Yes, they’ll howl. The Truth hurts. A couple of items this morning remind us what lies ahead. There’s dread and there’s hopium, depending on how one reads the tea leaves. Roy Edroso considers the rise of Unpopularism. Republicans have decided that their path to power is to give people what they don’t want: I talk a lot about abortion rights here for a bunch of reasons, but the relevant one here is the lengthening string of goose-eggs Republicans have suffered in the repro rights referenda that came after they destroyed Roe v Wade. Even in Kansas and Ohio they couldn’t win. Yes, a few right-wing pundits who survived Covid with their olfactories intact can smell the stink that isn’t issuing from Trump’s Depends, but they are the exceptions. Their pro-life palaver started as a sop to one specific religious constituency, but over time it has become the symbol of the Republican Party’s whole anti-choice, anti-consent, anti-democratic ethos. Look at how hard they fight to preserve gerrymanders, to stop early, drop-off, and mail voting, and to disenfranchise any voter group that is likely to defy their wishes (as opposed to trying to convince new voters to join or even get their old voters to turn out). Look at how (again, despite years of libertarian bullshit) they repeatedly overturn local authorities and plebiscites that deviate from wingnut orthodoxy. Hell, look how they keep coming for Social Security and Medicare! Republicans still have a lot of tricks in their bag, but their most effective line used to be that they were advocating…