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There only is one choice

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

For most of us our daily habits are set at an early age.  From whether you get up early or late, to what you like to read and when in the day you like to read it, whether you give to charities or attend religious services, whether you watch a particular local television station or you bite your fingernails or use profanity or can’t save your money, once you get into the habit of doing something it’s usually hard to stop.

When I was a teenager I got interested in government and politics.  Don’t know why.  I studied journalism in college and worked on the school paper and then in radio and (public) television news, so on top of it already being a habit it became a professional responsibility for me to stay informed.  Even after I left daily journalism for government/industrial video production and public affairs I still kept tuned to the news of government and politics.  Can’t shake it, even when I wish I could.  Like now.

Americans have many different political philosophies about the proper role of government in our society…we in fact have the Constitutional freedom to disagree with one another, and with the people in power, about how things should be and should be done.  (Not everyone in the world has that freedom, and those of us who had the good fortune to be born Americans shouldn’t take that for granted.)  Even when the differences are extreme, from the silly to the dangerous and possibly the un-American, everyone has the right to their beliefs.  But that doesn’t make it less disheartening to see a not-insignificant percentage of my fellow citizens supporting the candidate in yet another race for president who stands for greed and self-aggrandizement, who lies as easily as he breathes, who is prone to being manipulated by enemies and opponents and openly fawns over despots, and who does not and never has had the best interests of our country – our whole country – as the goal of his efforts.  You want to turn your head and ignore the ugly reality, but you can’t.

Don’t take my word for who the former guy is and what might happen if he were to win a second term.  Retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal cites the need for character in a man or woman who seeks to lead our country, and he says there is one major party candidate who doesn’t have what it takes.

As a citizen, veteran and voter, I was not comfortable with many of the policy recommendations that Democrats offered at their convention in Chicago or those Republicans articulated in Milwaukee. My views tend more toward the center of the political spectrum. And although I have opinions on high-profile issues, like abortion, gun safety and immigration, that’s not why I made my decision.

Political narratives and policies matter, but they didn’t govern my choice. I find it easy to be attracted to, or repelled by, proposals on taxes, education and countless other issues. But I believe that events and geopolitical and economic forces will, like strong tides, move policymakers where they ultimately must go. In practice, few administrations travel the course they campaigned on. Circumstances change. Our president, therefore, must be more than a policymaker or a malleable reflection of the public’s passions. She or he must lead — and that takes character.

Character is the ultimate measure of leadership for those who seek the highest office in our land. The American revolutionary Thomas Paine is said to have written, “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” Regardless of what a person says, character is ultimately laid bare in his or her actions. So I pay attention to what a leader does.

(snip)

Each of us must seriously contemplate our choice and apply the values we hope to find in our president, our nation and ourselves. Uncritically accepting the thinking of others or being swayed by the roar of social media crowds is a mistake. To turn a blind eye toward or make excuses for weak character from someone we propose to confer awesome power and responsibility on is to abrogate our role as citizens. We will get — and deserve — what we elect.

I’ve thought deeply about my choice and considered what I’ve seen and heard and what I owe my three granddaughters. I’ve concluded that it isn’t political slogans or cultural tribalism; it is the best president my vote might help select. So I have cast my vote for character, and that vote is for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ms. Harris has the strength, the temperament and, importantly, the values to serve as commander in chief. When she sits down with world leaders like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, representing the United States on the global stage, I have no doubt that she is working in our national interest, not her own.

Or, how about the 111 “former national security and foreign policy officials who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and/or Donald Trump, or as Republican Members of Congress” who earlier this week announced their endorsement of Kamala Harris.  Yep, more Republicans endorsing the Democrat.  Not just saying, like Mike Pence did, that they will not vote for Trump but refusing to say they will vote for Harris.  They have reasons they state plainly why they believe Trump is not fit for office.

We believe that the President of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader who can advance and defend American security and values, strengthen our alliances, and protect our democracy. We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be President.

