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.”
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
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: