Final Tuesday Male Beauty

 

The Republican Party is Splinting Before Our Eyes

From time to time I visit the blog "Bearing Drift" which bills itself as "Virginia's Conservative Voice."  In the past - I have tracked it for years now - the site has been fiercely pro-Republican.  That has changed since the rise of Trump and even more so since the 2020 election and the endless lies of Trump and his political whores about election fraud.  Perusing the site today, I found two noteworthy pieces.  The first one sets forth the author's reasoning behind his decision to leave the Republican Party.  The second focuses on the congressional Republicans who are about to challenge the Electoral College results  this includes local congressman Rob Wittman who is excoriated in a piece here - and makes the case for (i) remembering who they are and (ii) making it an agenda item to see them voted out of office at all levels.  I suspect a similar exoduses and declarations of war are occurring across the country as moral and decent people who have struggled to remain in the GOP have reached the braking point. If the Republican Party of Virginia believes it has a snowball's chance in Hell of winning state wide elections without those leaving the party, they are as delusional as Trump.  Here are excerpts from the first piece:

In 2015 I was honored to be the Republican nominee to represent the 74th district of the Virginia House of Delegates, but today it pains me to say goodbye and leave a party that I have fought for and worked to see succeed.

The present day Republican Party is a party where a majority believe in crackpot conspiracy theories such as QAnon.

The present day Republican Party openly embraces seditious tactics to satisfy a deranged base and an authoritative President in Donald J. Trump whose only goal is to stay in power.

The present day Republican Party is a party that largely remained silent when President Trump told the extremist Proud Boys to “stand by.”

The present day Republican Party is a party of corruption because they refused to check or admonish Trump for funneling millions of taxpayer dollars to Trump and his family via his business.

The present day Republican Party is a party that is willing to donate millions of dollars to millionaire (maybe billionaire) President Trump who claims to be using it to fight for candidates in Georgia, but is actually pocketing most of the money into his political slush fund PAC.

The present day Republican Party is a party that turned its back on the Constitution, failing to hold confirmation hearings, allowing President Trump to illegally appoint many individuals in “acting” capacities. 

The present day Republican Party has permitted lie after lie from President Trump to go largely unchecked. Many of these lies have been embraced by the GOP and its members.

On Sunday we heard evidence of President Trump, in his own words, demanding of the Secretary of State in Georgia “to find 11,780 votes.” This illegal shake-down of a state election official should have been rebuked far and wide within the GOP but, sadly, most were silent. This silence speaks to the control that Trump has on the GOP and the GOP’s willingness to overlook and willfully embrace authoritative rule and an attempt to overthrow an election.

On Wednesday, when during a Joint Session of Congress they will certify the Electoral College votes to officially make Joe Biden President-elect, we will see something that is purely disgusting in that a large number of Republicans (13 Senators and 144 members of the House thus far) will attempt a legislative coup d’etat.

Over the last 5 years I have fought from within the GOP for change as a NeverTrumper and was kicked out of “official party membership” because I would not cave to the crass and corrupt nature that is Donald J. Trump.

Since 2015 it’s become clear to me that the Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush, McCain, or Romney. Sadly, the party has capitulated to a mob boss in Donald J. Trump to become the Trumpkin Party, a party that I cannot and will not support.

Leaving the Republican Party was not an easy or quick decision. It’s been my political identity since 5th grade. There are many in the party that will be happy to see me leave (which is sad since a political party’s goal should be to grow). Some will probably say don’t let the door hit you on the way out or something much more vulgar. In the end, the GOP has become unrecognizable.

As noted above, the second piece makes the case of why the sedition caucus need to be remembered and forced from elected office.  Here are highlights:

On Wednesday afternoon, Congress will begin the counting of the electoral votes for president that were cast last month. Normally, this formality could be done in minutes. This time, Donald Trump’s insistence on trying to overturn the election, combined with the spinelessness of so many Republicans, makes it possible that the count could roll into Thursday. We now know several Republicans in Congress will challenge the count in certain states (Politico), forcing a debate in both houses.

How many will vote to reject the duly chosen electors in various states? We won’t know until Wednesday. That said, we know at least 126 asked the Supreme Court to disenfranchise voters in several states. Barring the very unforeseen, they will all maintain their obsequiousness to Trump, with a few more added on for bad measure.