We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump. As President, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding documents. In our view, by inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and defending those who committed it, he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country. As former Vice President Pence has said “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”

Donald Trump’s susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior, and chaotic national security decision-making are dangerous qualities – as many honorable Republican colleagues and military officers who served in senior national security positions in his administration have frequently testified. He is unfit to serve again as President, or indeed in any office of public trust.

A copy of their full letter is here; read all the names.

But there’s more.  Not only do these people clearly see the dangers we face if Trump wins another term, but they cite reasons to vote for Harris.

* Consistently championed the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles;

* Pledged to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” and to honor and respect those who wear the uniform;

* Committed to sign the bipartisan Border Security package, drafted under the leadership of Republican Senator James Lankford and other Republicans, which would hire 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel and provide more resources for law enforcement but was opposed by Donald Trump to avoid giving President Biden any political advantage;

* Supported a strong NATO to stand up to Russia and protect European and American security and been firm in her support of Ukraine;

* Declared her intention to ensure that the United States will meet the economic and military competition with China;

* Declared her intention to “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself” and “to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists”;

* Demonstrated that she can engage in orderly national security decision-making, without the constant drama and Cabinet turnover of the Trump Administration; and

* Committed to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet in order to encourage a diversity of views and restore a measure of bipartisanship and comity to our domestic politics.

Not that they support her position on all issues; they don’t.  But they are realistic:

…any potential concerns [about positions advocated by left wing Democrats] pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance. His unpredictable nature is not the negotiating virtue he extols. To the contrary, in matters of national security, his demeanor invites equally erratic behavior from our adversaries, which irresponsibly threatens reckless and dangerous global consequences.

In short, Donald Trump cannot be trusted “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . . and bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” We believe that Kamala Harris can, and we urge other Americans to join us in supporting her.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, are among a growing number of prominent Republicans who are endorsing Harris: people who’ve devoted their careers to the Republican Party, but who are speaking out against their party’s candidate in this election.  (They can always choose the Republican next time, right?)  Their position, if I may paraphrase, is that they do not agree with all or most of what the Democrats stand for or want to do, or how they want to do it, but believe it would be far worse to turn Trump loose in the White House again…and in our electoral system, no other candidate has a chance of winning.  The same feeling is true of many of those on this list, compiled by the New York Times editorial board, of former close associates of, and some relatives of, Trump, some of whom were caught saying what they really think of him.  It ain’t pretty.

Do you really want to vote for a candidate who you know is lying to you?  Who has proved to us over time that he’ll say anything – whatever he wants to be true in any given moment, or whatever he thinks will help him – because he doesn’t think we’re smart enough to see through it?  Who right now is campaigning to get back in power by making up a scary scary world that he promises he can fix with the snap of his tiny tiny fingers?

In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender confirming surgery.

The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.

It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.

No matter how many times the “reality-based” media research and confirm that there is no truth to these outrageous claims – post-birth abortion?  Immigrants come from the same “asylum” as Hannibal Lecter?  “I alone can stop” whatever imaginary horror he’s conjured? – he runs them out there over and over again.  Do you really want as president a man who lied to your face more than 30,000 times during his first term in office (Washington Post)?  I mean, he even lied about Oprah, for crying out loud!

I had been considering saying, c’mon, you gotta vote for Harris because she is not Trump…because, being not Trump seems like a great qualification in this election.  We all lived through his term in office; don’t you remember what it was like?  Do you want that again?  Or maybe worse, now that he’s gotten a keep-me-out-of-jail-free card from the Supreme Court.  (Funny, right, that not one of the other 45 American presidents ever claimed the critical need for immunity from prosecution, not even the ones that proved they could have used it.  What does this clown have mind for a second term that leads him to believe that having immunity from prosecution would be handy to have?)

