Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

After roe, women are no longer free.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickle?”

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

We still have time to mess this up!

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Repubs in Disarray! Open Thread (You *Don’t* Hate to See It)

Repubs in Disarray! Open Thread (You *Don’t* Hate to See It)

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His members keep this clownshow up, Very Serious People are gonna start questioning #MoscowMitch’s political talents…

McCarthy’s not as big a moron as, for instance, Louie Gohmert… but he’s consistently an idiot, playing way out of his depth:

… “Kevin McCarthy’s part of the team,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, Republican from Alabama who is leading the charge, adding that the California Republican has “told that to the President of the United States” as well as Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.

Asked if McCarthy had discouraged the effort at all, Jordan told CNN on Sunday: “Kevin’s been great. Kevin’s been fine. Kevin’s been great on this whole process.” …

“If you want to unite this nation, you start with having integrity in your election,” McCarthy said. “There are questions out there. … What’s wrong with bringing the information back so people have all the information to make those decisions?”…

While the effort is certain to fail, it’s bound to put Republicans in a difficult spot. If one senator joins with a House member to object to a state’s electoral count, each chamber must debate the merits of the objection for up to two hours before casting a vote on whether to affirm the objection. The objections are certain to fail in both chambers, even though they could win the backing of a majority of House Republicans…

Not an expert on ‘conservative’ media, but this seems about right:

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    To say that Trump went off the rails at his rally tonight isn’t quite right, since that assumes he was at some point on those rails. 15.5 days and counting.

  2. 2.

    lgerard

    LOL at this

    Trump had tried to reach Raffensperger at least 18 times before Saturday’s call, according to Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs, but the calls were patched to interns in the press office who thought it was a prank and didn’t realize it was actually the president on the line. Meadows arranged Saturday’s call after collecting all the participants’ cellphone numbers and connecting with them directly.

    I don’t doubt for a second that Raffensperger had told the interns “Hey if anyone calls pretending to be president trump, just laugh at them, then hang up.”

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    @lgerard: To be fair, the prank potential in calling up random people and pretending to be Trump is pretty high. And normally, calls from a President are pre-arranged well ahead of time. So assuming a cold call from someone claiming to be the President, calling from a random cell phone with either a New York or a Florida area code (making an educated guess here), putting it in the “nice try jokester” bin is reasonable and prudent.

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    It’s sad to see how the party of Lincoln has transformed over the years into the party of Trump. We may be about to see the latter eat itself, at least at the national level. If that does indeed happen, what then for the party at state and local levels?

  6. 6.

    lgerard

    @lgerard:

    it took 18 tries before they went to

    “Meadows arranged Saturday’s call after collecting all the participants’ cellphone numbers and connecting with them directly”

  10. 10.

    The Moar You Know

    Very obvious at this point that McConnell has zero control over his caucus, and it is reasonable to question if he ever had any, or just rode the bandwagon the entire time.  He wanted to go down in history as one of the greats, an LBJ-caliber Majority Leader.  He’s not even close.

  11. 11.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Haha. Republicans are never in disarray. Sure, there are a few loud elected RINOs making trouble for Trump and the crazy base right now but they’ll go the way of Flake and Corker soon enough. The derp doesn’t go back into the bottle.

  13. 13.

    joel hanes

    McCarthy’s not as big a moron as, for instance, Louie Gohmert

    … but Mark Meadows, who was in on Trump’s call to Raffensperger, is.

     

    Meadows refused all summer to negotiate pandemic relief with Pelosi.  His predecessor as WH CoS, Mulvaney, negotiated the first pandemic relief bill.

  14. 14.

    CaseyL

    @joel hanes:

    Meadows refused all summer to negotiate pandemic relief with Pelosi.

     

    Refusing to negotiate has nothing to do with being a moron. The GOP is not about policy. Maybe once upon a time it was, but those days are long gone. The GOP is all about, and only about, grifting. Riling up the mouth-breathers is part of the grift: not only can the rubes be regularly shaken down (and they love being taken for every dollar they own), but keeping government from, well, governing means they will always be full of incoherent rage and grievance.