We also know it won’t be enough to actually overturn the election: the Democratic majority in the House will refuse to reject any Biden electors, and based on recent reports (see the Politico link above), there are more than enough Republican Senators who have stated their opposition to this madness to ensure the Senate will reject these efforts as well.

More than one hundred Washington Republicans will refuse to accept reality, let alone make the effort to disabuse millions of Republican voters of Trump’s election fantasies. We may very well see a majority of Republican members of Congress go down the “stolen election” rabbit hole.

However many Republicans choose to do this, we must remember every single one of them. We must make it clear that they have no place in our body politic. We must oppose every single effort they ever make to gain a political office.

That may sound harsh, because, well, it is harsh. It is also necessary. The members of Congress who amplify Trump’s lies will make it easier for the next would-be autocrat to succeed, should there be a more pliant Congress in the future. Unless it becomes clear that such behavior will mean the end of their careers, they will suffer no consequences for their promotion of presidential tyranny – and make it much more likely for said tyranny to triumph in the future.

We will see which Senators and Representatives will choose Donald Trump over democracy. We should neither forget nor forgive them for this – ever.

Moreover, Americans who are not prepared to allow tyranny to take power must reject the party that allowed it to get this far. Republicans no longer have the benefit of the doubt. They have squandered it via their embrace of Trump and Trumpism. Until the Republican Party is purged of Trumpism, American political institutions must be purged of Republicans.

Donald Trump will no longer be president in less than three weeks, but the damage he has done to American democracy will take decades to heal. First and foremost, we must keep the wounds clear of infections. We should be grateful that so many of them will be prepared to name themselves by their votes against democracy starting on Wednesday.

Remember their names. Remember their actions. Remove as many from office as possible. Repeat until they’re all gone.

Both pieces are reminiscent of my thought process two decades age. In some ways, I foresaw all of this occurring once reality denying Christofascists infiltrated the GOP. 

More Tuesday Male Beauty

 

America's Domestic Enemies: Hawley, Cruz and Their Senate Cohort

Long time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist George Will is hardly someone who be described as a "liberal" or a Democrat.  Yet, like many honorable and morally decent Republicans he walked away from the Republican Party thanks to Donald Trump and the immorality and contempt for the rule of law that are prerequisites to being a member of the party of Trump. In a Washington Post column Will lets loose on Ted Cruz - a totally immoral individual in my view - and Josh Hawley (both with Ivy League degrees and Supreme Court clerkships on their resumes) who he describes as "domestic terrorists" due to their willingness to subvert the U.S. Constitution and the will of American voters solely to further their own short term personal interests by prostituting themselves to Trumps base of deplorables: white supremacists, Christian extremists, Neo-Nazis and conspiracy theory lunatics. Here are column excepts:

On a conference call last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his caucus that, in his 36 Senate years, he has twice cast votes to take the nation to war and once to remove a president, but that the vote he will cast this Wednesday to certify Joe Biden’s electoral college victory will be the most important of his career. McConnell (R-Ky.) understands the recklessness of congressional Republicans who are fueling the doubts of a large majority of Republicans about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

The day before McConnell’s somber statement, Missouri’s freshman Republican senator, Josh Hawley, announced that on Wednesday, 14 days before Biden will be inaugurated, he will challenge the validity of Biden’s election. Hawley’s conscience regarding electoral proprieties compels him to stroke this erogenous zone of the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominating electorate.

Hawley’s stance quickly elicited panicky emulation from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another 2024 aspirant.

So, allegations in sufficient quantity, although of uniformly risible quality, validate senatorial grandstanding that is designed to deepen today’s widespread delusions and resentments. While Hawley et al. were presenting their last-ditch devotion to President Trump as devotion to electoral integrity, Trump was heard on tape browbeating noncompliant Georgia election officials to “find” thousands of votes for him. Awkward.

Never mind. Hawley — has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment? — and Cruz have already nimbly begun to monetize their high-mindedness through fundraising appeals.

For many years, some people insisted that a vast conspiracy, not a lone gunman, masterminded the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy near the grassy knoll in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. To these people, the complete absence of evidence proved the conspiracy’s sophistication. They were demented. Today’s senatorial Grassy Knollers — Hawley, with Cruz and others panting to catch up — are worse. They are cynical.

