Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Oh yes. Silencing Trump is absolutely important. But it doesn't change the basic driver that brought the GOP to Trump in the 1st place- the Frankenstein they built- the right wing media ecosystem- that is a monster they lost control of back in the late 2000s. If establishment

https://twitter.com/declanpgarvey/status/1354171631804014592

2. Rs like @LeaderMcConnell have any true interest in saving their party, their legacies (and you have to think, McConnell in particular is bc what he achieved w the Courts is remarkable, but ONLY if American democracy itself survives. If the constitutional order collapses, &

3. right now, if @OldBullTV put a betting market on "American democracy is still functioning, intact 6 yrs from now" I'd peg that at 50/50. And no, I'm not being hyperbolic. AND the 2022 cycle will determine whether those odds improve or get markedly worse. If the GOP takes

4. control of the House or Senate, maybe we stay 50/50. But they take both? I'm not sure we do (assuming Trump is acquitted by Senate Rs & allowed to get away w insurrection, literally the worst possible transgression a POTUS can commit against the country. I'm guessing that

5. at least @SteveSchmidtSES agrees w this assessment, depressing as it is. The reason being, of course, is that if they acquit him w no more than 4 or 5 impeachment votes, if there is no accountability for Hawley or Cruz, or the #SeditionCaucus who voted to end democracy on

6. Jan 6th, if the Rep Party has not been deradicalized by 2024 then it is highly that this country is on a collision course with disaster in terms of its next presidential election. The GOP's failure to refute The Big Lie- which is much more imp than even impeaching Trump is-

7. guarantees that the party's voters will only accept a 2024 outcome in which the Rep Party is victorious. THAT is the ongoing crisis that is @GOPLeader's & @GOPChairwoman's continued support of The Big Lie. Unless something changes in the next couple of weeks that forces the

8. whole of the Republican Party to issue an official statement, from the national RNC AND from all 50 of its state parties (& all county parties too) that officially denounces The Big Lie- we are getting set up by this party for a world of hurt in terms of our next election.

9. This is why I have been correcting people who have talked about our democratic crisis in the past tense, or as something that "was a close call that we were fortunate to come out of." We are NOT out of it. It is an ongoing crisis and will remain so, so long as a vast majority

10. Republican voters believe The Big Lie. And the vast majority of Rep voters will believe The Big Lie so long as the Republican Party's leadership & mainstream elected officials are the ones perpetrating it. Which brings us to the problem of the right-wing media Frankenstein.

11. BC the reason that other than @LeaderMcConnell most of the other Rep Party's elected officials are either actively promoting The Big Lie, or silently promoting it by refusing to speak out to correct it is bc of Fox News & Rush Limbaugh & right wing influencers, who long ago

12. demonstrated their power over the party's elected officials when Limbaugh single-handily targeted and removed via an ideological primary target @bobinglis for refusing to pretend science on climate change didn't exist. That was the 1st time GOP electeds realized the fun tool

13. they'd helped build to "own the libs," like the Venus Fly Trap in Little Shop of Horrors, had instead grown too large, too mean, and most importantly, too self-focused to avoid eating THEM. And that triggered a massive wave of ideological extremism within the party, w Rs

14. jockeying to see who could out-conservative, out anti-science, & eventually out-stupid, out-racist, and out-hate each other, in part to avoid losing their seats via being targeted by right wing fear capitalists. So, if you're like me & believe that democracy is near collapse

15. and see that the collapse is being driven by radicalism in the GOP and that said radicalism MUST be curtailed and that to curtail that radicalism we must make it more electorally costly to be extreme than it has been up to now (up to now, D electioneering has utterly failed

16. to impose ANY penalty for extremism on the GOP, something @StrikePac is keenly interested in changing) but also must figure out a way to alter the media environment so that right wing nuts don't have so much power. Is that via a fairness doctrine? Consumer boycotts to force

17. fox news to moderate (any such plan must also deal w internet & radio extremism). Its a hard nut to crack but here's what we do know- either we will come up with solutions to the extremism problem or the extremism problem will likely end our democracy. secure.actblue.com/donate/strikep…