ABC News began, “On August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon woke up with a start after a restless night. “I looked at my watch,” Nixon said years later. “The battery had run out, worn out, at 4 o’clock the last day I was in office. By that day, I was worn out too.” That’s an intriguing omen. Nixon’s watch battery was done the same day he was. I wonder what will happen on the day in our history which we can finally mark as Donald Trump’s last day? Will Big Ben in London stop? Total eclipse maybe? The sewers in D.C. suddenly backing up?
I think Nixon was born before his time. He would fit perfectly today with the Supreme Court that we have sitting now and their ideas about presidential immunity. In their eyes Watergate was okay. Nothing illegal about it at all. It would have been a match made in heaven.
1974 was a different era and the most important difference is that the Republican party still functioned as an institution. It’s members knew the difference between right and wrong. It made the decision to police its own. The Senate decided that it would begin impeachment proceedings and Barry Goldwater strolled down from the Capitol and walked into the White House and said, “Dick, you’re finished.” That’s how it worked back in the day.
In this day and age we have a situation where the vast majority of the GOP have stopped being Republicans and have become MAGAs. Watergate was nothing to compare with January 6. But although January 6 was ten times, fifty times, what Watergate was, the GOP of 2024 is ready to whitewash it as nothing and the Supreme Court is more than happy to employ tortured logic to justify the insurrection, at the very worst, and to turn a blind eye to the reality of it, at the very least.
We need two functioning political parties in order to have a democracy. We have one functioning party and another one which has been hell bent on self destruction for nine years now.
Say what you will about Richard Nixon, he had respect for the office of president and for the institution of government. He lost his way, gave way to insecurities and did crazy things that he lived to regret, but he never flat out defied the law of the land like Trump did. He never incited a riot, put his vice president in mortal danger, or watched the mob of lunatics he inspired defile the Capitol and threaten the very lives of sitting members of both chambers of Congress. Trump not only did that, he sat and watched it on television for three hours before he called the mob off.
Chuck Schumer had texted Nancy Pelosi, “Only the president can stop this. He has to talk to them.” And despite the pleas (we are told) of his daughter Ivanka and other aides, Trump got around to it when he damned well pleased. And then, it was a half baked, mixed message, praising the rioters as “patriots” — as did Ivanka, on her own Twitter account, before she caught hell for it and took the post down. Nixon had his 18-minute gap, Trump had his three-hour riot.
And I’m not painting Nixon as a hero. Don’t get me wrong. Nixon blamed the press and a “liberal conspiracy” for bringing him down. He had more than a few cracks in his moral compass. But at least he had a moral compass and Trump does not.
I remember thinking at the time, “The Republicans can’t top this.” Little did I know. My God. Little did I know. And I remember the hatred I felt in my then-21-year-old heart for Nixon. I had never before hated a president like that and couldn’t imagine that I would ever feel that way again. HA! Little did I know.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday, Pelosi revealed that Republicans have told her that if Democrats can simply defeat Donald Trump, they might be able to rebuild the GOP without the same far-right ideologues who control their party now, reports Raw Story.
“The Republican Party has been hijacked,” Pelosi said. “It is now a cult, and they should take it back because the public needs a strong Republican Party. The Grand Old Party, great things they’ve done for the country, great leadership that they have provided and what now? What now?”
I guess the way this is going to go down is that the Democrats will do for the Republicans what they cannot do for themselves. Once Trump loses what’s left of the GOP will become unsustainable. They need to get a grip on themselves and decide if they’re Republicans or MAGAs. That’s step one. They can’t be both and that’s why this mad scheme, which managed to work in 2016, is now blowing up in their faces.
Trump should not have run a third time. That’s where the GOP made its fatal error. Maybe Biden running for reelection was a fatal error as well. But the Democrats self corrected and got the ship back on course with a minimum of effort. The GOP should have done the same but it could not. Now it’s destroying itself.
GOPers wanting Democrats to save them from Trump is nothing new. As the old-guard looked on in horror as he steamrolled his way to the nomination they were afraid to cut him off at the knees during the primaries. They wanted, needed even Trump’s MAGAs. Not that Yertle or any of the rest of them would admit it, nor will they when they have final memoirs written but they secretly hoped Clinton would win. Trump’s MAGAs would ensure control of the House and Senate and hamstring her. Worst case scenario they thought they could exert some control over Trump but I truly believe they wanted Clinton. They could have used her as a fundraising and electoral foil with great advantage.
They hoped Joe Biden would do what Clinton couldn’t. Win the ELECTORAL College which Clinton wasn’t able to do despite winning the popular vote by almost three million votes. They had not one but two chances to get rid of Trump via Senate conviction on his first impeachment but they didn’t have the guts. They still thought they could thread the needle to keep MAGA votes and figured (as Trump feared that entire election campaign) that Biden would kick Trump’s ass even worse than Clinton had. And as I said also prevail in the EC. And that happened.