Even if you have to hold your nose while doing it, I say vote for Harris: it’s the only thing that you and I as individuals can do to stop Trump, and I believe that is crucial.  No candidate is perfect (assuming you can’t vote for yourself!), and we each of us always have to make a choice as to which of the candidates available will do the best job for our country as a whole, and who offers a personality and political worldview closest to our own.  A candidate who we trust will try to do the right thing.  No, we don’t know everything about Kamala Harris as a potential president, any more than we knew everything about every other president before he was first elected, but she is not a total stranger.  And, we know what she is not.

Fingers crossed, hoping for the best

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

A few thoughts while waiting for the New York jury to return a verdict in the business fraud/election interference trial of you know who:

I hate it every time a news report refers to Donald Trump’s “Hush Money Trial.”  Not only is it inaccurate and lazy, but it plays into his overheated claim that he’s being persecuted, that there was no crime committed.

  • It is NOT against the law to have sex with a porn actor.  Of the many things it may be (and you have your own list of the things that it is), “against the law” is not one of them.  I pray we don’t return to an age in this country where it is against the law for consenting adults to engage in some non-hurtful behaviors.
  • It is NOT against the law to pay hush money.  Blackmail is a crime, for the person committing it; it’s not illegal for you to pay money to keep someone from telling a secret about you.
  • It is NOT even a crime to use your private company’s funds to pay that hush money, provided your paper trail does not lie about the use of the money.  Your investors or directors probably won’t like it much and may take action against you, but it’s not business fraud.  (And if Trump is SOOO rich, as he claims, why didn’t he just write a check himself and not get the company money involved?  I know, hindsight is 20/20.)

BUT, if you doctor your company’s books to falsify the record about why the money was spent – like, saying it was “legal fees” when it was really reimbursing an employee for fronting you the hush money to conceal a private matter – that IS a crime.  It is business fraud in New York, and that is the crime the Manhattan district attorney is prosecuting.  It became a major felony when, in this case, the fraud was committed to advance another crime: improperly interfering with the 2016 presidential election by covering up information that could harm Trump’s chances.  (Man, isn’t it hard to get your head around the idea that it was Trump and Republicans who actually were committing the election fraud, not the liberals and the illegals?)

Lately I’ve been running across many clever, funny, and to-the-point posts that take the varnish off of efforts to obscure what Trump has done, and what he promises to do if elected.  On ABC’s This Week George Stephanopoulos had a terrific summary as the current trial began.

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Last week Jennifer Rubin had a good roundup of Trump’s pratfall-filled week leading up to the trial’s closing arguments, including his not-unexpected cop-out when it came to fulfilling his repeated promise to testify in his own defense (something that I know no defense lawyer wants a client with a total lack of self-control and a well-documented history of serial lying to do).

Finally, Trump predictably chickened out of testifying. He repeatedly boasted he would testify, but like so many other attempts to look tough, this one fizzled into the ether. The episode underscored his cowardice and fragility. At some level, he likely knew that if he had taken the stand, he would have wound up either perjuring himself, digging his own legal grave or both.

What explains these serial debacles? This is who Trump is. He cozies up to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, so naturally he attracts aides with the mind-set to borrow material from fascists. He has contempt for women and tries to please his white Christian nationalist base at every turn; unsurprisingly, he has no idea where to stop and how far is too far. And he bullies his lawyers, insisting on making dumb arguments and calling witnesses he thinks are swell but who implode under examination. (And because he surrounds himself with disreputable charlatans and yes-men, one can hardly be surprised when they reveal their true character.)

For all Trump’s braggadocio, it may be that he just isn’t all that bright, cannot think strategically beyond the moment and lacks any common sense. Without aides or family members empowered to stop him from colossal missteps, he racks up the blunders. And perhaps like a good many bullies, he really does fear taking a punch.

