer deserves to be impeached, claiming that she:

-Ignored court orders.
-Violated our Constitutional rights.
-Completely ignored due process and the legislature.
-Weaponized contract tracing databases to aid democrat campaigns.
-Using our kids as political pawns and denied special needs students who depend on the services that occur during in-person classes.
-Caused the unnecessary death of thousands of our vulnerable elderly who died alone and scared in nursing homes.

The Michigan Constitution allows the state House of Representatives to impeach “civil officers for corrupt conduct in office or for crimes or misdemeanors.”

Whitmer Fires Back

Whitmer’s office fired back in a statement saying that the Democratic governor “doesn’t have any time for partisan politics or people who don’t wear masks.”

“Governor Whitmer doesn’t have any time for partisan politics or people who don’t wear masks, don’t believe in science, and don’t have a plan to fight this virus,” said Whitmer press secretary Tiffany Brown. “Right now, she is focused on saving lives. The governor will continue to work hard for all 10 million Michiganders. This is about Michigan vs. COVID-19. Governor Whitmer doesn’t care if you’re a Trump Republican or a Biden Democrat. We are all in this together.”

Whitmer herself later addressed the impeachment efforts against her in a television interview.

“Part of the problem throughout this pandemic has been that there’s been so much partisanship around this public health crisis,” Whitmer said. “Unfortunately, while we’ve done a lot of outreach with the Michigan legislature, Republican leaders have shown very little seriousness around this issue.”

She went on to blast Republicans for refusing to wear masks, saying that “they don’t even know how to protect themselves.”

Over the past few months, Whitmer has become national infamous for enforcing some of the strictest COVID-19 regulations in all of America in her state. This has made her unpopular with quite a few conservatives in Michigan, so it remains to be seen just how far their impeachment effort against her will go.

This piece was written by James Samson on November 17, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

The post Michigan Lawmakers Push For Impeachment Hearings Against Gretchen Whitmer appeared first on The Political Insider.

Pelosi doesn’t rule out new impeachment inquiries to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee

Posted on September 20, 2020 (Updated September 21, 2020) by Marissa Higgins

Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi honored the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by aptly describing her as a “brilliant brain” on the Supreme Court, reminded people that it’s absolutely imperative to get out and vote this November, and the ongoing importance of battling the novel coronavirus pandemic. On the subject of the vacant Supreme Court seat, the Democrat from California didn’t rule out launching an impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump (for the second time) or Attorney General Bill Barr, which would delay the Senate’s ability to confirm a Supreme Court nominee of Trump’s, either.

When host George Stephanopoulos hypothesized a major concern of progressives—that even if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election, Republicans and the White House might try to push through a nominee anyway in a lame-duck session—Pelosi replied: "We have our options.” The speaker continued, “We have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss right now but the fact is we have a big challenge in our country. This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election.”

She stressed that the “main goal” is ultimately to “protect the integrity of the election as we protect the people from the coronavirus." The speaker noted that she believed the late Ginsburg would want that same goal. Pelosi also clarified that “None of us has any interest in shutting down the government,” saying it would be too harmful to so many people in the nation.

“When people say, what can I do? You can vote,” the speaker stressed. “You can get out the vote, and you can do so as soon as possible.” She added that the same day we lost Ginsburg, ten states started early voting.

Stephanopoulos circled back to a potential impeachment inquiry and asked if the House would “rule anything out.” Pelosi drove home the basic tenant of public service: responsibility to the people.

"We have a responsibility,” she stated. “We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States." (If only Trump saw it that way.) Pelosi continued: “We have a responsibility to meet the needs of the American people. When we weigh the equities of protecting our democracy, requires us to use every arrow in our quiver.”

Here is that clip.

“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now,” Speaker Pelosi tells @GStephanopoulos when pressed on what Democrats would do if Pres. Trump and Republicans push a SCOTUS nomination ahead of the Nov. 3 election. https://t.co/JhU93KY3iQ pic.twitter.com/HOmI8AxREN
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 20, 2020

Lastly, Stephanopoulos asked about another big topic among progressives: expanding the court. To that, Pelosi said, “Well, let's just win the election,” adding that she hopes the president will “see the light.” The speaker then used her final talking time to home in on the importance of the Affordable Care Act, and how much the average American has at stake in this election cycle.