They know that every one of the almost 60 Trump challenges to the election has been rebuffed in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, involving more than 90 judges, nominated by presidents of both parties. But for scores of millions of mesmerized Trump Republicans, who think the absence of evidence is the most sinister evidence, this proves that the courts, too, are tentacles of the “deep state.” Hawley and Cruz, both of whom clerked for chief justices of the Supreme Court, hope to be wafted into the White House by gusts of such paranoia.

As does Vice President Pence, who says about Hawley et al.: Me, too.

Democrats, Hawley-Cruz Republicans, and McConnell-Sasse Republicans — will continue to take shape on Wednesday. Watch how many of these Republican senators who might be seeking reelection in 2022 have the spine to side with the adults against Hawley-Cruz et al. and the Grassy Knollers among their constituents . . . .

[O]n Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

The courage of Brad Raffensperger

I am generally very hard on Republicans, far too many of whom have jettisoned morality and decency and allegiance to the rule of law and constitutional government as they have embraced Donald Trump and/or put their party above the good of the nation.  While the sedition caucus - see yesterday's last post - continues it betrayal of the nation, some Republicans seemingly are realizing their errors and belatedly are refusing to bow to Trump's threats and the demands of the deplorables (e.g., white supremacists, would be fascists/neo-Nazis, and Christofascists) who now comprise the base of the Republican Party.  Perhaps most visible of this group - many of which still have many sins to atone for - is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger who perhaps more than anyone has borne the brunt of Trump's threats and glaring demands that he be treated as an emperor.  Hopefully, tomorrow more in the GOP will find a spine and vote to certify Joe Biden's election and say "no more" to Trump and his morally hideous and toxic base.  A piece at CNN looks at Raffensberger's refusal to bow to Trump.  Here are excerpts:

The hour-long recording of [Trump] the President of the United States, defeated and desperate, begging Georgia's secretary of state over the phone to "find" him enough votes to overturn the election results there was appalling.

But surprising?  After four years of Donald Trump's blatant assault on democratic institutions rules, norms and laws, anyone who is shocked by this latest outrage simply hasn't been paying attention. It was only a year ago that Trump was impeached for a similar attempt to strong-arm the president of Ukraine. 

No, what was remarkable about the whole, surreal and sordid conversation was not Trump's recycling of debunked conspiracy theories nor his insistent claim, against all evidence, that he had won the state by "hundreds of thousands of votes."  It wasn't hearing [Trump] the President sounding like a mafia don. 

It was the calm and steadfast way Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his attorney, Ryan Germany, firmly rebuffed him. 

After patiently listening to and rebutting each of Trump's bizarre diatribes about supposedly rigged machines, dead voters, shredded ballots and other social media-driven drivel, Raffensperger cut to the chase: "Well, Mr. President," he said, in even tones, "the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong." 

It's a safe bet that Raffensperger, a Republican who supported Trump, would have much preferred that Joe Biden had lost Georgia. Raffensperger might then have avoided Trump's wrath and the political and personal threats he has endured. 

Given the enormous sway Trump holds with Republican voters, Raffensperger knows that by placing his oath above [Trump's] the President's pleasure, he may well have doomed his own political future. And Trump was none too subtle in reminding him of that during their call on Saturday. . . . I will tell you that right now. The only people that like you are people that will never vote for you. You know that, Brad, right?" 

[T]he political threat is real, and Raffensperger knows that too, which is what has made his admirable stand so noteworthy. 

In his book "Profiles in Courage," former President John F. Kennedy described rare acts of political courage, in which politicians placed duty and conscience ahead of public opinion or their own political well-being. 

The essence of Trump is his belief that such courage is for suckers; that, regardless of duty, you do what is in your own best interest first, last and always -- even when it means undermining the most fundamental tenets of our democracy. It's been dismaying to see how many fearful Republican politicians have heeled to his craven view. 

Many of them will be on display in Congress on Wednesday, giving lift to Trump's well-litigated and thoroughly debunked charges of election fraud by challenging the vote of the Electoral College that will make Biden the 46th president.

