,
21 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
1. Some context for Trump's tweets today boosting white nationalists who we might describe, charitably, as Nazi-adjacent. Here's Steve Bannon (Trump's future campaign manager) in August 2015 responding to complaints that one of his Breitbart employees had retweeted Nazis. 
2. Sounds good right, Bannon asks Katie (who had retweeted Nazis) "WTF?" But then he tells the person who had brought this to his attention to stop. That person is then taken off the e-mail chain. Katie defends herself and Bannon seemingly sides with her because...
3. ...not only did Breitbart not fire their Nazi-loving employee, Steve Bannon chose her to be the producer for his new pet project, a radio show on Sirius XM.
4. I mean come on GOP, this is the campaign manager (and future WH staffer) for your currently sitting President hiring someone who is a known Nazi fan to produce his radio show. You'd think the response would be "Ugh, a f*cking Nazi? Get out of here w/ that sh*t."
Nope.
Nope.
5. While this story alone should be sufficient to say that someone like Steve Bannon and anyone who hired him should be shunned from both polite company and American politics, it does NOT tell us that the GOP is a party dominated by enthusiastic but closeted Nazis.
6. Trump, I believe, has very little understanding of what he's doing other than boosting people who he thinks are loyal to him. And if you asked most of Trump's rank and file supporters if they dig Nazis they'd say "no way! The Dems are the Nazis, that's why I hate them."
7. As long as the economy keeps humming along as it has all of this political organizing by right wing radicals may not result in serious structural damage (tho we will undoubtedly see more acts of terror inspired by this crap like we did in NZ and SD).
8. But if history tells us anything, it's that periods of economic prosperity always subside, often quickly and with very little advance warning. (Think fall 2008 or October 1929.)
9. Given that most of the cultural and organizational energy behind today's GOP is on the party's far right edge, how do we think the GOP will respond to such an economic crisis and the social turmoil that would accompany it?
10. If GOP "leaders" like Ben Sasse or Susan Collins or Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio think they can subdue the powerful, illiberal demons the right wing of their party has conjured, well I say "good luck with that."
11. We've already seen right wing vigilantes stalking the streets of Portland, marching w/ tiki torches in Charlottesville, and organizing armed, volunteer "militias" on the border; not to mention pipe bomb mailing MAGA fans, and synagogue shooters and mosque shooters.
12. Imagine how many more such folks there would be if unemployment hit 8-10% and imagine what such folks would do to the "un-American Socialist Democrats" who Trump told them was responsible for their struggles?
13. This might all just be future-tripping. Only time will tell.
14. Moments of crisis test the resiliency of a nation's political culture. There are dangerous folks organizing on the right edge of the GOP who are waiting to take advantage of the next crisis.
15. I have zero faith in the willingness or ability of the institutional GOP (which has basically given Trump carte blanche) to prevent the right edge of their party from driving the constitution off a cliff in the name of defending the republic from the "enemies of the people."
16. These are the sorts of scenarios that chaos agents like Bannon dream of. His minions may or may not have what it takes to pull off the victory they seek, but the GOP is kidding itself if it thinks its rank-and-file is there mainly for deregulation, tax cuts, & originalism.
17. If you're a well-off conservative or Republicans who genuinely cares solely for deregulation, tax cuts, and originalism; you should think hard about who you're working in coalition with.
18. We should also remember that all it would take to curb Trump's power is for 4 GOP senators to caucus with the Democrats, thus making Schumer the leader. Looking at you Gardner, Collins, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, McSally...
19. There are clear constitutional mechanisms designed to curb the power of a President who seeks to abuse his power. It would require some courage and principle on the part of a handful of Republican Senators to put those mechanisms into operation.
20. As this poll result suggests...the majority of the GOP rank and file (the people who vote in primaries) now happily inhabit the alternative media universe Fox and Trump have cultivated for them. They will condone whatever he and Fox tell them to.
21. Curbing Trump as a Republican means being willing to a) speak hard truths to your constituents that they don't want to hear and then b) probably losing in a primary. To me, seems like an easy choice between complicity on one hand, and a clean conscience on the other.
