Can the Republican Party Be Saved?

[daytripper]

And it's puking snow right now so voter turnout will be pretty low.

[easyrider16]

I wonder if this discharge petition thing has any legs? Given how overwhelmingly the bill passed the Senate, it doesn't seem like a tall order to get 4 Republicans in the House to sign on. Would be kind of embarrassing for Johnson though. Maybe he caves to avoid being out-maneuvered this way?

Senior Democrats are suggesting that a discharge petition could be introduced to bring a $95-billion overseas aid bill to a vote in the House of Representatives if Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to introduce it.

On Tuesday the bill passed the Senate in a 70-29 vote, but it must also be approved by the House before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

Johnson has refused to say he would bring the bill to the floor of the House, potentially halting its passage. On Monday he criticized the legislation, which would provide an additional $60 billion of military aid for Ukraine, claiming it is "silent on the most pressing issue facing our country" in reference to illegal immigration.

However, the legislation could also be brought to the floor via a discharge petition, which would require the support of 218 members, including at least four Republicans. It would then be voted on like any other piece of legislation, though this is unlikely to take place until the end of the month because of the packed congressional schedule.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-BB1idkpK

I'll say though that the complaint that it's "silent on the most pressing issue facing our country" is really galling when he just torpedoed a bill that would specifically address that issue for no good reason other than politics. Really makes you wonder just how ignorant current GOP supporters are.

[Bubba]

I wonder if this discharge petition thing has any legs? Given how overwhelmingly the bill passed the Senate, it doesn't seem like a tall order to get 4 Republicans in the House to sign on. Would be kind of embarrassing for Johnson though. Maybe he caves to avoid being out-maneuvered this way?

Senior Democrats are suggesting that a discharge petition could be introduced to bring a $95-billion overseas aid bill to a vote in the House of Representatives if Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to introduce it.

On Tuesday the bill passed the Senate in a 70-29 vote, but it must also be approved by the House before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

Johnson has refused to say he would bring the bill to the floor of the House, potentially halting its passage. On Monday he criticized the legislation, which would provide an additional $60 billion of military aid for Ukraine, claiming it is "silent on the most pressing issue facing our country" in reference to illegal immigration.

However, the legislation could also be brought to the floor via a discharge petition, which would require the support of 218 members, including at least four Republicans. It would then be voted on like any other piece of legislation, though this is unlikely to take place until the end of the month because of the packed congressional schedule.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-BB1idkpK

I'll say though that the complaint that it's "silent on the most pressing issue facing our country" is really galling when he just torpedoed a bill that would specifically address that issue for no good reason other than politics. Really makes you wonder just how ignorant current GOP supporters are.

It is possible that he'd prefer the Discharge Petition process to his making a decision to bring the bill to the floor. He's under pressure from MTG and others not to do so under threat of having a vote on his Speakership.

[XtremeJibber2001]

Is it true? Is it starting to happen? I don't think so.

An Outbreak of Republican Truth-Telling
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/an-outbre ... th-telling

LAST WEEK A GOP SENATOR suggested that a president could defy a Supreme Court ruling and that Congress should be able to decide presidential elections. A Republican House leader agreed with him that Congress could reject electors. Both are dangerous lies.

A bipartisan agreement to fix an unprecedented crisis at the border was killed by Republicans at the behest of Donald Trump, who wants to campaign on problems and opposes a solution.

After months of delaying and obfuscating on security assistance for Ukraine, as the situation has grown more desperate there, House Republicans finally came out and admitted their original demand for immigration policy in exchange for that aid was not a legitimate offer and that nothing can make them support it. So: no border bill, and no funds to defend Ukraine.

All of these are signs of Trump’s strength, not weakness. Which makes it a curious time—in a dark week of lies, distortion, and submission—for some Republicans to suddenly try telling the truth now that the hour has come to toe the line for good.

Join a community that values telling the truth in all seasons. Sign up for a free or paid subscription today:

There was Sen. Thom Tillis, who called out his colleagues for playing politics on Ukraine—hiding behind voter sentiment and Trump’s wishes to oppose military aid.

“Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” Tillis said, according to Punchbowl News.

“Some people around here—if they really are being driven just by the perceptions of their base, they should grow a spine and explain if they think it’s a tough vote.”

Then there was Sen. James Lankford, who had been deputized by his leadership to craft the immigration compromise that Trump tanked. Lankford isn’t likely to survive another election in Oklahoma after such apostasy, so he felt free to reveal on the Senate floor last week how he had been threatened: “I had a popular commentator . . . that told me flat out, ‘If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you.’”

The junior senator from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, was stunned at the treatment his senior senator—a former pastor and Bible camp director—has received back home. “There’s been people saying that [Lankford] is immoral. If that guy’s immoral, I’m literally swimming in flames,” Mullin told Politico.

And Rep. Chip Roy, who had backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s primary campaign against Trump, was clearly more frustrated by the lies his party is telling about the border than he was worried about getting back in Trump’s favor.

“I saw former president Trump make that allegation earlier today on one of his social media posts. ‘All a president has to do is declare the border is closed, and it’s closed.’ Well, with all due respect, that didn’t happen in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. There were millions of people who came into the United States during those four years,” Roy said on the House floor.

