Arizona votes to keep another election denier out of office https://t.co/nZZX3p1yq1
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) November 15, 2022
Ask Liz Cheney!
You’re welcome, @KariLake. https://t.co/5jVFIprwxS
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) November 15, 2022
A shofar is used in Jewish religious rituals. In this context, it's more properly referred to as a 'cope horn' https://t.co/ZYxeHZzgyO
— Ian Boudreau (@iboudreau) November 12, 2022
If Kari Lake-grade goblins are going to keep losing elections, then I will need more YouTube videos of overstated strike-three calls to send them. Right now, somehow, demand is outstripping supply. One video of Tom Hallion is supporting the entire edifice.
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) November 15, 2022
Confusion be upon the lot of them, as my people say…
.@seanhannity is now saying he has “no idea where these rumors of a red wave/tsunami came from.” Here’s a montage from your own network, Sean. pic.twitter.com/yDBHPSYrCw
— Andrew Wortman (@AmoneyResists) November 12, 2022
lots of contradictions in what average voters think but one thing that unites them is disgust at eldritch horrors like Blake Masters
— in the pocket of Big Tenant (@AllezLesBoulez) November 14, 2022
These are the absolute craziest people in conservative media and the most they can muster is some halfhearted whining about ballot harvesting. Time of death November 8th 2022.
— Joe (@JoePostingg) November 14, 2022
This is who you vote for if you're convinced the only thing that's keeping your side from winning in landslides is massive fraud. The election denial angle has had the twin costs of turning independents against Republican candidates & screwing up GOP voters' sense of who can win. https://t.co/jDnOoiEDMg
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) November 12, 2022
I really thought Pete Thiel had his finger on the pulse of ordinary Americans (who are worth billions of dollars and get blood transfusions from young people so they live forever) and now I just don’t know what to believe anymore!
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 12, 2022
Jackie
I love Liz Cheney’s response to Lake! 🔪
NotMax
Avenue Q.
//
frosty
AL, you’re a treasure. I love your late night posts. May Twitter last a little longer so you can keep doing them!
Alison Rose
From NYT:
LOL they sure do, you dumb bitch.
Jess
Never thought I’d be applauding a tweet from Liz Cheney, but here we are…
I’m going to bed now with a smile on my face because of Hobbs’s win. Wish Boebert was going down with Lake, but at least we rattled her cage.
dmsilev
@Jackie: Well, the Cheney family is noted for shooting people in the face…
Jess
@Alison Rose: Hahahaha! Nailed it!
brendancalling
@Jackie: that was deliciously, viciously delivered. Just… chef’s kiss.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Since when do Republicans complain about “warmongering”? When has there ever been a war they didn’t like? Aside from the Russian reinvasion of Ukraine?
Leto
When you enemies keep stepping on their collective dicks, give them a pair cleats. And I could listen to that Conan clip over and over.
SpaceUnit
Watching their ridiculous “March of Jericho” performance I am tempted to compare these MAGA dopes to a bunch of fourth graders, but I have known any number of third graders who would look at them, point, and laugh.
piratedan
I cannot begin to tell you what a big deal this election is… the state districts have been gerrymandered to a fare-thee-well and if the Dems win the AG, SOS and Governor’s chair (and even the State Supe of schools), we can hold the line on the continual batshit crazypants stuff that comes out of the lege, where they are constantly subverting the will of the voters by ignoring the state mandates that get passed. Now at the top, there’s a chance that all that crap will come to an end.
It’s a big Biden deal.
If Sinema decides that she no longer wants to play, Hobbs replaces her.
The SOS can ensure no more fuckery with elections.
The AG will ensure that we don’t prosecute women or docs for getting and providing abortion services.
If we hold Supe of schools, all of that CRT panic, school voucher bs and cameras in the classroom crapola gets shut down.
All that shit stops.
Kelly
Dark thought regarding 2024. It’s been pointed out that COVID fatalities were small compared to the size of the voting population and evenly distributed across parties. Two more years of right wing vaccination hysteria plus a half dozen fresh variants along the way could change that.
