Every Republican active in politics during the Trump era should be remembered based only on where they drew the line.
Did they draw the line at his openly racist immigration platform?

Did they draw the line when Trump mocked a disabled reporter?

Did they draw the line when he was sued for fraud?

Did they draw the line when he said a Hispanic judge can't be fair because of his race?
Did they draw the line when he urged his supporters to shoot Hillary Clinton?

Did they draw the line when he boasted about assaulting women?

Did they draw the line when he encouraged violence against journalists?

Did they draw the line over his ties to Russia?
Did they draw the line when he tore up every global treaty that keeps the world safe?

Did they draw the line when he banned flights from Muslim countries?

Did they draw the line when his administration shredded civil rights for workers, rape survivors, and disabled students?
Did they draw the line when he banned transgender military service because Fox said he should?

Did they draw the line when he forced a tax bill that gave trillions to the rich despite public opposition?

Did they draw the line when he tried to strip 20 million of health care?
Did they draw the line when he called neo-Nazis "very fine people"?

Did they draw the line when he ripped families apart at the border and threw innocent kids in camps?

Did they draw the line when he paid off a porn star?
Did they draw the line when he put an accused rapist on the Supreme Court?

Did they draw the line when he shut down the government for a month because Congress wouldn't fund his wall?

Did they draw the line when he then stole that money from the military budget anyway?
Did they draw the line when his administration relentlessly ignored every ethics law on the books, hiring family, campaigning in government roles, stealing taxpayer money?

Did they draw the line when he attacked pro athletes who kneeled for racial justice?
Did they draw the line when the special counsel found he obstructed justice?

Did they draw the line when he tried to bribe the president of Ukraine to prosecute Joe Biden's family?

Did they draw the line when he fired every public servant who spoke at his impeachment?
Did they draw the line when he tear gassed civil rights protesters at the White House?

Did they draw the line when he sat back and let 350,000 people die in a pandemic?

Did they draw the line when he sabotaged the Postal Service?
Or did they wait, through ALL OF THOSE THINGS, until he's two weeks from leaving and fomented a violent coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol, and decide, wow, I had no idea he could do something like this, all that other stuff was okay but THIS is a bridge too far?
If you're a Republican, then my respect for you directly depends on how long you took, from the day Donald Trump descended down that escalator in 2015, to realize this guy was a fundamental threat to the basic principles of this country.

If you waited until now...sorry. Nope.

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More from @fawfulfan

5 Jan
I hope every single person in California who voted for Prop 22 steps on a rake this morning.
Seriously — how stupid are you?

You voted for a law written by, effectively, a pair of Ponzi schemes (Uber and Lyft) that wanted taxpayers to prop them up, and in doing so you kicked the legs out from under a MUCH broader segment of the population's labor rights.
The really crazy part is that this all started because the legislature stupidly applied AB5 to a big set of tech and creative workers who weren't intended to be covered — but Prop 22 doesn't even get rid of AB5, it just exempts the workers that are *supposed* to be covered!
Read 4 tweets
5 Jan
I know a lot else is going on today, but the GOP President Pro Tempore of the PA Senate just flat-out refused to seat a Democratic senator-elect, despite his win being certified and upheld by the state Supreme Court.

And tossed the Lt. Governor out of the chamber for objecting.
The rationale is that Sen.-elect Brewster only won by a few hundred votes, and the margin was decided by mail-in ballots that his Republican opponent contested.

But the Supreme Court ALREADY RULED those ballots legal, under a law that the Republican legislature itself passed.
I don't know exactly what the legal process is from here, but it seems to me that PA Senate Republicans are at best in contempt of the state Supreme Court, and at worst staging a bloodless coup.
Read 4 tweets
15 Dec 20
Nobody who advocates for repealing Section 230 seems to be able to answer this most basic question: how would making it easier to sue tech platforms for the content they publish make them MORE willing to publish content they don't agree with?
People like @rachelbovard seem to have Section 230 entirely backwards — they think without it, they could sue tech platforms for *not* allowing them to publish content.

But Section 230 isn't what prohibits that. The First Amendment is.
In reality, Section 230 *protects* free expression on the internet. Without it, tech platforms would have to police the you post for language that could get them sued, and they would err on the side of assuming anything could get them sued.
Read 5 tweets
13 Dec 20
The U.S. is definitely the less competent democracy.

I'd argue the U.K. has a more fractured and less progressive left than the U.S. does, but the U.S. fails the basic test of even having a system of government where the political majority can enact and be judged on its agenda.
The U.S. political system has among the most "veto points" of any system of government in the world. Political parties exploit power divisions between House-Senate, Congress-President, President-Courts, Congress-Courts, Federal-State, and others to basically shut down everything.
It is good for a political system to have some level of checks and balances, but when you have *too* many, as in the U.S., the result is no politician has a mandate, majorities can't pass their agenda, and the public doesn't know who to hold accountable for anything.
Read 4 tweets
6 Dec 20
It's incredible to see the whole conservative movement crucify Bill Barr, who has arguably done more than any other person alive to shield Trump from legal harm and weaponize the law against his enemies, solely because he said, there's nothing I can do to overturn this election.
It's pretty chilling when you think about the implications of it.

We've reached the point where the GOP zeitgeist views anything short of actively overthrowing democracy as treachery and disloyalty to the cause.
Let's say that Bill Barr HAD overturned the election. That still wouldn't have been enough. Republicans would call him an establishment swamp creature because he refused to arrest Joe Biden.

Or let's say he did arrest Joe Biden. Then it would be, he refused to execute him.
Read 5 tweets
6 Dec 20
The reason smart conservatives attack the media for their reporting on Trump that they KNOW is accurate and damning is pretty simple: if they didn't, they'd have to admit that everything liberals have been saying about the Republican Party for decades is right.
The GOP has become a hollowed-out vessel for plutocrats that made a devil's bargain with neo-Nazis and theocrats to pull up the ladder of democracy behind them.

For years these "serious" conservatives called us hysterical for warning that's where it was heading. Well, it was.
Beyond the group of Never Trump conservatives who had the guts to admit we were right and leave the GOP, there's another group of cowards like Rich Lowry and Hugh Hewitt, who know what Trump is doing to their party but are too invested in the power they've won to admit any of it.
Read 4 tweets

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