Lankford’s Senate colleagues who supported his draft bill weren’t pleased House Speaker Mike Johnson was willing to block consideration in the House for Trump, and Sen. Kevin Cramer was willing to say so. He mocked House Republicans’ failed attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and said, “What’s rich to me is the speaker says the [border] bill in the Senate is . . . dead on arrival. And then they proceed impeaching a cabinet secretary, which is obviously dead on arrival.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher told the truth about the Mayorkas impeachment—that impeaching a cabinet secretary for doing a bad job would create a “new, lower” threshold that would “set a dangerous new precedent that will be weaponized against future Republican administrations.”

Gallagher was one of three Republicans to vote against the impeachment, was attacked for it, and announced Saturday that he is retiring from Congress at the end of this term.

When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an impeachment manager, railed against the three Republicans who opposed impeaching Mayorkas, another of the three, Rep. Tom McClintock, lashed back at her. Greene accused McClintock of “failing his oath of office,” and suggested he “read the room”; McClintock responded by saying “instead of her reading the room, I’d suggest that maybe she read the Constitution she took an oath to support and defend.”

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who started the week chastising his colleagues for sabotaging the border bill as “a pretty unacceptable dereliction of your duty,” finished the week basically saying Rep. Elise Stefanik had been less than truthful about the Constitution.

Stefanik, auditioning for Trump’s ticket, went on CNN Thursday for another provocative performance and said Vice President Mike Pence mishandled January 6th. She said she would have rejected the electoral votes certified by the states: “I would not have done what Mike Pence did. I don’t think that was the right approach.”

Crenshaw was asked about it on CNN the following day and said that while he would support Stefanik as vice president, she was “so completely incorrect,” and that the vice president has no power to decertify an election. “So this idea that there even is this mechanism for Congress to decertify an election is just—it’s totally wrong,” he said.

Predictably Trump ally and MAGA troll Alex Bruesewitz accused Crenshaw of “running to the media” to attack Stefanik. “Pathetic Dan. What do they have on you?” he tweeted.

To speak one’s mind, to refuse to tolerate lies, is to be compromised by the deep state. Because in the Trump cult, there would never otherwise be any motivation to do the right thing or tell the truth.

It’s notable that a sudden interest in defending the Constitution, by any Republican, now rises to the level of news—just ask Pence himself. And it was interesting that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who has made clear he will support Trump because Biden is so terrible, saw fit to go on ABC News last weekend, aware he would be asked questions about Trump. Asked by Jon Karl whether a president is entitled to absolute immunity for his crimes Kemp said no. “My personal opinion is, no one is above the law,” Kemp said, adding “You know, I’ve continued to talk about following the law and the Constitution and that’s what I’m going to continue to do in the great state of Georgia.”

While Kemp won’t be run out of office any time soon for his comments, Crenshaw sounds like someone ready to give up his House seat. Such blunt assessments, unsparing facts, and direct criticism of Trump’s party line on things like election denial, let alone of Trump himself, is no longer permitted in today’s GOP.

One other prominent Republican has spoken rare truths in the last few days. Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign might seem like little more than a vanity project, but she at least is speaking with increasing candor about Trump. On Monday, she called his inflammatory recent comments about NATO—encouraging Russia to attack NATO allies—“unthinkable.” Haley noted that when Trump was president, he talked “many times about getting out of NATO.” She called NATO “a success story” and asked, “Why would you go out of your way to put our allies and our military in harm’s way?”

Haley didn’t have company from Republicans condemning Trump’s remarks on Russia. Not many of them criticized Trump for bizarrely mocking her husband this weekend either. Trump questioned where Haley’s husband was. She tweeted in reply:

Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about. Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.

Haley sure seems liberated from years of defending the indefensible. While she’s unlikely to endorse President Joe Biden, she doesn’t sound like she will ever endorse Trump—which is not nothing.

Siding publicly with Haley on anything will invite death threats for Republicans, so she’s on her own. Yet the realization of Trump’s nomination, and the potential of him winning again, is distressing enough to some Republicans that they are trying to unburden themselves with small doses of honesty—if not about him then about Ukraine, or the GOP’s contempt for governing, or about their obligation to the Constitution.

Their quiet chirps for help do nothing to mitigate the threat of Trump. And if he wins, even they will go silent.

[easyrider16]

I mean I knew Trump was a real piece of work, but that stuff about Haley's husband is really low (and stupid):

“She comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago. ‘Sir, I will never run against you.’ She brought her husband,” Trump told the crowd. “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone. He knew. He knew.”

Turns out the dude is deployed in Africa with the National Guard. How do people still like this draft-dodging asshole?



source: https://news.yahoo.com/maj-michael-hale ... 43822.html

[deadheadskier]

I'll say it again, the Cultists do not care what he says or does. They are 100% in on Donnie no matter what. They'll even take a bullet to the neck for the guy.

Trump voters are the most gullible morons on the planet. Wonder if ole Madhatter still loves the guy. Probably

[XtremeJibber2001]

And it's puking snow right now so voter turnout will be pretty low.

