Robert E. Kelly is a political science professor and an expert on Asia. He was a consultant to the Ohio GOP. He minces no words in saying how the party has “definitively” revealed itself to be racists who will do anything in order to gain tax cuts for the rich, including support Donald Trump.
1. Gun rights advocates now clearly think that routine massacres are an acceptable price to pay for access to long guns. The president's teleprompter speech was so forced & hackneyed, & his desperation to blame anything – video games, mental health, the culture, hate – except /2
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
& co. now clearly prioritize gun ownership over public safety, and they will say anything to defend a capacious reading of the 2A.
2. A lot of Trump voters are racist. Again, this wasn't too hard to figure out before; the tea party pretty clearly wasn't motivated by limited /4
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
the Southern strategy. Those days are now over. 'Economic anxiety' is the standard talking point to deflect this. That is impossible to invoke after 'send her back' caused no drop in Trump's approval rating. It is apparent now that Trump wants the GOP to be like theNat'l Front /6
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
never need to take moralistic arguments from religious conservatives seriously again. They're just another interest group now, with no principled belief in elevating our debased politics. I find this sell-out the most disappointing. There is something noble in the notion that /8
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
they swallowed all the racism, misogyny, narcissism, norm-busting,& so on just for that juicy 2017 tax cut to their donors. Again,you probably suspected plutocracy before. W's 2001 & 2003 tax cuts were upwardly redistributive too. But Trump is so awful that the Congressional /10
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
so obvious as to be undeniable. Again, you kind of already knew this, but maybe the tea party was serious and Romney and Ryan really did think we were becoming Greece. Well that story is gone now too. Trump deficit spends with such abandon, that this GOP plank is revealed as /12
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
insincerity via his body language. He says the right stuff for a moment – at Charlottesville or after the shootings – but in such a fake, reading-from-the-teleprompter manner that you can easily decipher his true beliefs. This inability to mouth appropriate platitudes, to lie /14
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
come to regret after Trump is gone and no one knows what it stands for besides racism and upper income tax cuts. Aligning with Trump is a faustian bargain, and the bill will come due. But by demolishing useful, deflective GOP myths, Trump is accelerating that reckoning. END
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) August 8, 2019
This is insightful and brilliant. I can only hope that the GOP does come to pay the piper and finds that the price is too high.
I hope the GOP’s downfall is huge in 2020. It’s horrible that the Democratic Congress is holding back on opening an impeachment inquiry into this horrible president. The only thing I can think of is that they are so afraid that Trump could get re-elected. I want to see him in an orange jumpsuit SO bad – and put his ass in with the general population at the prison!
The impeachment may come. Pelosi wanted to defeat him at the ballot box. She was afraid that an impeachment inquiry could backfire — and there’s no way it’s going to succeed without votes in the Senate. It’s a complex issue, but one thing is certain: If anybody ever deserved to be impeached, it’s Trump.
This is what I think a lot of over-anxious, bomb-throwing people on the left don’t get: it’s really complicated and it’s a mine field. It might backfire, it might not. It could destroy the Democrats or propel them to taking over. It’s hard to know how the public will react to different phases and aspects of impeachment but it’s clear the media will work overtime to “both sides” it and likely downplay the destructiveness and illegality of what Trump has been doing. I am just getting sick of people on the left attacking and demeaning Democrats in Congress because they aren’t getting their instant gratification on this.
Wow, that is quite a long Twitter rant. Insightful. Adroit.
The GOP has to be made to suffer electorally in order to force them to evolve, and expunge those who are evil from their ranks.
Oh, there will be a reckoning for this, Ursula. The only questions are how high the price and how long before the inevitable hits home. The loss of Texas alone would doom them politically. And I don’t see any of those gun nuts getting less violent, creating the kind of feedback loop that the Manson family made for hippies by the mid 1970s, culminating in one of the former making a play for Gerald Ford.