It's clear to me that the so called Republican Party is in fact the party of Trump. They are supposed to be all about toughness, not snowflakes as they like to troll the libs with. However they cower at the thought of coming out against their dear leader in public unless they are not facing an election, case in point John Blake. Even Mitt Romney who appeared to grow a pair when he voted against Trump during the impeachment has apparently once again swallowed the grape Kool-Aid, indicating he would vote for a Supreme Court justice before the election. The Republicans are fascists. They have no interest in governance, no real concern for their constituency. The press has become a tool of the far right, bending a story anyway possible to make it appear that both sides are very similar when clearly they are not. As a Democrat I often point out what's wrong with our party. But let's get real, there is only one party that cares about the rights of all Americans and that's the Democrats. The press will only get worse if Trump wins again. Another victory for Trump means that it will not be long before journalists are arrested for their views. If you think that can't happen, could you have imagined four years ago where we are today with over 200k people dead because of a pandemic that this administration failed miserably in combating? Could you have foreseen that the AG of the US acts as consigliere to the president, defending him against charges of sexual harassment on tax payer money. How about being okay with Putin's bounty of the lives of our sons and daughters in the military or the fact that Trump loathes the lives of our fallen soldiers? As what happened after the fascists in the Senate cleared Trump of wrong doing, he will get another blank check if reelected for a second term, and what we couldn't imagine four years ago will appear trivial by 2024. Make no mistake, the press has been, perhaps unwilling, but never the less an accomplice in where we sit today.
I see more that the Founders actually made a tyranny of the minority far too easy to institute. From Day 1, by design, the will of the people was way too easy to thwart.
As for Donnie, the mainstream is essentially state propaganda, insignificantly better than Fox (at least during this administration). Whatever harm to the nation he and the Republicans have done, they’ve done right by the powers that be. In that sense, Trump is not significantly worse than the rest of his party. He’s just more disgusting than nearly everyone else in the party. The GOP’s fear is of Trump taking the party down with him. Given especially their response to the pandemic as well as the deaths caused by Trump, they have something to be concerned about.
The GOP wants one-party rule, which puts our democracy in danger.
Furthermore, has there been any investigation into the possibly that the GOP itself may be implicated in the money laundering and other organized crime that Trump’s been caught up in? That may partly explain the party’s fealty to him.
Eric, it has been a very long game of GOP Sovietism. Back when there was a Cold War [cough] and GOP running around calling folks "Commies" and writing up Red Lists, was just a beginning and fraction of what was to come. Somehow GOP decided to fight Communism, but at the same time, take on Soviet tactics of secret militias and secret forces. Take the J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy forward and you connect with Reagan and Edwin Meese of Sh¡t. They got all paranoid over Equal Rights movement, American Farm Workers movement and MLK | Black Panthers | Civil RIghts movement. Fascinating how what we saw thru Iran-Contra unlawful behavior and then swept up by Bill Barr, is similar to tRUmp admin selling arms to Saudi, against the wishes of Congress. All of their long game tactics driven by fear, paranoia and greed. Shit. Take Fred Koch for example. LongGame Infiltration is what we are seeing today. The messaging coming from GOP is so blatantly aligned with Soviet state media. I find it becoming such a farce. GOP, not just tRUmp are in a House of Pain. Even NeverTrumpers have a hard time identifying with the Iran-Contra situation. They are unable to admit, GOP strategically put drugs on the street to create more incarcerations of people of color. Take away their right to vote by suppressing them as felons. I see no differences in Bush Dynasty and tRUmp transnationaldisorganizedcrime. Eric, you truly should take a deep dive into it. DM me if you want to resources to poke through.
The Republicans were always willing to support right wing dictators who would put down communist/socialist movements. They were always pro-capitalism much more than they were pro-democracy. Communism terrified them because it was a threat to capitalism and their (meaning white men) control of our economy. Democracy came in a distant second and still does.
We have been hearing it for a long time now, the refrain that Republicans in private think like normal people.... Then, when it gets real, we get a few public mutterings from the 2 or 3 Republicans who may or may not stick to their words, followed by complete Republican allegiance to Trump's wishes. The refrain somehow makes the Republicans seem normal while the actual evidence shows they are not. I am sick of hearing this awful song. The Republicans, who evidently think just like Trump, get protected by the lie that they are decent in private.
