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Revenge is mine The Republican Party might actually draft a platform in 2024 for the first time in eight years. And a “Stop the Steal” election denier will lead them (The New Republic): On May 15, Ed Martin, a former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, was hired to serve as the deputy policy director of the platform committee, reported NBC News. Martin is well known for supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, even giving a speech in Washington, D.C., the day before the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021 to rally Trump’s supporters. “No matter what happens tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, we still need to be in the fight. There’s no summer soldiers and springtime patriots here. There’s the die-hard true Americans,” Martin said in that speech. “We start today, go through tomorrow and every day till we have a last breath and go home to the Lord because we will stop the steal.” Well. Echoes of Gone with the Wind.
I couldn’t help but think that Kimberly may have just realized that she bet on the wrong horse.
Trump vs Biden on D-Day I actually had this thought myself yesterday as I was watching Trump’s rally following Biden’s speech in Normandy. Dana Milbank: President Biden went to Normandy and spoke about American greatness. Donald Trump went to Phoenix and called the United States a “failed nation” and a “very sick country.” In France, Biden rhapsodized about “the story of America” told by the rows of graves at the Normandy America Cemetery: “Nearly 10,000 heroes buried side by side, officers and enlisted, immigrants and native-born, different races, different faiths, but all Americans.” In Phoenix, Trump, invoked the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, saying Biden had orchestrated an “invasion” at the border as part of “a deliberate demolition of our sovereignty” because “they probably think these people are going to be voting.” Biden hailed NATO, the “greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” and vowed to defend Ukraine: “To bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable.
As I’ve been watching the D-Day commemorations the last few days it’s obviously brought up thoughts about the history of our alliances in Europe and why they have been so important. The idea that the United States can withdraw behind its borders and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist has been proven wrong over and over again. We may not want to participate with the rest of the world but it certainly wants to participate with us, one way or the other. The first half of the last century was cataclysmic and the relative peace of the second half was largely achieved by recognizing the fact that closing your eyes to everything but your own domestic concerns never works. Being the world’s only superpower certainly makes that impossible. Allowing ignoramuses like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene to be in charge of such an awesome responsibility is one of the most reckless acts in human history.
I linked to this in passing in an earlier post but I thought you should be able to read the whole thing with a gift link. These Republicans have worked themselves into a frenzy, the likes of which I haven’t seen since Benghazi and “her emails.” It’s pretty shocking. An excerpt: The intensity of anger and open desire for using the criminal justice system against Democrats after the verdict surpasses anything seen before in Mr. Trump’s tumultuous years in national politics. What is different now is the range of Republicans who are saying retaliation is necessary and who are no longer cloaking their intent with euphemisms. Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Mr. Trump who still helps guide his thinking on policy, blared out a directive on Fox News after a jury found Mr. Trump guilty of falsifying financial records to cover up a 2016 campaign hush-money payment to a porn actress. Mr. Miller posed a series of questions to Republicans at every level, including local district attorneys. “Is every House committee controlled by Republicans using its subpoena power in every way it needs to right now?” he demanded.
In the NY Times post-verdict survey of 2,000 people they’d surveyed before there was a perceptible shift toward Biden. It was only a couple of points but what’s meaningful about it is who shifted. Nate Cohn wrote: Perhaps not surprisingly, the swings were relatively pronounced among young, nonwhite, less engaged and low-turnout voters. In fact, 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s previous supporters who are Black now say they back Mr. Biden. Only 2% of non-Black swing voters shifted to Biden. Apparently, Trump’s racist belief that Black voters would like him more because he’s a convicted criminal may not be such a great idea after all. Dan Pfeiffer writes: This comports with my most optimistic take on this election. Trump’s lead is very fragile because it depends on people who disagree with him on most issues, don’t particularly like him, and have a history of voting for Democrats, including Joe Biden. The defining characteristic of the persuadable voter universe is their disdain for politics and their abstention from political news.
They know it just doesn’t sound right for a president to sound like a cheap mob boss Fox ran this: That is a lie. Trump is most definitely saying that he wants revenge against his enemies. And they have now ginned up a whole rationale for doing it. He and his henchmen, which includes many national elected officials, is that they have to wreak vengeance in order to stop the cycle of revenge. It’s a dizzying, gaslight but it’s broken out all over the GOP. But something seems to have occurred to some people at Fox, including Sean Hannity, that this might not be the best idea. But Trump is having none of it: Of course he’s going to get revenge. Let’s go to the other tape[s} shall we? How about this, from this week? If you think Trump doesn’t understand the stakes, think again:
Those of us who’ve been writing about the right wing assault on women’s autonomy and reproductive rights for years have always said that contraception was on the menu. How can it not be? We know these people don’t actually care about babies or they wouldn’t be against helping poor mothers care for their children. They wouldn’t be trying to destroy public education and they wouldn’t insist on denying health care to kids and their families. No, their objections to abortion are all about misogyny and patriarchy. Allowing women to manage their own reproduction, whether through abortion or birth control, makes them more than gestation vessels and that makes them much more important than these people can allow. As Ryan Cooper at the Prospect spells out. they mean it: Unhinged conservative fanatics are building up momentum to ban the most common types of contraception, principally by lying that they actually induce abortions somehow, and they are finding success at the state and local level.
Nobody comes close to Thomas but it’s noteworthy that the justices who’ve accepted the next highest amounts are Alito and Scalia. And you’ll notice that Kavanaugh only lists $100 but that’s only because his big “gift” was from an unknown benefactor who paid off hundreds of thousands in debts before he assumed the bench. It’s quite a little club. This is the definition of corruption. The man is taking millions of dollars in “gifts” which anyone with a brain can see are actually bribes.