Yutsano
Submitted without comment.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@piratedan:
Is there any chance inroads into the Arizona leg could be made?
Shalimar
The first Naked Gun movie contains all the overstated strike-three calls you could ever need.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jackie:
Love the entire exchange. That original letter from Lake to Cheney — my goodness, what a pathetic little loser bitch she is, to be sure.
NotMax
From: Yogi Berra
To: Kari Lake
It’s over.
dm
@SiubhanDuinne: I think the word “smarmy” was invented to describe that letter from Kari Lake to Liz Cheney.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Speaking of “Jericho”, this song by the Call came to mind on the midterm results and Republican hopes and the MSM narrative being crushed:
Martin
Late CA update. Some edits to the earlier update.
CA-03: – 6.0 [+0 ] (open seat) [79,595]
CA-09: +12.6 [* ] (D incumbent) [44,513]
CA-13: + 0.8 [+1.0] (open seat) [51,203]
CA-21: + 8.6 [-0.6] (D incumbent) [45,202]
CA-22: – 5.4 [-0.4] (R incumbent) [27,147]
CA-27: – 8.8 [+2.0] (R incumbent) [68,553]
CA-41: – 2.6 [-1.2] (R incumbent) [78,918]
CA-45: – 6.6 [+0.8] (R incumbent) [78,622]
CA-47: + 1.3 [-1.3] (D incumbent) [114,392]
CA-49: + 5.0 [+0.4] (D incumbent) [135,046]
A little bit of vote in CA-03 – a couple thousand ballots. No change. I think this was one of the smaller counties reporting.
No new data from CA-09.
CA-13 has swung in D favor. Still tight, but this is a good bit of news. It’s nice sized swing as well.
CA-21 loses a little ground but it’s still a big lead.
CA-22 also loses a bit of ground after a really good batch of votes yesterday. We’re not getting consistent data out of counties (see CA-03 and -09 so these mixed county district are a little hard to nail down.)
CA-27 saw a nice new chunk taken out of it. Still a long way to go. About 60% has been counted. Longshot, but maybe if this kind of vote gain keeps up.
CA 41 is going in the wrong direction. They still have about 90,000 votes in the county still to count, but every update has dug the hole deeper, so we need something dramatic to happen.
CA-45 like CA-27 making progress, but not coming in as quickly here, so I’m less optimistic here.
CA-47 is a surprise. Lost half the margin today. Today was the shift from USPS ballots to drop box, and the drop box were more R favored. There’s another 90,000 drop box to go, so it could be these were more geographically disfavored to Porter and the rest will be better, or it could be that drop box is more R favored overall. There’s also vote center to do, and some other smaller categories, but this reversal has me a bit worried. My suspicion for it being geographic is based on CA-45 and CA-49 getting more D share from the same count than CA-47 did. I don’t see any reason why CA-47 would go in the opposite direction in terms of partisan lean. But if ballot boxes are broadly R lean, I don’t see any reason why vote center wouldn’t as well, and that’s bad news for Porter.
CA-49 continues to inch out ground as expected. We’ll see if any reversal like seen in -47 shows up, but so far so good.
Not a very good update overall. Good progress in CA-13. Maybe a glimmer in CA-27. CA-49 looking okay. Still up in CA-47. I think my thesis is pretty busted here. In 2020, late mail was more reliably D favored across the state from what I could see. We here have 4 going in the right direction and 4 in the wrong. I suspect now that a lot of that late D favored mail in 2020 converted into same day machine vote or early mail this cycle. There’s still millions more ballots to count, but today is discouraging.
We’re definitely now with the other called races out of the ‘can dems win the house’ category and into ‘how close can we keep it’ territory.
piratedan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): it’s a long slog to undo gerrymandered districts, but as we’ve seen, demographic changes take time. The registration work done by Hispanic and Native groups (that we’ve funded and should continue to do) shows that change can happen. Part of it is seeing results from your work, seeing the Senate, the AG, SOS and Supe of Schools all flip is a big damn deal.
The continued stridency of the Christian Nationalist movements are turning off independents and are possibly even making fractures within with Mormons as they may soon be finding themselves classified as “others”.
