Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

When we show up, we win.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

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

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

White supremacy is terrorism.

T R E 4 5 O N

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Weekend Summary Open Thread: *Every* GOP Candidate Is the Worst One Yet

Weekend Summary Open Thread: *Every* GOP Candidate Is the Worst One Yet

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Many Repubs are saying!

… Should the party fumble, as polls increasingly suggest, August will have been a pivotal month. It began with the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida home and the party’s bellicose defense of the former president that belied its pro-law enforcement image. The weaknesses of Senate candidates Trump personally picked became glaring as the cycle moves from the primary season, where the focus is on a small number of party-faithful voters, to the general election, which requires a broader appeal to a varied electorate.

There are also two high-profile Republicans uncomfortably dominating the spotlight and who put the party’s schisms in full view.

One is Liz Cheney, who led the Jan. 6 hearings into Trump’s role inciting a mob to attack the Capitol only to lose the nomination for a third term in a landslide to a pro-Trump candidate. The other is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, gaining momentum as an alternative to the former president, who embodies some of his pugnacity without the baggage.

Trump has shown no inclination for passing the torch and his allies used the FBI investigation to encourage him to make a third White House bid, setting up a potential clash between he and his would-be heir apparent.

This is a defining moment for Republicans who were counting on a strong midterm showing to launch themselves back into the White House in 2024. But the party’s identity crisis is evident in the uneven performances of Senate candidates in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Ohio, among others, that jeopardizes its prospects for a congressional majority.

“You’ve got a lot of factions within the party,” Robert Blizzard, a Republican strategist, said in an interview. “It looks convoluted. Are we the Trump party? Are we at the point where we’re DeSantis’ party?”…

Republican strategist John Thomas said that the GOP’s identity was now fully cemented in Trump’s image with the August FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort. Up to that point Thomas had been working on a pro-Desantis political action committee, with donor commitments in the “mid-seven-figures,” he said.

“That was a pivotal, hinge moment in the Republican party,” Thomas said. “To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man. Right now, no Republican has beaten Trump. Ron has to take it from Trump and right now I just don’t see it.”

Sowing, reaping…

Julian Sanchez, of the Cato Institute:

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  8. 8.

    dm

    People I respected are throwing a party around the humiliation of those who chose to pay their employees rather than fire them

    Note the rhetorical sleight-of-hand here: “accepting forgiveness of a PPP loan” is now “paying their employees rather than fire them”; and the humiliation is for accepting the loan and its forgiveness, not for the hypocrisy of subsequently decrying the fact that other people’s loans were also forgiven.

  10. 10.

    piratedan

    I dunno, when it comes to GOP history and going off the rails, you kind of have to go all the way back to McCarthy don’t you?  Not saying that Coolidge, Taft, Harding and Hoover were any great shakes, but mostly they were your garden variety corrupt dipshits beholden to enriching their cronies versus being completely devoid of humanity.  McCarthy seemed to set the template for the “by any means necessary” MO that has been adopted by Nixon, Gingrinch, Reagan, et al and refined into being a prick as a desirable, if not lauditory, character trait.

  12. 12.

    SpaceUnit

    Between the never-ending Trump shitshow and the Roe / Wade debacle our current GOP has shot itself in the dick.  In fact they emptied the clip.

    May November bring a downpour of salt and lemon juice.

  13. 13.

    VOR

    @dm: Today’s GQP does not believe hypocrisy or shame are real things.

    It’s vice signaling. TFG was an asshole, but he was an asshole who hated the same people as his base. They trusted that he understood their anger. Now Republican candidates have to also be obvious assholes to reassure the angry loons who constitute their base. And they have to buy into conspiracy theories and culture war BS, at least in public.

  14. 14.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SpaceUnit:

    Between the never-ending Trump shitshow and the Roe / Wade debacle our current GOP has shot itself in the dick. In fact they emptied the clip. 

    May November bring a downpour of salt and lemon juice.

    Oh, they shot themselves in the dick with W(?).

