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Greg Sargent Profile picture
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22 Feb, 4 tweets, 4 min read
Trump's grip on the GOP is tightening. He's threatening primary challenges to Republicans who don't maintain absolute fealty to him. Dems must explain to the public what a malignancy on democracy the GOP has become -- and go big while they can. My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Strong quotes from DCCC chair @RepSeanMaloney to me about the GOP's radicalization:

“Dangerous elements are controlling the GOP. They’ve got their hands around its neck right now.”

The GOP has “become a danger to our democracy and our public health.”

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@RepSeanMaloney Also key:

DCCC chair @RepSeanMaloney tells me he's undertaking a "deep dive" into the loss of House seats in 2020.

This will look at what happened with Latino voters, and at how to improve digital and social media communications (which @AOC brought up):

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@RepSeanMaloney @AOC Amazing new USA Today poll:

* Half of Trump voters say GOP must become MORE loyal to Trump

* 73% say Biden didn't legitimately win

Now Rs are escalating the voter suppression, saying it's necessary because GOP voters don't have confidence in elections:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

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More from @ThePlumLineGS

Greg Sargent Profile picture
23 Feb
Ted Cruz now says the media is attacking him due to Trump withdrawal. This may seem silly. But Republicans are increasingly recentering Trump as chief victim in US public life amid an ongoing retreat into their right wing fictional universe. New piece:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The pull of the Hannity disinformation vortex is so strong that Republicans are incentivized to tell lies that counter truths that *Republicans themselves* have admitted to elsewhere:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
The Texas disaster actually shows the terrible trade-offs at the core of *conservative* governance.

But in a fictional universe where it can be blamed on leftist economics with no sense of obligation to basic facts/reality, that truism is easily erased:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… Image
Read 5 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
19 Feb
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/…
Read 4 tweets
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

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