New House Speaker Mike Johnson may already be losing his first big clash with the hard-right lawmakers who are making the Republican majority and the nation ungovernable as time races down to yet another federal funding cut-off.
Sadly this is no longer a problem that can be fixed in the House. As long as republicans are scared of getting primaried by MAGA voters they’ll constantly tiptoe around what those 10% keep spewing. If they knew their seats were safe, you would have seen more of a bipartisan “fuck you” to the hardliners.
Hopefully there would have been some change after this months elections, but really one of the few ways I see left is if the democrats try to work with enough republicans who don’t have to worry about maga primaries to form a majority coalition.
Sadly this is no longer a problem that can be fixed in the House. As long as republicans are scared of getting primaried by MAGA voters they’ll constantly tiptoe around what those 10% keep spewing.
Nitpick: Part of the problem is that if they don’t tiptoe around what those 10% are spewing, they will get primaried by MAGA voters. Ask Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and the parade of former Republican congressmen who opted to retire instead of suffering the humilation of getting primaried, including safe, establishment Republicans like Mitt Romney.
I think one of the problems that we’re going to have in terms of trying to solve this is that we first must understand that the group of people who actually are in favor of MAGA extremism, strongman authoritarianism, blatant racism and discrimination is significantly larger than we feel comfortable admitting to. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Jim Jordans of Congress wouldn’t have the disproportionate power and influence they have without the backing of their voters. We need to start admitting that a significant portion of the population is saying that they see everything that Trump and the GOP are doing, and are saying “Yes. We want it this way.”. They’re not a majority, but they’re no longer the fringe extremists that can be safely ignored, either.
And it puts everybody in a catch-22. Even Democrats. Take a look at Mike Johnson as an example: Any attempt at purging anyone from that wing of the party only ends up resulting in them being replaced with someone much worse. We are seeing the Republican party being taken over by MAGA in real time. The extremists are doing the same thing they’ve been successful with at the local levels: Intentionally make the position so untenable that no rational person wants to go near it with a 10 foot pole, leaving only the crazies left to choose from. Which puts Democrats in a bad position because it becomes a game of the devil you know vs. the devil you don’t. Sure, they can help to oust Mike Johnson just like they did with McCarthy, but doing so risks once again that the GOP will just replace him with someone even worse.
This is fine if the voting turnout was 100% but it was one of the lowest turnouts ever and the recent midterms helped cement that less than half the population votes.
That “majority” of people who want racial based genocide are just a small subset of a minority party which has changed the rules for winning or holding power every 2 years for the last 40 years to remain relevant to political discourse. There is nothing to understand other than they want to totally remove anything they don’t like from existing or being remembered. There is no negotiating with a threat to existing.
changed the rules for winning or holding power every 2 years for the last 40 years to remain relevant to political discourse. There is nothing to understand other than they want to totally remove anything they don’t like from existing or being remembered. There is no negotiating with a threat to existing.
This part I agree with. However,
That “majority” of people who want racial based genocide are just a small subset of a minority party
Is incorrect. If this were just a “small subset of a minority party”, Trump would have never been elected in 2016. He wouldn’t be ahead of Biden in the polls. People like Boebert, MTG, Jordan, etc. would never have risen to power. Decades-long establishment Republicans like Mitt Romney would not have been run out of the party for daring to hold an opinion that runs counter to the hivemind. We would not have hundreds of voter suppression laws, book bannings, and an entire culture war against the LGBT community.
None of this would have happened if these people really were just a fringe wing of the party. This is where people keep making the mistake. They insist that these views are held by a fringe wing that can be safely ignored, while ignoring the reality that that wing is a fuck of a lot bigger than people are willing to believe. There are things that people like MTG and Trump say and do on the daily today that would have signaled the end of their political careers just 10 years ago. But now, their antics are considered “normal”. That doesn’t happen when the people who enabled them are only a small subset of the minority party. It happens when that subset of the minority party is now emboldened to take on, embrace, and vote for positions that they wouldn’t have dared to admit to even a few years ago. But what was political suicide in 2003 or even 2013 is now a GOP prerequisite in 2023.
We can pretend that they’re only a small subset of the population that can be safely ignored, but the longer we do that, the more we’re going to wonder why the situation keeps getting worse. There are people now who are literally saying they’re OK with ending direct democracy, discrimination against minorities, suspending the Constitution, and even enacting martial law if it means they get their way. Think about that for a second. They’re not a small subset of the population any more, and their takeover of the GOP as a whole is almost complete.
You are making the fundamental mistake of assuming Republicans want to govern at all.