I think some of them actually do but they are more concerned with protecting their power and their future careers as lobbyists or with right wing media than they are doing the right thing. Just yesterday Joe Scarborough said that is the calculations being made by guys like Corey Gardner whose vote for Trump’s pick might cost them at the polls. Joe said they know if they don’t their lucrative career as a lobbyist is destroyed. You know a lot of them are not anti-abortion but they pretend they are just to get and keep power. I loved it when Bob Barr of Ga. had to step down when his ex-wife produced proof he had paid for her to have an abortion. Too bad more people aren’t willing to do that.
Maybe so. But what do you think about speculation concerning what Republicans might think privately and why they might think it versus the actual evidence of their behavior?
You can bet a lot of them are doing what Scarborough said — protecting their reelections and/or their future job opportunities. Clearly that is what Bob Barr was doing with his opposition to abortion. From his ex-wife’s account he was in favor of her having an abortion.
If you go back to before the Republicans realized that right wing “Christians” were an untapped resource, a lot of them were much more moderate, particularly on cultural issues. Then they saw the large group of people who were avid supporters of Pat Robertson’s presidential run and decided to expand their base by courting those voters. (Until Robertson came along evangelicals generally shunned politics as too worldly and a distraction from God.) All of a sudden George Bush flipped from a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood to opposing abortion. A lot of others did the same; those who didn’t lost their seats.
The traditional Republicans (the Lincoln Project types) thought they would be able to keep control of those supporters by throwing them red meat on social issues they personally didn’t believe in. What they stupidly didn’t foresee was that eventually people from their conservative “Christian” base were going to get elected. Those Tea Party types are the tail that now wags the dog. To make matters even worse those evangelical “Christians” have been steeped in the un-Christian Prosperity Gospel becoming supporters of extreme libertarian economic ideas. After all the fact that someone is rich is proof that they are favored by God and God wouldn’t want their money taken from them, amirite?
When I heard yesterday that Romney had caved the song “I see your true colors” popped into my head. I was laughing about that with my daughter and she said she thinks that the theme song for Trump supporters is “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies”.
The media has been holding Republicans to a ridiculously low standard for decades. I remember when Reagan gave his non-apology apology for Iran Contra by saying that his heart and his best intentions told him he hadn’t traded arms for hostages but the facts and evidence told him he had”. I expected the media to react with astonishment and disdain. Instead they gave Ronnie a pass. They gave a pass to Bush for his involvment despite the fact that he lied repeatedly for years, claiming to have been “out of the loop”. The Independent Counsel eventually got Bush to admit he had kept a diary of his involvement and cough it up. When that diary was about to be made public in Weinberger’s trial, Bush pardoned all of his co-consprirators. Barr strongly supported those pardons. The Independent Counsel openly accused Bush of “completing the coverup” yet the media shrugged that outrageous obstruction of justice off. They kept using Bush as an example of a principled Republican and Barr as an institutionalist, not a man who clearly supports an authoritarian president.
All it takes for a Republican to get this kind of treatment is for them to put on a good act. It also helps if they schmooze the media and give them idiotic, demeaning nicknames the way Dubya did. Democrats on the other hand can get tarred as a liar even when they haven’t lied. Just ask Al Gore.
Did you see Margaret Sullivan’s article strongly criticizing Susan Page for the Girls’ Night she hosted for Seema Verma, Trump’s choice to be the Medicare and Medicaid services administrator? This one was particularly problematic because Verma had spent $3000 our tax dollars on a consultant to help her use that party to burnish her “brand”. As Sullivan says, the problem with all of these kinds of cozy gatherings is that:
“Instead of holding politicians’ feet to the fire, journalists are too often chatting them up over canapes and cocktails.”
I have been aware of this problem since I first read about Sally Quinn’s soirées but it still amazes me that Republicans have been able to rig the system simply by appealing to the media’s egos. I once read that David Ignatius said that he and his wife were thrilled to get their first invitation because Quinn and hubby Ben Bradlee were the glamour couple, the “Bogie and Bacall” of DC society.
Apparently their bullying has paid off handsomely too. According to Andrew Weissmann one reason the Mueller team pulled its punches was they were afraid of attacks from the right wing media!
They also want access and a lot of them admire bullies whom they see as manly men. I remember Mika Brzezinski, that great champion of women, being ga-ga over Chris Christie. She even admired him for his nasty bullying of a school teacher who dared challenge him. A lot of the media also loved Cheney, Rummy and Bush despite the fact that they treated the media with disdain.
Spot-on post this morning, Eric. Upsetting, but very much appreciate your thinking on all this. To say what's going on is frustrating is an understatement.
And, to your point: in case you haven't seen the NYT "The Morning" e-newsletter by David Leonhardt this morning — yet another "oh! maybe Trump could be re-elected after all!" piece. I let him have it on Twitter. smh
The Corporate Controlled Conservative Press is complicit in enabling the absolute corruption of the Republican Party and there is no limit as to how far those liars will go to normalize the decadence of the entire Party.