Seat was flipped. Majority is now 219 to 213.

[XtremeJibber2001]

He's not the only one, but this comparison is growing in popularity ...

Here's former Republican House Member Lee Zeldin .. a retired US Army Lt Colonel and current candidate for Governor in NY ...

https://x.com/LeeMZeldin/status/1758476 ... 89534?s=20

As the world reflects on the murder of Alexei Navalny at the hands of Putin, it’s worth remembering that Democrats are actively doing Biden’s bidding as they also try to imprison his chief political opponent, Donald Trump, remove him from the ballot, and ensure he dies in prison.

[easyrider16]

I have two major problems with that ridiculous notion. First, Trump is allegedly a billionaire with the capability to hire the best lawyers, and our justice system is not controlled by Biden - in point of fact, some of the judges Trump is in front of were ones he appointed, and the Supreme Court is solidly conservative. So why aren't these cases being dismissed for lack of evidence?

And two - how come this is unique to Trump? Why aren't Democrats going after Haley, Desantis, etc? Why didn't they go after previous Republican contenders like Romney or McCain?

[XtremeJibber2001]

The presumed GOP candidate for POTUS.

[Skid Mark]

Maybe a little VHD will help expand your horizons.

What the Left Has Bequeathed Us

The Left has created new rules for national politics. Here are 20 some precedents they now have established for America in the future:

1) When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t.

2) Call for the end of the Electoral College–but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition.

3) In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate.

4) Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same.

5) Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same.

6) Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate any, Supreme Court officials, politicians, or citizens you oppose.

7) Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival.

Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear any one as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment.

9) Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault—but only if they are radical supporters of your party.

10) Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda—but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences.

11) Try to pack the Supreme Court—but only if justices you don’t like are in a majority.

12) Seek in an election year to remove a presidential opponent off state ballots for crimes for which he has never been charged, much less convicted of.

13) First target a presidential opponent, and then change, warp, or redefine laws to convict him. Weaponized prosecutors should always indict their political opponents in jurisdictions where they are guaranteed like-minded justices and jury pools.

14) Violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (the prohibition of “excessive fines”) by having sympathetic judges level multimillion-dollar fines to bankrupt the opposition candidate during a presidential campaign. The more there is no victim of a crime, the higher fines should be leveled for “damages”.

15) Open the border by destroying all the protocols and executive orders of a predecessor president. Then welcome 8-million illegal aliens to “surge” into America on the premise a new constituency might support agendas that American citizens do not. Then call the nonexistent border “secure,” while blaming a predecessor president for having left it secure.

16) Have local prosecutors invent criminal acts of an opposition national presidential candidate in efforts to make it impossible for him to campaign for the presidency.

17) Use the FBI to hire out social media auditors to censor any news deemed problematic for the correct presidential candidate.

18) Hire a foreign national to concoct a smear dossier about one’s opposition political nominee. Ensure the FBI also uses and pays the foreign national to spread untruths among the media and administrative state.

19) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president drains the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices.

20) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president promises to cancel billions of dollars in contracted federal student loans.

[easyrider16]

Want to see something neat? Change "left" to "right" in the above post and it still mostly works.

Seriously though, if you don't see that your team is using those same unfair and dirty tactics, you need to have your eyes examined.

[daytripper]

Want to see something neat? Change "left" to "right" in the above post and it still mostly works.

Seriously though, if you don't see that your team is using those same unfair and dirty tactics, you need to have your eyes examined.

[easyrider16]

Lest you believe my constant references to Handmaid's tale are too much hyperbole, here is your current GOP House Speaker:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) delivered a “sermon” at a private gathering of House Republicans that did not go over well with those in attendance, according to a report published by Politico on Wednesday. The meeting was intended to be a strategy session for keeping the GOP’s majority in the lower chamber in November, but according to one attendee, Johnson spoke like the meeting was “church.”

A small group of Republican lawmakers met in Miami over the weekend, where they expected to hear actionable plans for defending the House. Instead, they received a lecture about declining morality and church membership in the U.S. Quoting Bible verses, Johnson reportedly said that godlessness leads people to look to the government for moral guidance.

“I’m not at church,” one of the people said, describing Johnson’s presentation as “horrible.”

“I think what he was trying to do, but failed on the execution of it, was try to bring us together,” that person said. “The sermon was so long he couldn’t bring it back to make the point.”

Johnson discussed religion and history for about a third of his presentation. The speaker is a devout Christian who was previously senior counsel for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, which opposes LGBTQ rights.

Shortly after being elected speaker in October, Johnson gave an interview to Sean Hannity on Fox News and explained his “worldview.”

“It’s curious, people are curious,” Johnson said. “‘What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.'”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-BB1iFyG6

If you care at all about the separation of church and state, this should be horrifying. As bad as the Democrats are with some of their nonsense, at least their leadership is moderate. The GOP is being led by wing-nuts right now.

[Skid Mark]

Want to see something neat? Change "left" to "right" in the above post and it still mostly works.

Seriously though, if you don't see that your team is using those same unfair and dirty tactics, you need to have your eyes examined.

Actually none of the above have been used by the right, but as VHD points out, they are fair game now.