There are those who believe the Republican Party lacks a cohesive vision for this country, that it has been drained of any ideas for governance, and that it lacks a policy agenda to contrast with the Democrats’ social and economic plans. That is simply not true. The GOP’s vision for American life is that Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The party’s central idea for national governance is that Donald Trump should be in charge of it. And its policy agenda is, well, doing things that could make it easier for Trump to win in 2024.
Not every single Republican is on board with this agenda. There are heretics like Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, who dared to suggest that Trump’s incitement of a riot at the Capitol in January was bad. There are pariahs like Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who voted to convict the former president in two impeachment trials for abusing power. And there is a party that can’t quite yet bring itself to cast out Cheney and Romney.
After January 6, some commentators spoke of a “civil war” within the Republican Party and the wider conservative movement between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions. To the extent that such a “war” took place, the Trump loyalists won it almost immediately. The “Big Lie”—that Biden’s victory in 2020 was fraudulent or illegitimate—is all but canonical now on the American right. And the few stragglers who openly challenge it face half-hearted purges from public life.
shutz2 on May 4th, 2021 at 15:04 UTC »
Biden didn't win "fair and square".
He won in spite of the other side cheating as hard as they could:
- gerrymandering (while there are a few places where it favors the dems, gerrymandering is overwhelmingly done by the GOP)
- unreasonable voting restrictions that disproportionately disenfranchise minorities who tend to vote democrat
- constant propaganda and lies through Fox News and all the other right-wing media
- churches that should pay tax after getting involved in politics and manipulating voters into believing falsehoods
- corruption at all levels of the electoral process as a result of Citizens United
- the Electoral College skewing the presidential election way too far in favor of smaller states (which tend to lean Republican)
He won IN SPITE OF all this, and many other things I'm probably forgetting. I don't see how any of this could be considered "Fair and Square".
-Holden-_ on May 4th, 2021 at 12:27 UTC »
Here's the thing. Very few of the people who say Biden stole the election actually believe he did. They're acting in bad faith, they want to upset people by claiming he stole the election - and it's their way of drawing a line in the sand and letting each other know which side they stand on.
Their goal is hate - and their modus operandi is hate - and by stating this falsehood over and over, they know it bothers folks - and that brings them joy.
They're sadists.
Fecapult on May 4th, 2021 at 11:39 UTC »
They've been casting out 'moderates' from the party for at least a decade now, so its unsurprising that Cheney and Romney now find themselves on the outside looking in. Slightly more surprising is their sudden war on their corporate donors, who have the audacity to speak in favor of their bottom line, which no longer aligns itself with a radical right wing entity. The people who profit from the GOP now are the propagandists and demagogues, and they'll continue to ratchet things up until this party is little more than a sponsor of misinformed terrorists.