Republicans devolve into party of warring vagrants as prospect of electoral doom looms

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Kerry Eleveld

Republican lawmakers long ago surrendered any hint of principle or ideal in subservience to a single man—a mad man at that—who is now dragging their party toward a frightful fate in November. Flailing and rudderless, they have now turned into a ship of warring vagrants wildly trying to save their own hides in an election that could deliver total wreckage to what's left of their party.

As the coronavirus continues to roil the nation, Republicans have no one who's even capable of stepping into the leadership void left by Trump and his aides. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn't even turn up on the Senate floor Thursday morning to deliver a vision for stewarding another relief package through Congress, despite the fact that House Democrats passed their version of the bill over two months ago. As Minority Leader Chuck Schumer noted Thursday during a joint press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republicans "dithered" and now congressional lawmakers are "up against a cliff" as expiration of the original relief package looms.

Over in the House, where fringe Republicans have run roughshod over the caucus leadership for a solid decade, Trump's toadies are making war on Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the highest-ranking Republican woman on Capitol Hill whom they apparently deem to be a traitor to their cause—Trump. The House Freedom Caucus is calling on Cheney to step down from her leadership post for daring to defend Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration's outspoken and highest profile infectious disease expert, against Trump's attacks.

And on the electoral front, retiring GOP Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts officially backed the opponent of one of Trump's most loyal allies—immigration right winger and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Republican prospects for holding the U.S. Senate have dimmed to the point where many Republicans argue a Kobach primary win could jeopardize the GOP majority in November. Kobach famously lost his 2018 bid to become governor of the state to Democrat Laura Kelly.

As Republicans factionalize over how to move forward with the next relief package, their closed-door quarreling has gone public. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz captured the spotlight Tuesday during a closed-door caucus session, asking, “What in the hell are we doing?"—a widely reported quote about his misgivings over the ballooning price tag of the legislation. But what's perhaps most stunning is that the counterweight to Cruz's argument is coming from right-wing stalwarts like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who advocated for including slightly more relief for struggling Americans in the bill in the hopes of protecting GOP counterparts facing tough reelection bids.

Naturally, Trump isn't doing anything to quell the GOP controversies erupting into full view. He's deployed White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to look over the shoulder of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is once again taking the lead on negotiating the relief package for the White House. Meanwhile, neither Senate Republicans nor White House negotiators have included a single Democrat in their floundering talks over the legislation. House Democrats passed a $3 trillion package in May as Republicans eye a price tag of closer to $1 trillion—and that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of differences that could sink the bill.

Both Speaker Pelosi and Schumer denounced their exclusion from the GOP talks. "What we have seen so far falls very short of the challenge that we face in order to defeat the virus and to open our schools and to open our economy," Pelosi said their joint press conference.

Schumer added, "Republicans need to pull their head out of the sand, get their act together, sit down with Speaker Pelosi and me, and start negotiating a real package."

Republicans have apparently forgotten that the only way to pass another bill is through bipartisan compromise. But McConnell is such a weak leader that he can't even forge the semblance of some consensus within his own caucus. That’s his job, but McConnell couldn't legislate his way out of a paper bag. The only time McConnell ever manages to keep his caucus in line is when it's in support of his abuse of power. Take, for example, the Senate GOP vote earlier this year to kill the prospect of hearing from any witnesses during the impeachment trial of Trump. Republicans fell in line for that vote at McConnell's strong urging, and now they're all saddled with having acquitted who ultimately botched the pandemic response, stoke racial divisions nationwide, and is now repeatedly siccing unmarked federal troops on peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment rights.

As for the House squabble, Trump stoked divisions Thursday with a tweet targeting Cheney's criticism of his foreign policy, including his plans to pull troops out of Germany and Afghanistan. “Liz Cheney is only upset because I have been actively getting our great and beautiful Country out of the ridiculous and costly Endless Wars,” he tweeted. “I am also making our so-called allies pay tens of billions of dollars in delinquent military costs. They must, at least, treat us fairly!!!”

Cheney responded Thursday by promising she would "continue to speak out" against Trump policies with which she disagreed.

In any case, don't expect the collective GOP meltdown to end anytime soon unless Trump's polling numbers miraculously rebound. And the only way for that to happen is for Trump to start governing—something he's both constitutionally bound to do and constitutionally incapable of doing.

It’s not just Trump—voters are abandoning the Republican Party like it’s a sinking ship

Posted on July 16, 2020 (Updated July 17, 2020) by Kerry Eleveld

Republican Party fortunes have taken a decisive turn for the worse. Gallup released remarkable data Thursday showing a dramatic 13-point shift in party affiliation since the beginning of the year.