The CCCP has become the American version of the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter.
That is a spot-on assessment. Fascists are at the door and we must not let them in, or, more accurately let them continue to rule from the minority. I wish there was an easy answer, but there is none. I fear that we have already seen the last fair election in 2018. The Electoral College has run out its usefulness and should be shut down.
I’ve struggled for a while to articulate what you so clearly state...
<blockquote>The press thinks the GOP should be unnerved by Trump's obvious racism and authoritarian ways, therefore the press presents that assumption as fact, often with coverage that doesn't include a single important Republican player who's actually upset by Trump's racist or authoritarian behavior. The media's Moby Dick-like pursuit of outraged Republicans always comes up empty. </blockquote>
...that I practically leapt out of my chair.
I don’t think all the press are suckers and rubes (some of them, sure; others are apparatchiks undeniably) but this really nailed it: it’s a kind of naivety.
Maybe it’s that so much of the press is them talking only to themselves, it’s confirmation bias?
Eric — a possibility for your "Good Stuff" section: CNN What Matters e-newsletter by Zachary B. Wolf today ... WOW! I haven't seen CNN, in any of their printed pieces, do such "truth-to-power"-speak to Trump before AND to try and quell people's fears about voting and tell them how to properly do so. Very well done.
I think there has been more out there about what the treason party is doing. At the same time, I saw a story the other day referring to a powerful figure in DC who reports like because they are nice to them. The Hungarian word for the beltway political media is kurvas, and only my Hungarian grandmother could say it with the proper contempt.
Would you say the same thing in regards to one Judith Miller publishing endless lies in the New York Times inciting war with Iraq AND you son, believing those lies gladly goes to war and is killed in combat?
It's clear to me that the so called Republican Party is in fact the party of Trump. They are supposed to be all about toughness, not snowflakes as they like to troll the libs with. However they cower at the thought of coming out against their dear leader in public unless they are not facing an election, case in point John Blake. Even Mitt Romney who appeared to grow a pair when he voted against Trump during the impeachment has apparently once again swallowed the grape Kool-Aid, indicating he would vote for a Supreme Court justice before the election. The Republicans are fascists. They have no interest in governance, no real concern for their constituency. The press has become a tool of the far right, bending a story anyway possible to make it appear that both sides are very similar when clearly they are not. As a Democrat I often point out what's wrong with our party. But let's get real, there is only one party that cares about the rights of all Americans and that's the Democrats. The press will only get worse if Trump wins again. Another victory for Trump means that it will not be long before journalists are arrested for their views. If you think that can't happen, could you have imagined four years ago where we are today with over 200k people dead because of a pandemic that this administration failed miserably in combating? Could you have foreseen that the AG of the US acts as consigliere to the president, defending him against charges of sexual harassment on tax payer money. How about being okay with Putin's bounty of the lives of our sons and daughters in the military or the fact that Trump loathes the lives of our fallen soldiers? As what happened after the fascists in the Senate cleared Trump of wrong doing, he will get another blank check if reelected for a second term, and what we couldn't imagine four years ago will appear trivial by 2024. Make no mistake, the press has been, perhaps unwilling, but never the less an accomplice in where we sit today.
Founding Fathers put in every protection they could think of. They just never imagined an entire political party capitulating to corruption
I see more that the Founders actually made a tyranny of the minority far too easy to institute. From Day 1, by design, the will of the people was way too easy to thwart.
As for Donnie, the mainstream is essentially state propaganda, insignificantly better than Fox (at least during this administration). Whatever harm to the nation he and the Republicans have done, they’ve done right by the powers that be. In that sense, Trump is not significantly worse than the rest of his party. He’s just more disgusting than nearly everyone else in the party. The GOP’s fear is of Trump taking the party down with him. Given especially their response to the pandemic as well as the deaths caused by Trump, they have something to be concerned about.
The GOP wants one-party rule, which puts our democracy in danger.
Furthermore, has there been any investigation into the possibly that the GOP itself may be implicated in the money laundering and other organized crime that Trump’s been caught up in? That may partly explain the party’s fealty to him.
we may never know what’s behind GOP un-democratic behavior
Libertarian / Christian dominionist money.