    Trump himself is dumber than a bag of hair, but only when it comes to everyday knowledge about life, history, and the world. He’s smart as a tack when it comes to running a con. Since that’s all the GOP cares about, they adore him. He’s shown the way to being what they wanted to be all along.

  15. 15.

    the pollyanna from hell

    Neither embarrassment nor criminal prosecution will slow white supremacy down. Back in the day those frustrated the KKK, but that just opened doors for the Birchers in my extended family. I take comfort in knowing that the apocalypse they imagined actually did come to pass and eliminate them in their own families, now hippies all.

  16. 16.

    RandomMonster

    Mercifully, I didn’t have an opportunity to watch Covigula’s rally. I take it I didn’t miss much.

  17. 17.

    Fair Economist

    @West of the Rockies:

    She’s only mostly dead.

    I know you’re just trying to joke, but she’s been in critical condition for two weeks, and apparently her partner thought she *was* dead.

  19. 19.

    BruceFromOhio

    … “Kevin McCarthy’s part of the team,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, Republican from Alabama who is leading the charge, adding that the California Republican has “told that to the President of the United States” as well as Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.

    Do these guys know that “leading the charge” means you get shot at at, and some of your comrades might end up dead?

    Maybe they should know this before going further.

  21. 21.

    patrick II

    @CaseyL:

    Agreed.  Dumb and forgetful about most things, but on that phone call he reeled off the various conspiracy theories like they were on his finals — which in a way they are.

  25. 25.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    “Republicans were in open warfare”. There appear to be no area weapons in play. I am disappoint.

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Amir Khalid: It’s sad to see how the party of Lincoln has transformed over the years into the party of Trump.

    Oh, it’s been shitpile for decades.  Dump was just a better conman than the rest of the bastards.  A bunch of con artists got outconned by a better conman.

  28. 28.

    Ruckus

    @BruceFromOhio:

    These are not the guys you warn about that.

    They want to lead the charge, be out front, take all the blame, and all the incoming, why would you want to stop that?

  29. 29.

    Mag

    The only disarray is the Republicans who want to say the quiet parts out loud and the Republicans who want to keep saying the quiet parts quietly.

    Twitter thread from Jared Yates Sexton:

    There likely won’t be a schism in the Republican Party. Romney might eventually give a tearful speech and declare himself an independent, but the Right is going to dive deep into the muck and eagerly and violently compete over who can swallow the most filth.

    All economic and political incentive on the Right is on embracing anti-democratic fascism and slamming down the pedal. Even being ambivalent or lukewarmly supporting a blatant coup is enough to get thrown in the gulag. It’s going to be a horror show.

    To even begin understanding what’s happened with the Right is to reckon with the fact that Trump is a symptom of something much larger that has been festering for a long, long time.

    To reckon with what the GOP is, what it actually IS, means a massive reconsideration of white, misogynistic supremacy and the violent means by which it has been enforced and perpetuated. The mask is off and it’s not going back on.

  31. 31.

    cain

    @West of the Rockies:

    I for one am happy she’s still amongst the living – she’s still gravely ill, but I hope she survives. Pretty crazy that her partner couldn’t tell if she actually died or not. If she survives, she’s gonna kick his ass.

  32. 32.

    NotoriousJRT

    Kevin McCarthy last and probably dimmest and most inept of the Republican “Young Guns.”  What a joke (they all were).

  34. 34.

    WereBear

    @The Moar You Know:

    Very obvious at this point that McConnell has zero control over his caucus, and it is reasonable to question if he ever had any, or just rode the bandwagon the entire time.  He wanted to go down in history as one of the greats, an LBJ-caliber Majority Leader.  He’s not even close.

     
    I think we continually underestimate the extent to which bullying works, and how rampant its use is in any field.

    Mark Halperin is a case in point. Until finally felled by #MeToo, he held high-paying corporate media jobs on the basis of threats; sexual harassment, “don’t make me beat you up” body language in elevators, late night phone call cursing sessions… whatever it took for the other person to give up and give him what he wanted.