They don’t. They don’t care. They obly want to RULE. They quit because they knew they would personally be proven to be nothing but sharlatans.It IS saving face like you said, but you need to understand WHY.
They aren’t doing it out of embarassment. They’re doing it to keep their own personal public perception away from fascism. It is pure self-preservation.
Sadly this is no longer a problem that can be fixed in the House. As long as republicans are scared of getting primaried by MAGA voters they’ll constantly tiptoe around what those 10% keep spewing. If they knew their seats were safe, you would have seen more of a bipartisan “fuck you” to the hardliners.
Hopefully there would have been some change after this months elections, but really one of the few ways I see left is if the democrats try to work with enough republicans who don’t have to worry about maga primaries to form a majority coalition.
Nitpick: Part of the problem is that if they don’t tiptoe around what those 10% are spewing, they will get primaried by MAGA voters. Ask Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and the parade of former Republican congressmen who opted to retire instead of suffering the humilation of getting primaried, including safe, establishment Republicans like Mitt Romney.
I think one of the problems that we’re going to have in terms of trying to solve this is that we first must understand that the group of people who actually are in favor of MAGA extremism, strongman authoritarianism, blatant racism and discrimination is significantly larger than we feel comfortable admitting to. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Jim Jordans of Congress wouldn’t have the disproportionate power and influence they have without the backing of their voters. We need to start admitting that a significant portion of the population is saying that they see everything that Trump and the GOP are doing, and are saying “Yes. We want it this way.”. They’re not a majority, but they’re no longer the fringe extremists that can be safely ignored, either.
And it puts everybody in a catch-22. Even Democrats. Take a look at Mike Johnson as an example: Any attempt at purging anyone from that wing of the party only ends up resulting in them being replaced with someone much worse. We are seeing the Republican party being taken over by MAGA in real time. The extremists are doing the same thing they’ve been successful with at the local levels: Intentionally make the position so untenable that no rational person wants to go near it with a 10 foot pole, leaving only the crazies left to choose from. Which puts Democrats in a bad position because it becomes a game of the devil you know vs. the devil you don’t. Sure, they can help to oust Mike Johnson just like they did with McCarthy, but doing so risks once again that the GOP will just replace him with someone even worse.
This is fine if the voting turnout was 100% but it was one of the lowest turnouts ever and the recent midterms helped cement that less than half the population votes.
That “majority” of people who want racial based genocide are just a small subset of a minority party which has changed the rules for winning or holding power every 2 years for the last 40 years to remain relevant to political discourse. There is nothing to understand other than they want to totally remove anything they don’t like from existing or being remembered. There is no negotiating with a threat to existing.
This part I agree with. However,
Is incorrect. If this were just a “small subset of a minority party”, Trump would have never been elected in 2016. He wouldn’t be ahead of Biden in the polls. People like Boebert, MTG, Jordan, etc. would never have risen to power. Decades-long establishment Republicans like Mitt Romney would not have been run out of the party for daring to hold an opinion that runs counter to the hivemind. We would not have hundreds of voter suppression laws, book bannings, and an entire culture war against the LGBT community.
None of this would have happened if these people really were just a fringe wing of the party. This is where people keep making the mistake. They insist that these views are held by a fringe wing that can be safely ignored, while ignoring the reality that that wing is a fuck of a lot bigger than people are willing to believe. There are things that people like MTG and Trump say and do on the daily today that would have signaled the end of their political careers just 10 years ago. But now, their antics are considered “normal”. That doesn’t happen when the people who enabled them are only a small subset of the minority party. It happens when that subset of the minority party is now emboldened to take on, embrace, and vote for positions that they wouldn’t have dared to admit to even a few years ago. But what was political suicide in 2003 or even 2013 is now a GOP prerequisite in 2023.
We can pretend that they’re only a small subset of the population that can be safely ignored, but the longer we do that, the more we’re going to wonder why the situation keeps getting worse. There are people now who are literally saying they’re OK with ending direct democracy, discrimination against minorities, suspending the Constitution, and even enacting martial law if it means they get their way. Think about that for a second. They’re not a small subset of the population any more, and their takeover of the GOP as a whole is almost complete.
deleted by creator
You are making the fundamental mistake of assuming Republicans want to govern at all.
They don’t. They don’t care. They obly want to RULE. They quit because they knew they would personally be proven to be nothing but sharlatans.It IS saving face like you said, but you need to understand WHY.
They aren’t doing it out of embarassment. They’re doing it to keep their own personal public perception away from fascism. It is pure self-preservation.
If only, if only the woodpecker cried…