    They took a gatling gun to themselves with the “grassroot” Tea Party, etc.

  16. 16.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @SpaceUnit: Karl Rove was on Fox Friday looking down in the dumps complaining that three straight weeks of Dump has dragged down their prospects.

    He begged Dump not to speak and let his lawyers do the talking.

    What a joke.

  17. 17.

    Matt McIrvin

    Red-faced, screaming maniacs are who red-faced, screaming maniac voters would want to have a beer with. They’d happily trade spouse-abuse stories or plot to murder the gays or something. I don’t see a contradiction there.

  18. 18.

    CaseyL

    I hope September is just as bad – nay: even worse – for the GOP.

    And October, come to think.  Maybe an indictment in October?  How’s that for an October Surprise?

    (Note: The traitorous slime should be indicted sooner than October.  Hell, he should have been indicted the instant NARA told DoJ there were still classified docs at MAL, despite what the slime and the slime’s lawyers said.)

    And I might actually start believing in a benevolent higher power if the Democrats do really well in November.

  20. 20.

    Another Scott

    Made me look:

    FEC.gov/data/raising-bythenumbers:

    Senate totals:

    2022: Blue ahead by ~ $24M
    2020: Blue ahead by ~ $350M +3D
    2018: Blue ahead by ~ $220M +2R
    2016: Red ahead by ~ $12M +2D
    2014: Red ahead by ~ $19M +9R
    2012: Red ahead by ~ $71M +2D
    2010: Red ahead by ~ $110M +6R

    Money matters, but it’s obviously not the only thing. And of course, the FEC numbers are not the totals (the GQP seems to always have ‘independent” [sic] outside groups spending a lot on their campaigns).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    Martin

    I’ve been saying this for years. If Dems turn out, they win, at least nationally. There are WAY more than us than them. We just don’t vote reliably enough.

    The GOP have spent decades convincing themselves the opposite is true. We gotta vote like our hair is on fire.

  26. 26.

    James E Powell

    @dm:

    They didn’t choose to pay their employees, they got paid to allow the federal government to pay their employees.

  27. 27.

    Martin

    My sense is that this election is for the Dems to lose. The polling is shit. The turnout models are shit. I don’t know what a good poll would look like, but neither does anyone else. Lots of anecdotes that the models are all fucked, though.

  29. 29.

    James E Powell

    @Martin:

    I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s ours to lose, but I do think we should hold the senate and we have a good chance to hold the house if we can turn out our voters.

  32. 32.

    Amir Khalid

    Lately, I’ve been struck by the similarities between TFG and Malaysia’s own Najib Razak. Like TFG, Najib has led his party to disgrace and defeat. The 1MDB scandal exposed him as a big-time embezzler; that cost his coalition the 2018 general election — the first election it had ever lost since independence — and put him in jail.

    Yet his party UMNO still loves him, still calls him Bossku (my boss). At UMNO’s pre-election convention last week, the party president shed tears as he spoke of Najib languishing in Kajang Prison. Right now he’s urging the party rank-and-file to support a petition for a royal pardon for Bossku. It’s obviously not a good look for UMNO to be all in for a criminal, and I reckon it’s only going to cost them big at the upcoming general election. But that’s where UMNO is right now, in thrall to a wholly unworthy leader, afflicted with its own variant of Trumpism.

  34. 34.

    West of the Rockies

    I think 2016 marked the last even vaguely pleasant Republican running for president (Jeb?).  Trump mopped the floor with them all.  It’s been all venality and malice ever since.

  36. 36.

    Embir

    “Paid their own employees” – like themselves. A portion of that money went directly into their own pockets as highly paid employees of their companies. They were personally enriched to the tune of 10s of thousands of dollars in loans that were then forgiven.  Don’t let that important little detail get lost.

  38. 38.

    dm

    @VOR: Don’t think of the context as “shaming the GOP”.  GOPers aren’t the audience for the trick being pulled.  The audience are  the uncommitted person who has better things to do with their lives than hang on every political nuance.