    This is the source of McConnell’s power: you just know he looooooves being a bully, by whatever means he can grasp. And money gives you lots.

  35. 35.

    lgerard

    @The Moar You Know:

    McConnell’s power was always his fundraising ability.  He is the most prolific fundraiser in history and no one ever wanted to cross him for fear of being cut off from the easy dollars he directed to campaigns.

    Now, evidently a few senators have calculated that as McConnell is nearing the end of his career perhaps it is OK to appease the trump nuts a little even if it causes the chamber of commerce types to be mildly annoyed for a few months.

  37. 37.

    sukabi

    @NotoriousJRT: Kevin “I think Russia is paying two guys, Trump is one and Rohrbacher is the other” McCarthy was likely compromised shortly after he made that observation. And he hasn’t waivered in his support for anything Trump since.

  39. 39.

    rikyrah

    @rikyrah:

     

    Ms. Maureen Weil is giving me life on Rachel’s show. Don’t put Black folks with wisdom in years on tv not expecting the raw truth. She believes in science and said trump was spreading bull corn. Get yo vaccine on Ms. Weil. 79 years young and ain’t putting up with no bull corn.— NewsomIsALemonheadedBitch (@PurpleReign14) January 5, 2021

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: Even I know that these calls are supposed to go through landlines.

    Never never never do criminaling on a landline. Always get a burner phone and don’t use anybody’s name. Of course, they didn’t do any of that either. They probably all failed Conspiracy 101.

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @Amir Khalid: The various toxic strains that trump turbocharged have been eating away at the republican party for decades. In his excellent Bearing Drift article “Trump is the Republican President,” author M.D. Russ examines the question, did trump hijack the Republican party? No, Russ concludes, “Trump just answered the casting call.”

    The conflicts highlighted in the post have plagued the Virginia party at least since the rise of the “Tea Party” in 2009. The Chamber of Commerce types that used to call the shots in Virginia republican politics are losing the intraparty struggle, while at the statewide level Virginia has gone from red to blue in 20 years.

  44. 44.

    Anne Laurie

    @rikyrah: Does it count that I put the MaddowBlog tweet with Ms. Weil’s video statement at the top of tonight’s COVID-19 post?

    (Agree — she is a GREAT influence!)

  45. 45.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @BruceFromOhio: the Titans also lost in Greek Mythology, so a well informed Republican.

    So who is going point out the obvious that the if the election was fixed in Georgia than all Georgia elections are invalid? I mean I know in Conservatard land it’s something you aren’t allowed to say, like “were is the proof of your position” or “this is illegal and immoral” or “you do understand Stalin wasn’t American and a communist?”

    I think this is the Wingnut Event Horizon finally. they are off accusing each other of being secret space lizards and what not the rest of can’t understand.

  46. 46.

    raven

    What I hate about Mornin Joe is that he pussyfoots around so much when he calls the republican senators traitors and cowards.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s been trying to eat everything else for decades, and pretty much everything it could to become the party of complete cockups. It succeeded when it ran shitforbrains as president and proved that when he won – legally or otherwise. All that has happened since is show who they really are and that a lot of people are convinced that good government is the worst thing in the world. Politics in several countries has become turned inside out and upside down, with not only some citizens but far too many politicians convinced that complete chaos and stupidity is the answer to the question, how do we ruin our political systems/countries, in an effort to make some wealthy far beyond their potential and abilities. It’s clowns running the mob. At least the mob knew that keeping order and minimal living conditions was better for business.

  49. 49.

    Kosh III

    “It’s sad to see how the party of Lincoln has transformed over the years into the party of Trump. ”

     

    Yes,  Ike, Jacob Javits and Everett Dirksen must be turning in their graves.

  50. 50.

    Geminid

    @Kosh III: Former Republican Senator John Warner is still kicking around Virginia. He has not said he’s left the party, but he now endorses Democrats in federal and state elections.

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