Eric, it has been a very long game of GOP Sovietism. Back when there was a Cold War [cough] and GOP running around calling folks "Commies" and writing up Red Lists, was just a beginning and fraction of what was to come. Somehow GOP decided to fight Communism, but at the same time, take on Soviet tactics of secret militias and secret forces. Take the J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy forward and you connect with Reagan and Edwin Meese of Sh¡t. They got all paranoid over Equal Rights movement, American Farm Workers movement and MLK | Black Panthers | Civil RIghts movement. Fascinating how what we saw thru Iran-Contra unlawful behavior and then swept up by Bill Barr, is similar to tRUmp admin selling arms to Saudi, against the wishes of Congress. All of their long game tactics driven by fear, paranoia and greed. Shit. Take Fred Koch for example. LongGame Infiltration is what we are seeing today. The messaging coming from GOP is so blatantly aligned with Soviet state media. I find it becoming such a farce. GOP, not just tRUmp are in a House of Pain. Even NeverTrumpers have a hard time identifying with the Iran-Contra situation. They are unable to admit, GOP strategically put drugs on the street to create more incarcerations of people of color. Take away their right to vote by suppressing them as felons. I see no differences in Bush Dynasty and tRUmp transnationaldisorganizedcrime. Eric, you truly should take a deep dive into it. DM me if you want to resources to poke through.
The Republicans were always willing to support right wing dictators who would put down communist/socialist movements. They were always pro-capitalism much more than they were pro-democracy. Communism terrified them because it was a threat to capitalism and their (meaning white men) control of our economy. Democracy came in a distant second and still does.
We have been hearing it for a long time now, the refrain that Republicans in private think like normal people.... Then, when it gets real, we get a few public mutterings from the 2 or 3 Republicans who may or may not stick to their words, followed by complete Republican allegiance to Trump's wishes. The refrain somehow makes the Republicans seem normal while the actual evidence shows they are not. I am sick of hearing this awful song. The Republicans, who evidently think just like Trump, get protected by the lie that they are decent in private.
exactly! Press has propped up myth that Trump offends GOP “privately”
I think some of them actually do but they are more concerned with protecting their power and their future careers as lobbyists or with right wing media than they are doing the right thing. Just yesterday Joe Scarborough said that is the calculations being made by guys like Corey Gardner whose vote for Trump’s pick might cost them at the polls. Joe said they know if they don’t their lucrative career as a lobbyist is destroyed. You know a lot of them are not anti-abortion but they pretend they are just to get and keep power. I loved it when Bob Barr of Ga. had to step down when his ex-wife produced proof he had paid for her to have an abortion. Too bad more people aren’t willing to do that.
Maybe so. But what do you think about speculation concerning what Republicans might think privately and why they might think it versus the actual evidence of their behavior?
Rick, you make such a great point.
Like a typical abuser, GOP leaders expect you to accept them at their word rather than their demonstrated behavior that actually hurts people.
People need to wake up to this quickly.
“The Republican party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
You can bet a lot of them are doing what Scarborough said — protecting their reelections and/or their future job opportunities. Clearly that is what Bob Barr was doing with his opposition to abortion. From his ex-wife’s account he was in favor of her having an abortion.
If you go back to before the Republicans realized that right wing “Christians” were an untapped resource, a lot of them were much more moderate, particularly on cultural issues. Then they saw the large group of people who were avid supporters of Pat Robertson’s presidential run and decided to expand their base by courting those voters. (Until Robertson came along evangelicals generally shunned politics as too worldly and a distraction from God.) All of a sudden George Bush flipped from a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood to opposing abortion. A lot of others did the same; those who didn’t lost their seats.
The traditional Republicans (the Lincoln Project types) thought they would be able to keep control of those supporters by throwing them red meat on social issues they personally didn’t believe in. What they stupidly didn’t foresee was that eventually people from their conservative “Christian” base were going to get elected. Those Tea Party types are the tail that now wags the dog. To make matters even worse those evangelical “Christians” have been steeped in the un-Christian Prosperity Gospel becoming supporters of extreme libertarian economic ideas. After all the fact that someone is rich is proof that they are favored by God and God wouldn’t want their money taken from them, amirite?
When I heard yesterday that Romney had caved the song “I see your true colors” popped into my head. I was laughing about that with my daughter and she said she thinks that the theme song for Trump supporters is “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies”.
The media has been holding Republicans to a ridiculously low standard for decades. I remember when Reagan gave his non-apology apology for Iran Contra by saying that his heart and his best intentions told him he hadn’t traded arms for hostages but the facts and evidence told him he had”. I expected the media to react with astonishment and disdain. Instead they gave Ronnie a pass. They gave a pass to Bush for his involvment despite the fact that he lied repeatedly for years, claiming to have been “out of the loop”. The Independent Counsel eventually got Bush to admit he had kept a diary of his involvement and cough it up. When that diary was about to be made public in Weinberger’s trial, Bush pardoned all of his co-consprirators. Barr strongly supported those pardons. The Independent Counsel openly accused Bush of “completing the coverup” yet the media shrugged that outrageous obstruction of justice off. They kept using Bush as an example of a principled Republican and Barr as an institutionalist, not a man who clearly supports an authoritarian president.