The GOP has pretty much only one policy here in AZ, its vehemently anti-immigrant and they are scapegoated as the cause of all ills, be it drugs, guns, schools, the economy, climate change (if they ever copped to that being an issue) and abortion.
SpaceUnit
I’m starting to question whether trump is really going to want to seek another term if he senses that the political winds are shifting hard in this country. I think he’ll toss his hat into ring for the money haul, of course, but a conman always knows when the jig is up and when it’s time to get out of town.
I’m sure he’s been thinking that it’s the best way to stonewall his legal troubles, but I can’t imagine he’d relish being in the White House if he can’t get his lackey nominations approved to key posts like AG.
And then again maybe it’s a pathological ego thing and he just can’t help himself. ???
HumboldtBlue
@SpaceUnit:
Who the fuck were they summoning, the defenders of Masada?
Moses’ younger brother, Gary, to lead the righteous into an uprising against the Roman Legions?
Even the Pharisees are shaking their heads.
SpaceUnit
@HumboldtBlue:
Proud Boy types and lone wolf terrorists.
A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)
@Leto: I recall someone characterizing the epitome of Trumpism as “a golf shoe stomping on a human dick forever”. I have yet to see a better summation.
jonas
@SpaceUnit:
As a number of people have already commented, evangelical Christians running around blowing a shofar is about as tasteful as the old Atlanta Braves “tomahawk chop” — a disgusting bit of performative cultural appropriation. Idiots.
jonas
@Martin:
So is the reason CA votes are taking so long to count is that there’s just a fuckton of them? Or is everything hand-counted these days? What’s the deal? When I lived there back in the day, I don’t remember elections taking a week or two to tally.
HumboldtBlue
@jonas:
There’s no “old” about it, they still use that repugnant gesture. Gave a little extra “oomph” to the Phillies playoff series win.
different-church-lady
It’s gotten so bad for them that even Thiessen has gone to the lifeboats.
LeftCoastYankee
The lack of “stop the steal” nonsense this time is entirely due to Trump not running (and losing).
He didn’t lose, so he doesn’t care (someone else’s fault), and without his relentless narcissism and delusion daily in their ears, the mob is just a bunch of aimless losers milling about.
moops
If our campaign funds had been more wisely spent the Dems might have held the House.
How would I have known where to give, have you *seen* my inbox?
SpaceUnit
@jonas:
I’m not Jewish so I’m totally out of my lane here, but I’m not aware that shofars have any significant role in modern Hebrew culture. Other commenters please feel free to correct me – I’ll take my beatings as they come.
But I see it as just a lot of dipshit MAGA cosplay.
different-church-lady
@LeftCoastYankee:
Apparently his cult of personality doesn’t have coat-tails two years later.
mrmoshpotato
Cry harder bitchass Trump trash, or, cry harder GOP!
Martin
@jonas: It’s a mix of things.
1. There’s a lot of them. LA county would be the 10th largest state in the US. That’s a lot of ballots going through one system.
2. CA has the most flexible voting system in the country. ⅔ is vote by mail, some of which is USPS, some drop box, some vote center drop off. There’s also machine ballots. It’s postmark based and ballots can be received for a week. So we’re still receiving ballots through tomorrow. We literally can’t finish counting any sooner than the last mail drop-off tomorrow. But paper ballots are slower to process than electronic, so it is slow.
3. We have same day registration, so in additional to provisional ballots, we have provisional registrations so we need to confirm those ballots are by residents, etc. My guess is CA has over 50,000 provisional registrations to process (extrapolating from my county)
4. CA puts a *lot* of effort into not trashing ballots. So there’s a lot of effort to manually cure by the ROV, then notifying the voter and curing, etc.
5. Because CA gives counties a lot of time to do this right and not rush things, we don’t rush things. We let election workers work more reasonable hours because there’s plenty of time.
CA doesn’t care that you or I or the NYT are impatient. We’re going to do it right, and it’ll be done in time to meet federal deadlines, and everyone can just fucking deal until it’s done. The state is aggressively apathetic to the demands of the networks or parties on this. Nothing good will come from trying to appease them, because someone will just weaponize any efforts to appease, as you can see countless republicans doing.
mrmoshpotato
@LeftCoastYankee:
WEAK! SAD! POOP!
smike
@SpaceUnit:
Bingo! I believe we have a winner.