    PPP existed to help employers meet payrolls during the COVID-“shutdowns”, and keep their employees (true enough).

    By (insert sleight-of-hand here) shaming people for taking PPP loans, you are shaming them for preserving jobs.

    Of course, that’s not the behavior that is being ridiculed.  It’s the “This you?” response with a PPP-loan forgiveness to someone decrying the fact that student loans are also being forgiven.

    But now we’re the ones who are explaining, and if you’re explaining, you’re losing.  It’s a rhetorical trick to change the framing.

  43. 43.

    Sanjeevs

    @Hoppie: The polls were showing much better Dem figures than the results. Iowa was supposedly a dead heat and Susan Collins was 6 or 7 points down

  44. 44.

    frosty

    @Martin: Anecdata: We had brunch today with good friends going back to high school. Always voted Republican. Wife probably turned blue in the Obama years. Husband kicked off the conversation ranting about all the MAGAs in his neighborhood.

    Conclusion: The well-off, well-educated suburban Republicans are lost to them.

    Footnote: I asked him if he’d come knock on doors with me this fall to beat Mastriano and was surprised that he would consider it.

  47. 47.

    patrick II

    Why did Trump keep those documents?  Trump is not a deep thinker and for him the trappings of the presidency made him feel powerful — which he loved.  And then he lost it.  The documents make him feel like he still has power, still knows dangerous and important things that other people don’t. He has taken with him a little bit of the presidency that, unlike most of the real levers of power, he was able to carry away.  It makes him feel like a big man which is the most important thing in the world to him.

  51. 51.

    sab

    Where was my brain all these years?

    I did not know Jackie Robinson was a Republican until 1972. Doesn’t surprise me, even that he hung in after Goldwater since that could be explained as an aberation of a minority of crazies. But Nixon’s Southern strategy was not an aberation. The whole party went behind it.

    In some small way I admire Stu Stevens, but really? You didn’t notice the racist slant of your party? Your whole life in that party?

  53. 53.

    CaseyL

    We talk a lot about the low-information voters who vote for the (R) without thinking about it much, for whatever reason.

    And we talk a lot about how the MSM perpetuates the myth that the GOP is “good on defense,” or “more fiscally responsible.”

    What the events of the last 6 years have shown to anyone who isn’t already a Fox Zombie is that the GOP is neither of those things.  (Never mind that they never were; we’re talking popularly held beliefs here.) Anyone who’s paid any attention whatsoever sees that the GOP is cruel, corrupt, and stupid.

    They may also notice that the only people in the GOP who are doing well financially are the top echelon, not the nitwits who keep voting for them.  People who are Fox Zombies are happy to spend their lives rolling in shit because they get to open carry, attack libraries, and be complete assholes in public.  People who are not Fox Zombies might get to thinking that rolling in shit isn’t so great.

  54. 54.

    Redshift

    @James E Powell: It was also a way for Republicans to pretend they weren’t part of the same party as Shrub, who had become an unperson. Instead, they were part of this new party and movement (who always ran as Republicans and supported and donated to Republicans, but really, they weren’t Republicans!)

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Just a reminder that confidence is not our enemy.  Complacency is.  We can be confident and still know that we have donate, volunteer, show up to vote, and encourage others to do the same.  Confidence does not mean that we think we have it in the bag and can coast.  It means we believe that if we do all the things we need to do we will win.

    I have confidence.  I am not complacent.

  56. 56.

    sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: I am not a good salesperson. Every candidate I have ever door to door canvassed nationally ( not locally) has lost. Since 1972. So I am staying home this election, except for our hopeful congressperson.

    Tim Ryan is on his own, except for my checks. He will do better without me

    ETA I have been on the winning side in some issues. Get those union guys out, especially teachers. They can persuade people. I am happy to drive them in my car and carry their literature.

  57. 57.

    The Lodger

    @sab: For decades, Stu Stevens’s career depended on not getting a clue. I’m pleasantly surprised that he got one.

  59. 59.

    sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: First do no harm

    ETA I remember when I did phone banks and we called and were innocuous and basically annoyed people.