In January, the GOP had a two-point edge on Democrats in terms of voters who either identified as Republicans or leaned Republican—47%-45%. Now Democrats and Democratic leaners enjoy an 11-point edge, 50%-39%. Check out the graph below.

What's so stunning is that it's not just Trump shedding support, it's the entire Republican brand. Think about that. Heading into the GOP-led Senate's January impeachment trial, more Americans generally embraced Republicans than Democrats. But after Senate Republicans acquitted Trump in early February in their sham, no-witness trial, party support shifts in favor of Democrats.

By March, as the coronavirus starts grabbing more headlines, Democrats gain a two-point edge. Democrats then nudge up slightly in April.

But around May, Republicans really begin to tank. That plunge comes in the wake of news in late April that the coronavirus death toll surpassed the 58,220 Americans who died in the Vietnam War. In early May, it becomes clear that Trump and the White House have simply surrendered to the virus and pivoted toward reopening state economies without any national testing/tracing plan in place. At that point, Republicans at both the state and federal levels become willing accomplices in Trump's reckless scheme to reopen America before any of the proper tools are in place.

In addition, George Floyd's brutal death on May 25 at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sparks national outrage, and Trump starts implementing an authoritarian crackdown to combat nationwide protests, most of which are peaceful.

It's during that late May/June timeframe that GOP affiliation plummets five points in a month while Democratic affiliation rises three points. Just wow.

Party affiliation does fluctuate in the Gallup surveys dating back to 1991, but the outfit says "double-digit Democratic advantages have been relatively uncommon." Democrats held a 10-point advantage in January 2019 just after they routed Republicans in the 2018 midterms.

"Four months before Election Day, Democrats appear to be as strong politically now as they were in 2018 when they reclaimed the majority in the House of Representatives and gained seven governorships they previously did not hold," Gallup writes.

Congrats, Republicans. Couldn't be happening to a nicer crew of folks.

Obama’s office slams GOP investigation into Ukraine, Joe Biden, in private letter from March

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Marissa Higgins

In a letter from March, the office of former president Barack Obama condemned a congressional investigation into former vice president and now presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. You likely remember the Republicans’ incessant focus on Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural energy company. Trump and various Republican allies have alleged that there’s a scandal there, and alleged possible conflict of interest for Joe Biden, who was key on Ukraine policy at the time. And of course, Republicans had claimed this investigation had nothing to do with wanting to distract from Trump’s impeachment proceedings or the upcoming general election.

In the private letter signed by Obama’s records representative and now available because the office released it to BuzzFeed News upon request, Obama’s office described it as an effort to "to shift the blame for Russian interference in the 2016 election to Ukraine” and said it was “without precedent." The letter, which was first obtained and reported on by BuzzFeed News, does not actually explicitly mention Biden by name, and does agree to release the requested presidential records.

"The request for early release of presidential records in order to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign--one that has already been thoroughly investigated by a bipartisan congressional committee--is without precedent," the letter, dated March 13 and sent to the National Archives and Records Administration (which maintains presidential records), says in part.

As a quick review, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson made the record request in November 2019. The two senators have effectively spearheaded the investigation into the Bidens and Ukraine, and have been doing so since last fall. Both wanted records on meetings between Ukrainian officials and the Obama administration from the National Archives.

The letter from Obama’s office refers to former National Security Council analyst and Russia expert Fiona Hill’s now-viral opening testimony about the notion that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had a misinformation effort in the 2016 election. She said it’s “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

The Obama office relented and has allowed the records to be released "in the interest of countering the misinformation campaign underlying this request.” Former presidents (and technically, current presidents, though it’s no surprise that representatives for Trump wouldn’t do so) are allowed to review and use executive privileges on record requests thanks to a federal mandate. But neither Obama’s office nor Trump’s did so. Obama’s office released the records essentially to counter the message that is beneath the request.

The letter finishes: “We emphasize that abuse of the special access process strikes at the heart of presidential confidentiality interests and undermines the statutory framework and norms that govern access to presidential records.”

At the time of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, Republicans went out of their way to distract from any perceived weakness and create an enemy—in this case, Hunter Biden and Ukraine. But it didn’t end there. For example, Sens. Grassley and Johnson have reportedly recently dug into Secret Service documents to see whether Joe and Hunter Biden ever overlapped on trips to Ukraine. It’s endless. Even now, as a global pandemic rages on and the United States continues to fumble public health crisis management, GOP senators continue to dig into the Burisma theories.