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Trump’s family, which finally began to trickle in to the courthouse to act like they support him, joined in the family business – lying to our faces – when Eric Trump clearly and cleanly misstated the facts:

And beyond the current trial, the situation has become severe enough to get the historian and documentarian Ken Burns off the political sideline; he had this warning to America during a commencement speech at Brandeis University.

https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1794455333764538763

Just a couple more..I can’t resist:

https://twitter.com/AnnieForTruth/status/1795772810520117719
https://twitter.com/TheReelRandom/status/1795769741593714898
https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1795848109752217919

The real majority rules

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

It only lasted a moment.  An instant, perhaps.  But the spark grew into a happy realization: the U.S. House of Representatives can do something constructive after all, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary it has piled up since January 2023.  The headline on the email that popped in yesterday afternoon was “House approves $95 billion foreign aid bill” and it turns out that the speaker of the Republican-majority House accomplished it by working with Democrats to outvote the extreme MAGA wing of his own party.

It’s the sort of thing that almost never happens anymore.  Dating back to the mid-1990s, Republican speakers have rarely allowed full floor votes on bills that weren’t already supported by a majority of their own party.  Even in cases where a majority of the full House – Republicans and Democrats and independents – supports a proposal, no final vote is permitted; that keeps the opposition party from looking good by passing legislation with the help of a few renegades from the majority party.  In recent years it has also allowed smaller groups of GOP members with extreme views to prevent more moderate members – in concert with the hated Democrats – from passing legislation that the extremists oppose.  That has prevented a full House vote on, among many other things lately, a bill to send more American military assistance to Ukraine to support its war with Russia.

Part of the story here is what happened to change Speaker Mike Johnson’s mind on helping Ukraine.

When the House passed a $40 billion emergency funding bill for Ukraine in May 2022, support for Ukraine was largely still a bipartisan issue. But a little-known conservative congressman from Louisiana was one of the 57 Republicans to oppose it.

Now, just six months after his unlikely elevation to speaker of the House, Mike Johnson (R-La.) has pushed through a $60 billion effort to bolster’s Ukraine arsenal, along with funding for Israel and the Indo-Pacific.

The move marks a major victory and dramatic turnabout for the speaker who is trying to gain control of a bitterly divided Republican conference. The far right is fiercely against Ukraine aid — 112 Republicans, just over half of the conference, opposed it on the House floor Saturday and he had to rely on unanimous Democratic backing — and Johnson’s decision to greenlight a floor vote could come at great political cost. He could very well lose his job as speaker over it.

(snip)

“Look, history judges us for what we do,” said an emotional Johnson, holding back tears and with a quivering lip at a news conference last week in response to a question from The Washington Post. “This is a critical time right now, critical time on the world stage. I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.”

The Washington Post story goes on to explain Johnson’s evolution, which seems to boil down to the fact that he learned more about the situation and the stakes.  Good on him, an extreme conservative and evangelical, for not turning Speaker Johnson (1)his back on real-world, secular evidence that he might have been wrong in May 2022; maybe there’s a bit of accepting the responsibility of being a leader at work here, too.  “One Republican House member recalls: “I’ll never forget Johnson one time said, ‘I’ve gone from representing my district only to representing the entire [House] and the country.’ For someone to go from where he was to where he is now as quickly as he did … is remarkable.”

The other part of the story is the happy realization that brightened my afternoon: the evidence that the MAGA wing can be defeated, that the ignorant and selfish isolationists will not win if the rest of us stand up to them.  When we have leaders who put the best interests of the whole country first, who are serious about supporting America’s role as a leader of the whole world, a rump faction cannot take control.  And I do mean “rump.”

I also take this as an example of what the founders of Axios wrote about recently, the idea that American society and politics are not as irretrievably broken as it seems.

Here’s a wild thought experiment: What if we’ve been deceived into thinking we’re more divided, more dysfunctional and more defeated than we actually are?

Why it matters: Well, there’s compelling evidence we’ve been trapped in a reality distortion bubble — social media, cable TV and tribal political wars — long enough to warp our view of the reality around us.

The big picture: Yes, deep divisions exist on some topics. But on almost every topic of monthly outrage, it’s a fringe view — or example — amplified by the loudest voices on social media and politicians driving it.