    Every phone bank had one person who broke all the rules and got in peoples faces, and every shift pesuaded two or three people. Those guys were unicorns. Anyone else would have lost votes.

  61. 61.

    eclare

    @sab:   As someone who does not answer the phone at all, not a fan of phone banking.  I did it decades ago, not sure it is effective.

  62. 62.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @patrick II: Boy, that is a believable scenario, psychologically speaking.  I certainly haven’t seen any other believable explanation other than “They’re mine”.

  63. 63.

    sab

    I woke up  from a deep sleep at 10 o’clock when my dad’ s nursing home called me and he has fallen for the third time this week. He is okay. His dementia has gotten to the stage where he goes to the bathroom without his walker. Why call me?

    I have been up ever since. Trying to be quiet in the guest room, but my pitbull isn’t. She is worried about him and stomps in  periodically to see how he is. So husband, who can’t sleep sporadically  calls out to see how I am. He is not supposed to know I am awake. He has his own problems.

    Grrr.  But at least he is alive.

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    @sab:

    As I understand, African-Americans traditionally supported the party of Lincoln. At least, they did until Richard Nixon, cursed be his name, came along.

  66. 66.

    sab

    @eclare: The campaign people think it is. I am not sure it is with people like me. Probably is with good salespeople. My stepdaughter can talk anyone into anything.

  67. 67.

    sab

    @eclare: The campaign people think it is. I am not sure it is with people like me. Probably is with good salespeople. My stepdaughter can talk anyone into anything.

  68. 68.

    Marc

    @sab: I did not know Jackie Robinson was a Republican until 1972. Doesn’t surprise me, even that he hung in after Goldwater since that could be explained as an aberation of a minority of crazies.

    I’m not sure what your point is, but many (most?) black people (including my family) were fairly solid Republican voters with the shift starting in ’68 and pretty much complete by ’72.

  70. 70.

    hotshoe

    @rikyrah: yep, I hear ya.

    I feel sad for generalizing about such a wide swath of humans — surely any group of humans have some good and some bad — but no, not Republicans, not any more. All Republicans are filth now.

    They had their chances to rediscover their morals and redeem their place in a decent society when we saw the Jan 6 insurrection.

    I will never forgive a Republican voter ever again.

  73. 73.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I’ve been watching more local TV than I normally do. Jeezus, I am not sure there are any non-political ads. Every break – Kelly/Masters/Hobbs/Fontes/the AGs. I don’t remember seeing any Lake tv ads. She may be running them on the local Fox station which i don’t watch.

  75. 75.

    Marc

    @sab: Martin Luther King Sr was Republican. Party of Lincoln until Nixon.

    Not so much the Republicans being the Party of Lincoln as it was the Democrats being the party of Southern racists.

  77. 77.

    sab

    @Marc: There used to be two sides of Republicans, Lincoln and big business. The blatant racism didn’t come in until Goldwater and Nixon, although it was always a side issue with the business Republicans. But the alternative to them back in the day was Dixiecrat Democrats.

    i am sure you know more about this than me.

  78. 78.

    sab

    @sab: To Marc:: One of my grandfather’s sisters wanted to get off the farm in Pennsylvania and signed up to be a missionary  ( i.e. teacher of English, math and science) in Africa.They posted her to Southern Sudan and she stayed there twenty years until WWII when Germans invaded. She loved every minute, and spent most of her retirement there, dragging her PA sisters along.

  79. 79.

    Marc

    @sab: The blatant racism didn’t come in until Goldwater and Nixon, although it was always a side issue with the business Republicans. But the alternative to them back in the day was Dixiecrat Democrats.

    I think we’re mostly in agreement.  Both parties were filled with racists, the difference was that racist policies were actively implemented by Democrats, both locally and nationally, right up until the mid 60s.  Such as FDR colluding with the Southern Democrats to carefully craft Social Security and the GI Bill to exclude as many blacks as possible.  And, the Republicans were occasionally willing to allow black candidates, like Edward Brooke, for whom I cast my first vote for senator when I turned 18 in ’72.