By standing up for the integrity of the election despite Trump's shameless pressure, Raffensperger has proven himself, in America's moment of trial, to be an admirable exception. He has shown courage. 

Voters may not reward him for it, but history will.

More Monday Male Beauty

 

Republicans' Self-Prostitution to and Enabling of Trump Comes Home to Roost

In Donald Trump's mind loyalty is a one way street: he wants blind loyalty but gives nothing back in return and will stab a heretofore loyal supporter in the back the moment he or she fails to live up to Trump's always shifting loyalty test. With his insane hour long call on Saturday to Georgia's Secretary of State has shown that he expects election results to be overturned and votes discarded if he doesn't like the results.  The only election fraud in view is what Trump and those in the GOP who continue to prostitute themselves to Trump and his base of deplorables are demanding be done in violation of both state and federal election laws.  Meanwhile, big business has had enough of Trump and nearly 200 business leaders - typically allies of Republicans - have called on Congress to certify Joe Biden's victory and Trump's toadies in Congress are being accused of behavior worse than treason.  One can only hope the GOP implodes tomorrow in Georgia and the ruin for Republicans will be immense.  As noted in a piece here, when Senate Republicans wrongly acquitted Trump from impeachment, knowingly or not, they sent Trump a message that he could do whatever he wanted, the law, decency and morality be damned. Trump has rum with that message and it has come home to roost for Republicans.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the calls of the business community to end Trump's lies and attempted election fraud.  Here are excerpts:

Almost 200 of the country’s top business leaders urged Congress to certify the electoral results for President-elect Joe Biden in a letter Monday, arguing that “attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy.”

The letter marked the business community’s most significant push yet to ensure President Trump’s efforts to overturn the November election are unsuccessful. Signers included a wide array of executives of Fortune 500 companies, from the leaders of banks, airlines, investment firms, pharmaceutical companies, professional sports leagues, real estate conglomerates, top law firms and media companies.

Many of the leaders have previously been wary of getting publicly involved in politics, and some have been supportive of [Trump] the president. . . . Among the signers included leaders of Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Pfizer, the National Basketball Association, Mastercard, Blackstone Group, BlackRock, Lyft, Deloitte, Warby Parker, Moody’s, WeWork, Ernst & Young, JetBlue, MetLife, Condé Nast, the Carlyle Group, Hearst, American Express, Saks Fifth Avenue, Price Waterhouse Cooper and Deutsche Bank, along with 150 more.

In addition to alienating would be donors Republicans - at least those still beholden to Trump and his deplorables are being accused of treason like behavior as noted in a scathing but highly accurate piece in The Atlantic:

“We are what we pretend to be,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in the opening of his 1962 novel, Mother Night, “and so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” Republicans in Congress are pretending to be seditionists—and so they have become, in fact, seditionists.

Forget all the whispered denials and the off-the-record expressions of concern in private; ignore the knowing smirks on camera from GOP officials who are desperately trying to indicate that they’re in on the joke.

This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat.

This is not some handful of firebrands making a stand for the television cameras. . . . Today, the “sedition caucus” includes at least 140 members of the House—that is, some two-thirds of the House GOP membership—and at least 10 members of the Senate. Their challenge comes after weeks of insistence that the 2020 election was rigged, plagued by fraud, and even subverted by foreign powers. The president and his minions have filed, and lost, scores of lawsuits that ranged from minor disputes over process to childlike, error-filled briefs full of bizarre assertions.

Instead of threatening to gavel these objections into irrelevance, as Biden did four years ago, Vice President Mike Pence “welcomes” these challenges. Pence’s career is finished, but he could have stood for the Constitution he claims to love and which he swore to defend. However, cowardice is contagious, and no mask was thick enough to protect Pence from the pathogen of fear.

Perhaps the sedition caucus didn’t mean to go this far. . . . But for Trump, there is no such thing as too much humiliation. . . . And just as they have done for the past four years, elected Republicans tried to convince themselves that if they supported this outrage, it would be the last time they would be required to surrender their dignity; that this betrayal of the Constitution would be the last treachery demanded of them. That if they complied one more time, they would be allowed to go back to their privileged lives far from the districts they claim to represent—places few of them really want to live after tasting life in the Emerald City.

Engaging in sedition for insincere reasons does not make it less hideous. Arguing that you betrayed the Constitution only as theater is no defense.