  • No, most Christians aren’t white Christian nationalists who see Donald Trump as a God-like figure. Most are ignoring politics and wrestling with their faith.
  • No, most college professors aren’t trying to silence conservatives or turn kids into liberal activists. Most are teaching math, or physics, or biology.
  • No, most kids don’t hate Israel and run around chanting, “From the river to the sea.” On most campuses, most of the time, students are doing what students have always done.
  • No, most Republicans don’t want to ban all abortions starting at conception. No, most Democrats don’t want to allow them until birth.
  • No, immigrants who are here illegally aren’t rushing to vote and commit crimes. Actual data show both rarely happen — even amid a genuine crisis at the border.
  • No, most people aren’t fighting on X. Turns out, the vast majority of Americans never tweet at all.
  • No, most people aren’t cheering insults on Fox News and MSNBC in the evening. Turns out, less than 2 percent of Americans are even watching.

Reality check: But our politics are hopelessly divided, Jim and Mike! You’re naive!

  • Yes, current politics, and particularly the House, seem hopelessly dysfunctional. But this flows in part from majorities so narrow that fringe figures can hijack institutions, again particularly the House, and render them dysfunctional.
  • The actual dysfunction runs much deeper for structural reasons, such as redistricting, low voter turnout in off-year elections and geographic sorting (Democrats in cities, Republicans in rural areas).

(snip)

This new poll by the AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows a striking amount of agreement on some very big topics. Roughly 90% or more of Americans — Republicans and Democrats — agree the following rights and freedoms are extremely or very important to a functioning America:

  • Right to vote.
  • Right to equal protection under the law.
  • Right to freedom of religion.
  • Right to freedom of speech.
  • Right to privacy.

Hell, almost 80% think the right to own a gun is important to protect.

The last Republican candidate for president to win a majority of the popular vote was George W. Bush in 2004…barely, at 50.7%.  The last before that was the first George Bush, with more than 53% when he beat Michael Dukakis in 1988.  The guy at the top of the GOP ticket in the last two elections won less than 47% of the popular vote each time; in 2020 one-third of the voting age population didn’t vote at all, and almost 40% blew off the election of 2016.  Which means he was actually voted for by roughly 30% of Americans, at best: less than half of a bit more than half of the country.  Thirty percent is not close to a majority.  The MAGAs are loud and obnoxious, but they are not the voice of America.  It’s time we remember that, and promise to do the thing that they fear the most: vote them out!

No reservations on the crazy train

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

In the Unofficial Pat Ryan Register of All Things Known and Unknown, there is recent high concern that Donald Trump has dementia.  Or is just batshit crazy.  One or the other is used to explain some of demented and/or hallucinatory things he says at his rallies.  But such concerns aren’t new: in the 2016 campaign it even led to the development of an explanation of a candidate’s speech that you’d never expect to be considered positive: that one should take him seriously but not literally.

At a rally in Ohio earlierGJcwK0kaMAEBJeW this month, in a speech in which he referred to China and automaking, Trump said (amid a typical word salad) there would be a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win this November; sounds pretty ominous, and the Biden campaign claimed he was threatening actual violence.  But maybe he meant to convey that one result of him losing would be the continuation of Biden policies that would be devastating for the American auto industry.  In February, he told the Black Conservative Federation Gala that Black Americans like him better lately due to the many criminal and civil court cases against him: “I think that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now because they see what’s happening to me happens to them. Does that make sense?”  (No, not really)

One way or another, the listener has to do a lot of work to try to figure out what the speaker really means.  It’s the speaker’s fault if he doesn’t make his message clear enough for the audience to understand it.  (I mean the audience of the general population; his MAGA followers seem to process the dog whistle messages just fine.)

Susan Glasser in The New Yorker: I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You

But there is at least one constant message in Trump speeches lately that doesn’t need much interpretation: his promise to free those convicted of crimes in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.  Jonathan Chait sets the eerie scene in a great piece in New York Magazine:

At a recent rally in Ohio, Donald Trump stood at formal attention while an announcer instructed the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.” As Trump saluted, the speakers played a version of the national anthem sung by imprisoned insurrectionists. “They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that, and everybody knows that,” Trump said at the outset of his speech. “And we’re going to be working on that as soon as the first day we get into office. We’re going to save our country, and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots.”