  80. 80.

    Dan B

    @Martin: Some of us vulnerable folks feel like we are gonna be thrown on the fire to make it burn brighter.  Our gay friends are ignoring much of the trends that show increasing “random violence” against gay people and daily murders of trans people.  My partner and I could emigrate to Canada if we sold our houses but most of our friends could not.  If the GQP took control they would likely unleash a reign of terror in hopes they would plant so much fear that the low people would submit to their rule to avoid more pain.  Ukraine demonstrates another path.

  81. 81.

    opiejeanne

    @eclare: I phone-banked for Hillary in 2016, and no one was ever home. The few that were seemed a little irritated that we were reminding them to vote, since Washington state is all vote-by-mail.

  84. 84.

    Ksmiami

    @Dan B: the Republican Party is hazardous to the health of women, Lbgtq, minorities, liberals, atheists, government employees, teachers, doctors, nurses, educated Americans… wait come to think of it, that’s a hell of a lot of people, time to bring the pain to the GOP.

  85. 85.

    lowtechcyclist

    @West of the Rockies: ​
     

    I think 2016 marked the last even vaguely pleasant Republican running for president (Jeb?). Trump mopped the floor with them all. It’s been all venality and malice ever since.

    And even Trump had a salesman/con-man’s ability to connect with the people he was trying to sell himself to, while convincing them he hated the same people they did.

    This wave of Trump wannabes, from DeSantis on down, have all of the anger and grievance and malice, but none of Trump’s ability to fake being a human being for long enough to close the deal. The “white-hot ball of rage” isn’t just the frontrunner for the GOP Presidential nomination anymore, it’s all of them.

  90. 90.

    Princess

    @opiejeanne: I’m still salty that the Hillary campaign in 2016 had us calling Iowa on Election Day — which was long gone — instead of Wisconsin or Michigan. There were some basic low-level failures in that campaign that never were recognized because of all the drama.

  91. 91.

    Ken

    @patrick II: Why did Trump keep those documents? [explanation omitted]

    You make it sound so innocuous, like a retiree keeping the name plaque from his office door, or a serial killer keeping a lock of hair from each victim.

    I think he took some of them to sell, and after the recent connect-the-dots post about overseas intelligence assets being killed, I think he already has sold some.

  92. 92.

    evodevo

    @sab: When Mr.Evodevo’s aunt was in a nursing home,  they would call us at 4am to say she’d fallen (true, they are required by law to do this, but we live 70 miles away, and what were WE going to do about it?!), but when she was admitted to the hospital for her last illness, we were NOT notified, and the first we knew of it was when they called to tell us she’d passed away…talk about a screwed up policy…

  93. 93.

    Denali

    @Dan B

    I would seriously plan to move to Canada if I were not too old.  For you, I would say definitely.  Never thought I would be at this point. but here we are.

  94. 94.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @HumboldtBlue: Thank you for the video. I was looking for a reason to drink far too much tonight. In fact, you’ve given all of us a reason to start now.

  95. 95.

    Tony G

    @piratedan: In my baby-boomer lifetime, the category of “awful Republican presidents” goes back to Nixon, but it probably goes back to the nineteenth-century presidents after Lincoln.

  96. 96.

    Tony G

    @Ken: Trump almost certainly sold some of those classified documents during and after his presidency.  Why wouldn’t he?  When has he ever missed a chance to earn a nickel?

  97. 97.

    apocalipstick

    @sab: The Goldwater years were when the Republicans made the flip and started inviting in the Dixiecrats, and inertia is a powerful force.

  98. 98.

    dww44

    @Sanjeevs:  I think the best explanation is that Republican voters lie when polled since lying is what they always do, particularly if they think it will harm Democrats. 

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: It started a little earlier than that, with some Black voters actually becoming FDR Democrats (which amazes me since the Dixiecrats were very much in the party’s big tent at the time). But there was a huge reaction to the Southern Strategy later on.

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