Republicans Declare War On American Democracy And Reality

May 12, 2021

Whoa, this day:

Mr. Gibbs: “She was singing about pirates. Bad luck to sing about pirates, with us mired in this unnatural fog… mark my words!”
Norrington: “Consider them marked.”
— “Pirates of the Caibbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl“

Occasionally comes a day when shit gets marked, and sometimes only after you see what an impact the day has on the future. Nearly 20 years ago as a nation on Sept. 11, 2001 — life hasn’t been the same since (though, we didn’t realize how way-serious that day right away). And today, maybe a marked-shift toward some ugly road ahead, but this time we’ve seen it coming from not too far away, the bubbling-ingredients there for awhile. And to pull from that horror-move trope, the call is coming from inside the house — no foreign actors, all domicile, inbred terrorists.
The ouster this morning of Liz Cheney from her number-3 GQP House seat because, and only because, she wouldn’t join the asshole Republican bunch and lie about the election, is the starter’s pistol-shot for the ratcheting-up the fight to eliminate America’s democratic freedoms. Scary shit, a minority, criminal element with zero-care for even their own people could easily run this country, maybe even begining next year, or four years from now. The apparatus is oiled, geared and ready.

And the real most-frightening part is Republicans total disregard for way-obvious reality, and the incredible posturing of a massive don’t-give-shit attitude — even Liz understands:

Cheney is no saint by any means. She comes from a nasty-shit bucket of a family — her daddy, and current counsel, is one of America’s most terrible villians. Yet she’s become the face of good within the GQP, the voice of sanity in the corrupted horror-show bustered from the T-Rump.
As the scenario warranted: ‘“If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person,” she told her colleagues before the vote, according to a person who provided her remarks only on condition of anonymity. “You have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy.”‘

Of course, the T-Rump couldn’t help but be his natural piece-of-shit self:

“Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being,” Trump wrote. “I watched her yesterday and realized how bad she is for the Republican Party. She has no personality or anything good having to do with politics or our country.”

“She is a warmonger whose family stupidly pushed us into the never-ending Middle East disaster, draining our wealth and depleting our great military, the worst decision in our country’s history,” he added. “I look forward to soon watching her as a paid contributor on CNN or MSDNC!”

As I wrote above, Republicans just don’t give a fat-rat’s ass, and are open about it, too (h/t Susie):

And they lie about lying (CNN):

While meeting with reporters after his meeting at the White House, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rejected the idea that members of his conference were questioning the results of the election in the wake of the vote to oust Liz Cheney as GOP conference chair.

“Well, first of all, the conference will decide but I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with sitting here with the President today,” he said.
…
Despite today’s comments, McCarthy continues to support Trump, and his lies about the election being stolen.

This frightful shit is part of the pose to really steal all future elections. GQPers now have no rails to run on and with the full anti-public war machine to maintain power — a big horror is how they could easily grasp it.
Paul Campos at LGM this morning posted a depressingly realistic outline on how they can accomplish the ugly feat:

(1) Simple voter suppression. The state-level laws now being passed in places like Georgia and Florida are designed to disenfranchise enough Democratic voters to ensure the “legitimate” victory of the Republican candidate.
This is just straight up Jim Crow revisited, and passing the VRA is utterly crucial in regard to combatting this.
I don’t know what needs to be done for/to Manchin and Sinema to make that happen, but the urgency of making them see the light can’t be overstated.

(2) Republican state legislatures refusing to certify Democratic slates of electors post-election. This is arguably legal because of our ridiculous Constitution.
What needs to happen here is an all-out assault on those arguments, that will ideally lead to federal legislation making it clear that state legislatures can’t ignore the results of presidential elections in their own states.
Again, this requires the Senate voting to get rid of the filibuster, which at this point is simply identical to voting to maintain some tenuous semblance of democracy in this country.

(3) A Republican-controlled Congress uses the Electoral Count Act (which is a complete mess of a statute btw) to throw the election to the individual state delegations in the House of Representatives, which would of course then choose the Republican candidate, despite that candidate losing both the popular and the Electoral College vote.

Time is of the essence: ‘ Stopping the Republican party from openly stealing the 2024 election is first and foremost a matter of making it as clear as possible to the American public that this is what they are planning to do. We need to pass laws to help stop this from happening, but we also need to prime other institutions, such as the courts and the military, to use what power they have to stop it from happening.‘

Go read the whole post — George Orwell/Hungary/Turkey type shit.

And the marking of words:

“Mark my words, Mitten, some day someone’s gonna stand up to you…”

(Illustration: M.C Escher’s ‘Scholastica,’ found here)

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