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Greg Sargent Profile picture
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19 Feb, 4 tweets, 3 min read
Two ugly new moves from Steve Bannon show GOP radicalization is getting worse:

* Bannon says GOP Senate candidate in PA in 2022 must be "full MAGA"

* He's hatching a plot to make Trump House Speaker to impeach Biden

My latest, on what this all means:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The GOP civil war in Pennsylvania has taken a dark turn, invading the 2022 GOP Senate primary.

The rage of MAGA is raining down on former Rep Ryan Costello, who dared to suggest that excommunicating Pat Toomey might be bad statewide politics for the GOP:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Bannon's threat to have Trump run for House Speaker and then impeach Biden sounds comical.

But a lot of elected Republicans are not that far from this level of crazy. One of the party's organizing ideas right now is the mythology of the stolen election:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Here's the serious point:

This GOP radicalization requires that Dems do not allow Republicans to impair a full accounting of the insurrection *and Trump's role in it.*

Rs are already faking outrage that the commission for this purpose is "partisan":

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

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More from @ThePlumLineGS

Greg Sargent Profile picture
18 Feb
Texas is showing the future Republicans want: One in which they respond to large public challenges by retreating into their alternate information universe and insulating themselves from accountability with redoubled countermajoritarian tactics. My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Unsurprisingly, Rep. Lauren Boebert succeeded in taking the phony anti-elite posturing to towering heights of stupidity.

And Rick Perry did a bang-up job exposing the utter bankruptcy of the conservative response to Texas as well:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
On Fox News, Gov. Greg Abbott blamed wind and solar for the Texas disaster.

But the thing is, he *knows* this is nonsense. He admitted elsewhere that the problem was natural gas and coal!

The rub is that the pull of the Fox News vortex is irresistible:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 5 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
17 Feb
If you want to understand Rush Limbaugh's poisonous impact on our politics, you couldn't ask for a better guide than @rickperlstein, the great historian of the New Right.

So I talked to Perlstein at length about Limbaugh. Great big-picture stuff here:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@rickperlstein A few highlights.

First, @rickperlstein notes that even back in the late 1980s, it was already clear that Limbaugh had a genius for making reactionary whites feel like they belonged to a movement, like they had a home:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@rickperlstein .@rickperlstein also points to how badly Limbaugh "deranged our public life."

"People were being taught that nothing liberals could do, nothing Democrats could do, could be anything but a diabolical conspiracy to destroy them."

Great context here:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 6 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
17 Feb
Trumpism is devolving into:

* Undying fealty to QAnon crackpottery about the election

* Endless hating on Trumpism's phantom enemies (AOC, Antifa)

* Tucker Carlson blaming Texas blackouts on wind power

That actually gives Dems a big opening. My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
There's a fascinating tension at the core of the intra-GOP war over Trump.

On one hand, Trump cost GOP the WH and Congress.

On the other, Rs see him as a success for activating millions of new voters.

This tension is the crux of the problem for them:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Republicans have made their choice: Their future depends on keeping those new Trump voters in the GOP coalition.

Solution: Double down on the QAnon lunacy about the election and the nonstop hating on the enemies that have come to define Trumpism:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 5 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
16 Feb
Everyone is laughing at this GOP quote about Pat Toomey:

"We did not send him there to do the right thing. We sent him there to represent us."

But the idea that "representing" GOP voters means impunity for Trump is the mainstream GOP position. New piece:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
This is a bad development. It's becoming commonplace to hear Republicans claim that *representing GOP voters* requires maintaining fealty to the stolen-election myth and demands refraining from holding Trump accountable for inciting violent insurrection:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
It's telling that Trump lickspittle Lindsey Graham says Lara Trump represents the "future of the GOP."

The future of the GOP belongs to those who maintain fealty to the alt-narrative of 2020, that Trump was the victim of a series of monstrous injustices:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
12 Feb
Damning new facts show Trump may have known Pence's life was in danger when Trump attacked Pence during the insurrection. Democrats simply must call witnesses. If Trump knowingly pointed this loaded gun at Pence, we need to know the full story. New piece:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
I talked to a former Secret Service agent, who explained to me what Trump might have known about the danger Pence was in when Trump whipped up the mob against him.

This former agent says witnesses could help reconstruct what Trump knew and when:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
I don't see how Dems can refrain from a full accounting, with witnesses, given what we've learned.

This isn't for Rs, who are hopeless. It's for the American people and for history.

I tried to rebut objections:

(others like @Timodc have been good here)

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 6 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
11 Feb
Mark it down: Most elected Republicans will end up comprehensively absolving Trump of any and all responsibility for inspiring the attack. His role will be erased entirely. @LindseyGrahamSC's abject toadying on Fox shows where this is all going. My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@LindseyGrahamSC News accounts keep claiming Dems have "failed to persuade" GOP senators to break with Trump. This framing is all wrong. It implies most Republicans have principled objections to the case against Trump. Everyone covering this trial knows that's nonsense:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@LindseyGrahamSC People have rightly ragged on Graham's "what did Pelosi know and when did she know it" idiocy.

But it's also worth noting that the underlying argument -- some preplanned Jan 6, and this exonerates Trump -- is also nonsense. These known facts demolish it:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets

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