Indeed, shredding the Constitution purely for personal gain is perhaps the worst of the sins of the sedition caucus. . . . But we are, in the main, dealing with people who are far worse than true believers. The Republican Party is infested with craven opportunists, the kind of people who will try to tell us later that they were “just asking questions,” that they were “defending the process,” and of course, that they were merely representing “the will of the people.” Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are not idiots. These are men who understand perfectly well what they are doing.

The members of the public and the institutions of American life should shroud these seditionists in silence and opprobrium in perpetuity: no television interviews, no sinecures at universities or think tanks, no rehabilitating book tours, no jokey late-night appearances, no self-serving op-eds.

The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy. At least real traitors believe in something. These people instead believe only in their own fortunes and thus will change flags and loyalties as circumstances require. They will always become what they pretend to be, and so they cannot—and must not—be trusted ever again with political power.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

Trump Has Crossed a Bright-Red Line

Throughout his business and political career Donald Trump has always behaved like a crime boss with no regard for the law.  Now, in an hour long phone call seeking to tamper with election results in Georgia - an act that appears to clearly violate both state and federal election laws, the latter imposing a five year prison term, Trump has again provided unequivocal evidence of his criminality. Some would like to simply turn the page once Joe Biden takes office and to move on - seemingly the course that presents the least risk of continued upheaval.  Yet, if Trump is not prosecuted and any attempt at self-pardon is not challenged, a dangerous precedent will have been established that bodes ill for the future.  Likewise, prosecution and a criminal conviction will help under cut the actions of seditious congressional Republicans and document for posterity their moral bankruptcy and unfitness for office. A piece in The Atlantic by a former Republican makes the case of why Trump cannot be given yet another pass.  Here are highlights: 

In a bombshell conversation with Georgia’s secretary of state yesterday, President Donald Trump made monkeys of every Republican official and every conservative talking head who professed to believe Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. The president himself made clear that he had only one end in view: overturning the 2020 election.

You knew this already, of course. Anyone connected to reality knew it. Even most of Trump’s political allies probably knew it. But important incentives induced people in the pro-Trump camp to pretend otherwise. And now, as so often happens, Trump has yanked away the protective deception to reveal the truth.

What Trump did on that call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, first reported by The Washington Post this afternoon, might well have been a crime. More than that cannot be said until and unless a jury is heard from. But Trump has reason to worry about new juries today, alongside all the other juries he was worrying about yesterday.

The Raffensperger tape shows Trump’s Plan A to stay ahead of the law: election tampering. That plan will reach its finale on January 6—the point of no return, the last minute for stunts and sabotage. A shameful number of Republican members of the House and Senate have signed up for the stunts and sabotage, but not enough to prevent the inevitable outcome of a Biden-Harris inauguration on January 20.

Trump’s thoughts now must turn to a Plan B. Plan B is to protect himself from juries even if he loses office. Plan B points to a self-pardon, and the huge crisis that must ensue.

[I]f Trump is unwilling to trust Biden’s forbearance, and chooses to attempt to pardon himself, it would be a direct attack on the whole structure of the rule of law. Nobody knows whether presidential self-pardons are valid. Scholars disagree; courts have never ruled on them, because no past president ever tried such a thing. But a president desperate enough to try to steal an election on a recorded line is desperate enough to try a self-pardon.

If a president can pardon himself as well as his or her subordinates, a president can order any crime, or commit it himself, with absolute impunity. The very notion of a self-pardon is radically inconsistent with democratic accountability. If Trump tries to pardon himself, his successors must fight his attempt all the way to the Supreme Court. And given the Raffensperger recording, who doubts that Trump will try it?

The sensible American majority surely wants an end to Trump controversies after Inauguration Day, a return to normal governance and the crucial work ahead: overcoming the pandemic, restoring the economy, and renewing U.S. leadership of the world. But Trump gets a say too, as he got a say in the impeachment crisis. Trump is abusing the power of the presidency until his last hour in office. And his nonstop abuse seems likely to force a reckoning even by those most eager to move on. Trump will not be ignored; he will not let the chapter quietly close. Show him a red line, and he will cross it. And if the country’s red lines are to be reestablished, Trump will have to face the law he violated and violated and violated again.