Make no mistake – had McConnell cracked the whip there would have been enough Republicans voting to convict in the second impeachment Trump wouldn’t be their nominee again. But they lack the courage and wanted those goddamned MAGA voters rather than take the hit and regroup for 2028. They were counting on Biden and Democrats to once again save them from Trump. For the old-guard and a LOT of their rich friends there was a LOT of nervousness over how things were unfolding this spring. Now it’s a whole new environment and they hope AGAIN that we Democrats will bail THEM out and defeat Trump so badly this time he’ll be done. Probably they even hope he’ll be so broken he’ll just up and die within a year of losing.
Once again, with Harris they had an actual candidate with a chance to take Trump out if not in the primaries then at the convention. They COULD have organized both the hard-core conservative but not foaming at the mouth MAGAs and major donors to PUBLICLY throw in with Haley. I think Trump would have had a meltdown. But no, the cowards looked to US to do what they lacked the will to do – take Trump out once and for all.
I’m getting really sick of these weasels scheming behind the scenes, even admitting to Democrats it’s time their Party move on from Trump and hoping, if not begging Democrats to do what they can’t or aren’t willing to do. If things go like we hope then for damned sure on some key legislation that will come up our side better be calling in some fucking I.O.U.s! Strategically of course. Don’t cash in all the chips at once. But spread things around to get just enough crossover votes to get long overdue stuff passed. And ONLY give some of the credit to the GOP in exchange for repeated pronouncements that Trump and MAGA no longer will have a seat at the table.
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The current GOP is nothing like the party I belonged to when I worked in the US Senate in the late 1970s. I was young, idealistic and thought that my fellow progressive Republicans and I could transform the party from within.
It’s instructive to remember that before George H.W. Bush became Ronnie’s VP and toed the party line, he supported the Equal Rights Amendment. We had hope. For awhile.
Then I watched the party dissolve into evangelical nuttiness, Teabagger nuttiness, and today’s performance art exemplified by MTG, Bobo and others. Absolutely no interest in actual governance.
Today, I’m a Yellow Dog Democrat hoping that the shell of the GOP will be replaced by something more sane. Not holding my breath…but still idealistic. I think America will survive MAGA.
“Speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday, Pelosi revealed that Republicans have told her that if Democrats can simply defeat Donald Trump, they might be able to rebuild the GOP without the same far-right ideologues who control their party now, reports Raw Story.”
Not sure which “Republicans” were trying to impart this information to Mrs Pelosi but I really hope she didn’t buy the veracity of it for a moment. (I’m hoping the story was more of a “cautionary tale” she was spinning to GOPers rather than any actual event that happened.)
The simple fact is the GOP will do just as much to expunge the “ideologues who control their party now” as they did back in 2010 when the “Tea Party” movement (and the Orwellian-styled “Freedom” Caucus it spawned) threatened to leave the GOP if Party officials didn’t allow the teabaggers to run in GOP primaries. In other words, nothing. The GOP’s party officials knew that allowing the teabaggers to run third-party or independent campaigns would cause enough splits that even some of the reddest House districts and reddest Senate seats could go to the Democrats. Even worse, the teabaggers might end up consigning the “traditional” GOP to third-party status (even in states where the Democrats have difficulty competing at anything more than a district level) and the GOP could NOT have that. So, the GOP’s party officials caved and gave the teabaggers free rein, forcing already-hard-right Republicans to run even *more* to the right (for instance, AL’s Richard Shelby–already a hardcore conservative–faced his first actual primary opponent in decades against a man claiming that Shelby was “too liberal” for Alabama or the US Senate; while Shelby won the primary 84-16, this was a man who hadn’t faced a primary opponent since 1986 when he was a Democrat).
So, the idea that a “reformed” GOP, after a Trump defeat, would accept the NEEDED building time (which would likely mean accepting losses in some current “red” areas because you WOULD have those “ideologues” still fighting to keep Trump’s MAGA alive even if it meant they HAD to form their own GOP) is laughable. If the “old guard” of the GOP wasn’t willing to write off the teabaggers if it meant they might lose power for a decade or so, there’s NO EFFIN’ WAY the current GOP leaders would part with MAGA now. Hell, look at how many “traditional” GOPers bent the knee to Trump, even after Trump lost in 2020 to keep from losing Trump supporters (though not necessarily Republican voters) in future elections. They caved to Trump solely to keep those diehard MAGAts and to keep from facing primary opponents of their own in their upcoming elections.
Again. I really don’t believe Nancy has spoken with any anonymous Republicans hoping for a Trump loss; I believe she told the story as a cautionary tale for GOP leaders about continuing to back Trump.