All it takes for a Republican to get this kind of treatment is for them to put on a good act. It also helps if they schmooze the media and give them idiotic, demeaning nicknames the way Dubya did. Democrats on the other hand can get tarred as a liar even when they haven’t lied. Just ask Al Gore.
as I noted, GOP has effectively rigged the system re: press and how they’re judged
Did you see Margaret Sullivan’s article strongly criticizing Susan Page for the Girls’ Night she hosted for Seema Verma, Trump’s choice to be the Medicare and Medicaid services administrator? This one was particularly problematic because Verma had spent $3000 our tax dollars on a consultant to help her use that party to burnish her “brand”. As Sullivan says, the problem with all of these kinds of cozy gatherings is that:
“Instead of holding politicians’ feet to the fire, journalists are too often chatting them up over canapes and cocktails.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/washingtons-cozy-media-political-cocktail-circuit-needs-a-cooling-off-now-is-the-perfect-time/2020/09/14/241ae1f4-f6ad-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html
I have been aware of this problem since I first read about Sally Quinn’s soirées but it still amazes me that Republicans have been able to rig the system simply by appealing to the media’s egos. I once read that David Ignatius said that he and his wife were thrilled to get their first invitation because Quinn and hubby Ben Bradlee were the glamour couple, the “Bogie and Bacall” of DC society.
Apparently their bullying has paid off handsomely too. According to Andrew Weissmann one reason the Mueller team pulled its punches was they were afraid of attacks from the right wing media!
MediaMob are just 2 cent whores. They want ratings.
They also want access and a lot of them admire bullies whom they see as manly men. I remember Mika Brzezinski, that great champion of women, being ga-ga over Chris Christie. She even admired him for his nasty bullying of a school teacher who dared challenge him. A lot of the media also loved Cheney, Rummy and Bush despite the fact that they treated the media with disdain.
Spot-on post this morning, Eric. Upsetting, but very much appreciate your thinking on all this. To say what's going on is frustrating is an understatement.
And, to your point: in case you haven't seen the NYT "The Morning" e-newsletter by David Leonhardt this morning — yet another "oh! maybe Trump could be re-elected after all!" piece. I let him have it on Twitter. smh
https://nyti.ms/2G3Bqgg
gosh that Times piece is so bad....
The Corporate Controlled Conservative Press is complicit in enabling the absolute corruption of the Republican Party and there is no limit as to how far those liars will go to normalize the decadence of the entire Party.
The CCCP has become the American version of the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter.
That is a spot-on assessment. Fascists are at the door and we must not let them in, or, more accurately let them continue to rule from the minority. I wish there was an easy answer, but there is none. I fear that we have already seen the last fair election in 2018. The Electoral College has run out its usefulness and should be shut down.
I’ve struggled for a while to articulate what you so clearly state...
<blockquote>The press thinks the GOP should be unnerved by Trump's obvious racism and authoritarian ways, therefore the press presents that assumption as fact, often with coverage that doesn't include a single important Republican player who's actually upset by Trump's racist or authoritarian behavior. The media's Moby Dick-like pursuit of outraged Republicans always comes up empty. </blockquote>
...that I practically leapt out of my chair.
I don’t think all the press are suckers and rubes (some of them, sure; others are apparatchiks undeniably) but this really nailed it: it’s a kind of naivety.
Maybe it’s that so much of the press is them talking only to themselves, it’s confirmation bias?
Anyway, thank you. That insight gobsmacked me.
Eric — a possibility for your "Good Stuff" section: CNN What Matters e-newsletter by Zachary B. Wolf today ... WOW! I haven't seen CNN, in any of their printed pieces, do such "truth-to-power"-speak to Trump before AND to try and quell people's fears about voting and tell them how to properly do so. Very well done.
https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1600992025539526f7364f381/raw
I think there has been more out there about what the treason party is doing. At the same time, I saw a story the other day referring to a powerful figure in DC who reports like because they are nice to them. The Hungarian word for the beltway political media is kurvas, and only my Hungarian grandmother could say it with the proper contempt.
Would you say the same thing in regards to one Judith Miller publishing endless lies in the New York Times inciting war with Iraq AND you son, believing those lies gladly goes to war and is killed in combat?