The winds of politics are continually shifting and they blow with varying degrees of force. This is one of those times where the storm in the GOP is so intense that the weathervane on the roof just got blown clean off and it’s not so easy to tell exactly which way the wind is blowing.
Liz Cheney was put out the door with a quick voice vote and Elise Stefanik quickly installed in her place. She was part of a purge. And Politico Playbook is also using a weather metaphor. They’re saying the GOP is like a hurricane, gathering strength and it’s going to wallop the Democrats in 2022 and the purge is all part of a master plan.
First: It’s a purge.
— The term “civil war” suggests some level of parity between the opposing sides. That’s not what we’re seeing.The window for people like Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) to rally anti-DONALD TRUMP Republicans to her side passed weeks ago. She valiantly tried to de-Trumpify the GOP, but the troops never arrived. Straddlers like House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY — who initially criticized Trump for his actions around Jan. 6 — abandoned her and threw in with the die-hard MAGA types. Cheney was kicked out of House leadership. Her reelection will be a struggle.
— “In Congress, and at the grassroots, the dominance of Donald Trump over the party is more or less total,” Greenfield writes. “The small handful who denounced the former president for his massive lies about the election and his seeding of an insurrectionist riot are now either silent, or have embraced a mealy-mouthed argument for ‘election integrity.’”
Second: You may not realize it from the coverage, but the GOP is actually gaining strength right now.
— The day-to-day storylines in political media emphasize the divisions within the Republican Party and how those divisions weaken the GOP and help President JOE BIDEN push through his agenda. But if you step outside that narrative, you’ll see something very different.
— While it might look like a shitshow in Washington, the party is more like a hurricane gathering strength off shore that will wallop Democrats beginning in 2022. The Republican Party has a structural advantage in the House, Senate and Electoral College. It controls redistricting in a majority of states. Most ominously for Democrats — and democracy — it is using its power in statehouses and governors’ mansions across the country to pass voting laws that solidify these advantages.
— “The pattern is striking,” Greenfield writes, “if you want to survive as a Republican official, you will support the former president; if you support the former president, you will support laws that reflect his conviction that the election was stolen; if you enact those rules, you are making it more possible that he will win a second term. The party is talking with one voice; the voice is Trump’s, and it’s one that plenty of Americans are still perfectly receptive to.”
So it comes down to the Big Lie, to believe or not to believe, that is the question. Or actually, it’s simpler than that. You don’t have to believe it, you just have to repeat it. That will suffice. As Goebbels said, make it big, keep it simple, and tell it all the time and people will believe it. It’s astonishing how many people in this country have swallowed this fable.
Which brings us to Liz Cheney, because this is squarely where she has set the goal posts. She was on Fox News last night arguing with one of the hosts about how Fox News should come clean and tell the truth about the election.
Liz Cheney: Fox News needs to tell people the election was not rigged
Fox anchor Bret Baier: We on this show don't do that
[30 minutes later]
Baier: Here to comment on the Liz Cheney interview, the author of the book RIGGED pic.twitter.com/3WA2ZQEa34
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) May 13, 2021
And you also saw the video from the GOP Accountability Project yesterday, which is a mash up of all of the Reps and Senators who support the Big Lie. This is clearly Cheney’s hill to die on. The question is, will she die on it? Or, is this a revitalization of the GOP, and Cheney will prevail?
Before anybody, either Democrat or Republican, gets too excited about a third party, bear in mind that third party votes usually hurt the Democrats. At least, this is what we have seen in the past. It is very likely that a third party composed of Republicans, Ex-Republicans and Independents could be the best thing that ever happened to Donald Trump in 2024. It might very well splinter off enough of the votes that would have instead gone to the Democrats and enable a second Trump victory.
Or, will the GOP wake up and smell the coffee? Will the people who booed Mitt Romney when he said he was “an old fashioned Republican” do a 180 and decide that a return to traditional conservative values is what they need? Will Liz Cheney be on the ticket and not Trump?
Obviously, before we begin to get cold and clammy sweating about 2024, we have to see what happens in 2022. Traditionally, the out party picks up seats in both chambers. If that happens in 2022, with the razor thin margins the Democrats hold, that could be ominous indeed.
Cheney is spot on correct about what the big issue is, although her focus is a bit skewed. The Big Lie is the big issue, but that can be disposed of if renegade Republicans would tell the truth. They won’t, because the actual big issue is to stay in power through voter suppression. That is the problem. There is no problem greater than that. And at the rate that faith in free and fair elections is being eroded, it’s entirely possible that both the midterm election and the next presidential election could see a death of democracy. I don’t think that’s hyperbolic. There were 73 million people who voted for Donald Trump and who would probably do so again. You put that figure together with limitations on hours, drop boxes, mail-in voting, all the machinations which are taking place, and you have a recipe for catastrophe. We may see fascism come to America in our lifetimes. It won’t be wrapped in a flag or carrying a cross, it will be the fat dummy with the red hat, back for an encore.
I have been making that point over & over. Unlike some who think our laws will, in some indeterminate time, put these people in jail. Until the democrats truly unite, fight like they are in a war to save our democracy, expand the supreme court, end the filibuster, & pass voting rights & protections, authoritarian rule will happen. It’s already happening. Otherwise, how did the conspiracy nuts get the law to give them the AZ ballots, in violation of federal law. I think it’s more likely they will succeed. Cheney or trump. Little difference except she’s smarter. No criminal ex president has ever gone to jail. Never. Yet, the Pollyannas think magically the law will save us. Sure. The Germans buried their collective heads in sand. We know how that went.
I trust in my enemies’ proven stupidity or smarts (depending on whether we’re talking GQP or Liz Cheney) over any law system. One of the big barometers for measuring such? How open they are about their activities and what they do when they find such don’t play with the public. 500 people now in custody decided to test that proposition and found it didn’t save them. A few of them are even now realizing they’ve been betrayed.
Thinking the Trumpies are a danger to anyone beyond themselves and anyone unfortunate enough to be around large numbers of them? Now THAT’S Pollyannaish to the max. Almost as blind comparing an early 20th Century European “republic” that was as rickety as the one that we tried setting up in Iraq THIS century to our flawed but still functional government of two hundred plus years standing. It helps to know your REAL enemy if you intend to defend the latter…and that enemy is Liz Cheney.
Harmless? Tell that to the dead & their families from 1/6/21. Not to mention the THOUSANDS of children destroyed with an illegal border policy. U say the democracy in Germany was ‘rickety’. Seems like a good word for ours at the present. We do agree on Liz. Absolutely dangerous.
The GQP is not smelling that coffee until not doing so costs them some more. Cheney just made the public bet that it will. And unlike aging, irrelevant fossils like Mitt Romney (the Human Windsock) or Mitch McConnell (AKA Moscow Mitch), she’s got the years, the education and the connections to make it over the long haul. She’ll eat a few short term losses if she can get the eventual win.
Any third party she rolls out, it’s going to take from GQP, period, full stop, don’t even go there. The most progressive elements in Biden’s coalition right now. He’s obviously grooming the next generation of leadership (something Pelosi had already begun when she took back the Speaker’s gavel in 2019). And far leftists were NEVER part of this bunch and never will be. Meanwhile, sane conservatives are functionally homeless with the Trump takeover. More than a few of them can’t bear the thought of either party. And the Trump cult is functionally non transferable.