Over the last year, the insurrection has gradually assumed a more central place in Trump’s campaign. The J6 version of the national anthem has been playing at rallies since March 2023, and Trump has been referring to jailed insurrectionists as “hostages” since November. But the prospect of pardoning them, which he has floated for two years, has in recent days been made his highest priority. Trump’s promise to “save the country,” which before encompassed his array of domestic and international policies, now refers principally to vindicating the militia that tried to illegally install him in power and that more and more has come to resemble a classic paramilitary group in the Trump imaginarium, licensed to carry out extrajudicial violence on his authority alone.

Bad enough that Trump is promising he will ignore/overturn court cases that sent hundreds of domestic terrorists to jail; Chait finds a scarier reason for Trump’s using this new message, one that potentially drives away independents who might vote for him: his desire for a second term in the White House that is unrestrained by conventional politics or judgement.

But there is a perfectly cogent reason why Trump continues to press his most extreme demands, even at the cost of repulsing potential voters. He is no longer willing to accept the alliance of convenience with reluctant partners that held traditional Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Reince Priebus by his side during his first term. Trump has long demanded fealty from his party, which has made it harder to discern the acceleration and intensification of his work in the days since he effectively clinched the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday. Trump’s primary focus is not outward but inward, tightening his control over the GOP to almost unimaginable levels of personal loyalty.

Trump’s elevation of the insurrection to a matter of holy writ within the party is a matter of both conviction and strategy, consistent with his intention to stifle even the quietest forms of dissent. This is why Trump deposed Ronna McDaniel as head of the Republican National Committee in favor of election deniers Michael Whatley and Lara Trump. McDaniel had dutifully jettisoned her maiden name (Romney). She had strongly suggested the 2020 election was stolen, saying the vote tabulations had “problems” that were “concerning” and not “fair,” without quite stating as fact that Trump absolutely won. All her genuflections were not enough.

This is also why Trump is reportedly bringing back Paul Manafort, who served a prison sentence for bank and tax fraud, and witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and whose business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, was assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort’s skills are hardly irreplaceable. The point of bringing him back, other than the familiar mob logic of rewarding an underling who took his pinch like a man and refused to rat out the boss, is to signal that loyalty to Trump matters more than any other possible consideration. Normal politicians would distance themselves from staffers who committed crimes, especially crimes on their behalf. Trump regards this as the highest qualification.

(snip)

While Trump touts his first term as a historic success, he and his closest allies view it as largely a failure. Trump, in this view, was manipulated by staffers loyal to the traditional party into letting figures like Robert Mueller and Anthony Fauci undermine him. Mike Pence’s refusal to cooperate in Trump’s plot to steal the election was the ultimate betrayal. Trump’s project is to ensure that a second term faces no sabotage.

An effective Trumpist government has difficulty functioning under the rule of law. If Trump’s staffers and allies believe that carrying out his orders, some of them plainly illegal, will lead to prison or other punishment, they will again hesitate to follow them. That belief is one he has to stamp out, especially as he faces multiple criminal charges for his attempts to steal the election in 2020.

Chait’s conclusion is that Trump’s new focus is meant to shed his movement of all but the true believers; he doesn’t want to build a coalition of various interests and beliefs, he wants only those loyal to the boss, who will support and assist any grift the boss wants.

Among the true-believing Trumpists, there’s no confusion about what Trump’s relentless demands of cultlike submission are trying to accomplish. “The Judas Iscariots of the American Right need to understand that their betrayal comes at a cost,” rails a recent column in American Greatness, one of the new pseudointellectual organs that have sprung up in the Trump era to meet conservative audience demand for sycophantic content. “Excommunication is not enough. Their treachery deserves relentless psychic pain.” It adds that Mike Pence, the New York Times columnist David French, and others “should never be allowed back into respectable conservative company under any circumstances.”

