Thread by @ProfessorAMuse

WARNING: 2 conservatives sound the alarm that the ominous radicalization of the Republican Party as it turns against democracy beholden to Trump is a constitutional crisis. 

Give this 8 mins by @SteveSchmidt a watch or read below transcribed:  msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/… via @msnbc

I think it's extremely ominous. I think we are in a crisis. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of that crisis. I agree w/ Mr. Kagen that Donald Trump will certainly be the Republican nominee in 2024.

We have an autocratic movement in this country & one thing is certainly true, the Republican party of late Sept 2021 is a profoundly more radical party than it was on election day, that it was on Jan 6...than it was on inauguration day.

And part of the strategy & it is important to understand & you see this w/ the chaos about the debt ceiling, they are driving both chaos at the same time where they are selling order.

All right authoritarian movements always do this. It's how they come to power. They drive chaos through policies of cynicism, nihilism & then they promise to restore order w/ easy scapegoats.

It's very important & we should never talk about these issues w/o talking mentioning that these are minority voters that are alleged to have fraudulently voted. That's not so much hidden by a dog whistle but loudly screamed by the Trump people and their lawyers.

So there's that aspect of it. When you have mainstream leaders supposedly like @EliseStefanik imagine someone w/ the last name of Stefanik, engaging in replacement theory, engaging in white nationalism, white supremacist replacement theory in ads in her Albany #NewYork district.

This is mainstream. The (Republican) party is now in open alliance w/ extremist elements include those fascists that you saw outside the Capitol, white nationalists, white supremacists & a bevy of other extremists groups.

Certainly there's going to be political violence in this country b/c the argument Trump is making & so many of his allies is that civilization is going to collapse b/c of the hoards of minorities being imported to steal the birthright & franchise of the American people.

It is evil. It is demagogic. It has been done before in history; the stigmatization of people who are the weakest in a society, to scapegoat & to diffuse the blame from the problems that those that are attacking them are responsible for creating in the first place.

Yeah, we are in a very dangerous moment & it's going to get worse.

[@maddow asks @steveschmidt: Kagen brings up that we can't underestimate the radicalization of the GOP. What is the opposite of appeasement?]

(He responds) Confrontation.

The front of that fight that will determine if we remain a republic. In the front of that space is where the lie is confronted with the truth. That's the battleground. That plays out in a million ways. Democracy cannot survive in a world where the lie & the truth stand equally.

The system that we have is based on a compact that requires faith & belief in trust. It's how we share power w/ people that we disagree with. We acknowledge that we live in a complex world where people have different perspectives & we have to accommodate those views.

I believe there was a consensus that has unraveled in a startlingly short period of time, that you can trace back to the beginning of the country; in the name of political power

also the same people claiming that they are doing it in the name of freedom means maintaining our power and not necessarily abiding by the results of the election. When you get into that territory you are in a scary space. It is essential to remember to understand one thing and:

This has to be brought forward into any debate despite all the flaws of American democracy, or any democracy, democracies are the only system of gov't that has ever existed in the history of humanity that puts the individual human being on top of the power of the state.

Every other system subordinates the dignity of the human being to the power of the state for the purposes of the state often controlled by self-interest corrupt minorities. This is the most profound moral issue that you could possibly talk about on a given evening in this country

b/c it (democracy) goes to the heart of the American idea; the embrace of humanism of natural rights, of pluralism, & this idea that anybody can be an American & we can all stand equal, coequally, in a society under the rule of law where we all get a say and can participate.

That is what is being vandalized & attacked & successfully so. They are on the march. They've (GOP) raised more money than the Democrats. Republicans have tremendous advantages heading into this next midterm election. We are indeed in a very frightening moment.