Measured in traditional political terms, January 6 martyrdom may be a disadvantageous message for Trump. The stolen-election lie polls terribly with persuadable voters, and his fixation with it is one reason why Biden’s catastrophic approval ratings have resulted in only a small Trump lead. But by Trumpian logic, it is the perfect campaign theme. It forces his internal critics to swallow their last objection against him. It sends a message to his allies that they can act with impunity. By November, the J6 national anthem will be burned into our brains as deeply as any campaign jingle.

It doesn’t require high-levelGJiBgcnXcAAa-K4 interpretive skills to see the threat posed by a future President Trump in an administration without the likes of John Kelly or Mark Esper around.  They are among 40 of Trump’s 44 one-time Cabinet members who do not support him.  Think about that: of all the people Trump put in positions to lead the government – “the best people” – 10 out of every 11 of them now say no way do they want him in power again.  They haven’t all told us exactly what they saw on the inside of the Trump White House, but it’s enough for them to warn us not to repeat the mistake that was made in 2016.

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Same song, next verse

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

When I was a college student in the capital city of Texas, the mayor once held his regular weekly news conference and was asked to comment on the fact that the state legislature was about to begin another biennial session under the big pink dome.  His immediate reaction was to say “Lock up the kids and dogs.”

America, your legislature is back in business: the House of Representatives has selected Mike Johnson of Louisiana as its new speaker.  Who is that, you ask, and what does he believe in?  Among other things, he

So, we got that going for us…which is not nice.  Ruth Marcus writes in the Washington Post that any sense of relief you might be feeling that a well-known extremist like Jim Jordan was not elected by Republicans in Congress is misplaced.

For Jordan’s shirt sleeves demeanor and wrestler’s pugnacity, substitute a bespectacled, low-key presentation, a law degree and an unswerving commitment to conservative dogma and former president Donald Trump.

This is not an upgrade. It is Jordan in a more palatable package — evidently smoother, seemingly smarter and, therefore, potentially more effective.

Johnson, now serving his fourth term in Congress, was the moving force behind aSpeaker Johnson Supreme Court brief that helped lay the shoddy intellectual groundwork for Jan. 6, 2021. In December 2020, he rallied fellow Republican lawmakers to support Texas’s brazen bid to overturn the election results. In a lawsuit that fizzled almost as soon as it was filed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought to have the Supreme Court intervene in the election by blocking the certification of electoral college votes in four swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — where voting rules had been changed in the course of the election and voters, not coincidentally, had favored Joe Biden. The justices swiftly rejected the case, tartly noting that, “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

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The Johnson brief was a full-throated endorsement of the “independent state legislature” theory, ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court in 2023’s Moore v. Harper. The brief asserted that under the terms of the Constitution, only state legislatures — without any review by state courts or involvement of other state parties — have power to set rules for choosing presidential electors. “The clear authority of those state legislatures to determine the rules for appointing electors was usurped at various times by governors, secretaries of state, election officials, state courts, federal courts, and private parties,” the brief argued.

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The Texas episode was of a piece with Johnson’s conservative worldview. Before being elected to Congress, he was a senior lawyer and national spokesman for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights.

Running for Congress in 2016, he described himself as “a Christian, a husband, a father, a lifelong conservative, constitutional law attorney and a small business owner in that order, and I think that order is important.” Johnson said he had been “called to legal ministry and I’ve been out on the front lines of the ‘culture war’ defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage, and other ideals like these when they’ve been under assault.”

We shall see how well Johnson does in leading the House, or at least its too-small-for-comfort Republican majority, in handling upcoming issues like a possible government shutdown in three weeks, or requests for more aid to Israel and Ukraine, or any of the other normal kinds of business which members of Congress are supposed to take care of on our behalf.  But given his still-declared support of Trump, it’s unlikely Johnson will be much of a leader when it comes to the reality of the need to work with Democrats to get things done: as David Frum wrote in The Atlantic earlier this month, “The rules of contemporary Republican politics make it had to accept reality.  Reality is just too awkward.”

In reality, Trump has been a big vote loser for Republicans. He fluked into the presidency with a Dukakis-like share of the vote in 2016, then lost his party its majority in the House in 2018. Trump got decisively booted from the presidency in 2020; rampaged illegally on January 6, 2021; and then cost his party its Senate majority in the January 2021 runoff elections. His election-denier message damaged his party further in the elections of 2022. His demand for a Biden investigation and impeachment in 2023 is producing an embarrassing fiasco. But no Republican leader dares say these things out loud.

Most taboo of all is working with Democrats, on any terms other than total, one-sided domination: We win, you lose. So [then-Speaker Kevin] McCarthy just had to press ahead, acting as if he commanded a majority when he did not; insulting and demeaning the minority, even though he had to know that he might need their help at any minute.

That minute came. McCarthy sought Democratic votes to save him from his own refractory members, and in return he offered nothing. Not even politeness.

That proposition did not produce the desired results, and so here we are.

Where we are is a country with a solid anti-Trump majority confronting a pro-Trump minority that believes it has a right to rule without concession or compromise.

The only way to produce a stable majority in the House is for the next Republican leader to reach a working agreement with the Democrats to bypass the nihilists in the GOP caucus. But that agreement will have to be unspoken and even denied—because making agreements that show any respect for the other side will be seen by Republican partisans as betrayal. The price of GOP leadership is delivering delusions and fantasies: the delusion and fantasy that Trump won in 2020, the delusion and fantasy that the Republicans did not lose in 2022.

“Delusion and fantasy” might well stand as a new motto for the remnants of a once proud GOP: in the Public Religion Research Institute’s annual American Values Survey, one-third of Republicans believe that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” almost half think we need a strong leader who is willing to break some rules to get things done, and 29% are strong believers in the QAnon conspiracy movement. In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin writes:

Most frightening is how many Republicans buy into white Christian nationalism, a racist ideology that rejects the basic premise of our democracy: “All men are created equal.” One-third of Americans but 52 percent of Republicans agree that “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” The number is even higher among White evangelical Protestants (54 percent). Americans who subscribe to white Christian nationalism are more than twice as likely as other Americans to say true patriots might have to resort to violence to save the country.

In a related question, 75 percent of Republicans think the Founders wanted America to be a Christian nation with Western European values.

Rubin also identifies a “positive sign of public sanity” across the ideological spectrum.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans today support teaching the good and the bad of American history, trust public school teachers to select appropriate curriculum, and strongly oppose the banning of books that discuss slavery or the banning of Advanced Placement (AP) African American History.” Moreover, “A solid majority of Americans also oppose banning social and emotional learning programs in public schools.” Though some Republicans have made “anti-wokeism” a key requirement of their political identity, their message is deeply unpopular. “Fewer than one in ten Americans favor the banning of books that include depictions of slavery from being taught in public schools (7%), compared with 88% who oppose such bans.”

Sixty percent say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, compared with 37 percent who say it should be illegal in most or all cases. In a political reversal, “Democrats are now significantly more likely than Republicans to say their support for a candidate hinges on the candidate’s position on abortion,” 50 percent vs. 38 percent.

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Taking a step back, the overall picture here is a country that is inclusive, respectful of religious differences, pro-democracy and supportive of women’s rights — except when it comes to the largely Republican, mostly White evangelical Christians who reject these fundamental ideas.

When a sizable portion of one of the major political parties, aided by a right-wing propaganda machine and infused with religious fervor, rejects the basis for multiracial, multicultural democracy, we face a severe crisis. Even if Trump does not return to the White House, this radicalized segment will not disappear. How we reintegrate millions of Americans into reality-based, pro-democracy politics in a diverse country remains the great challenge of our time.