Kent
They are REVERSE coat tails.
Look at PA vs FL. In PA the Trump endorsee Mastriano was absolutely SHELLACKED far beyond how Biden performed in the 2020 election in every county in the state.
By contrast in FL where DeSantis is definitely his own man and not a Trump endorsee, he far outperformed the 2020 election results in pretty much every county in FL.
In fact, in those few races where the GOPer was definitely NOT a Trumper, they tended to do OK.
Martin
@smike: Yeah, Trump, no matter how hard he scrubs just can’t seem to get the loser stink off of him. But he is compelled to keep trying.
JoyceH
@SpaceUnit:
It goes nicely with a spear and a furry hat with horns, though.
Mike in NC
The love child of Sean Hannity and Riki Lake would be Eric Trump.
Alison Rose
@SpaceUnit: The shofar is absolutely still part of Jewish culture and religious observance. It is a key part of Rosh Hashanah services, and is blown every day except Shabbat in the month preceding, as well as ending the fast on Yom Kippur. The different shofar sounds all carry different meanings and emotion. Trust me: These fucking asshole goyim playing around with it is 100% offensive and disgusting.
prostratedragon
@SpaceUnit: These people seem to know more about it than I, a gentile of Christian upbringing, do: “Shofar blowing” at wikipedia. That said, you’ve probably got the MAGAts doing this cosplay about pegged.
SpaceUnit
@Alison Rose:
Okay. Thank you for the correction. Hope I did not offend.
Alison Rose
@SpaceUnit: Not at all :) Not knowing something isn’t offensive…but not knowing and fucking around with it is, LOL. I’m not a violent person but I want to punch those people.
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose: ISTR there’s a Jewish prayer shawl of some sort, that some of these Christianists will appropriate for their rituals, too.
Alison Rose
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, all of it, basically. Remember when Palin wore a Star of David for a while? I’ve also seen some Christians light a fucking menorah because “Jesus was Jewish”. They’ve spent a couple thousand years calling us Christ-killers and demanding we convert and then they also want to appropriate all of our shit.
SpaceUnit
@Alison Rose:
Watching those mooks I wished I was standing on the roof with a hose.
gene108
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Republicans have an odd isolationist streak. They dislike multiparty involvement, and would rather “go it alone” regarding foreign policy.
When Bush, Jr. ran in 2000, he promised not to do any “nation building”, which President Clinton’s critics felt he did with interventions in Somalia and the Balkans. When Jesse Helms took over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1999, he held up our funding for the U.N., because a loud contingent of Republicans wanted to “get us out of the U.N.”. Plus, this was when nascent conspiracies about a One World Order usurping sovereignty under U.N. control found a home among American conservatives.
Neocons and 9/11/01 threw that thinking on its head to some extent. The “go it alone” approach was still there.
TFG embraced isolationism more than any modern politician, and this connected with Republican voters.
gene108
@Mike in NC:
What do you have against Ricki Lake? She was great in the movie adaptation of “Hairspray”, and her 1990’s talk show wasn’t toxic, unlike others that decade.
TriassicSands
Gee, and I thought they were blowing elections.
trollhattan
@Martin: What you said. The 2022 timeline:
2022 California General
Ballots continue to be counted after Election Day during the official canvass period.
County elections officials must complete final official results by December 8, 2022.
The Secretary of State will certify the results on December 16, 2022
AnneWith
@GregHawes:
Fake Irishman
@piratedan:
nb: sup of schools flipped back to GOP, AG is still too close to call.
NotMax
@Alison Rose
“How are the new dentures working out, rabbi?”
“Shofar, sho good.”
:)
lgerard
I’m astonished that the quacks who pushed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin turned out to be scam artists!
https://www.thedailybeast.com/covid-misinformation-group-americas-frontline-doctors-implodes-over-dr-simone-golds-extravagant-spending?ref=scroll
HumboldtBlue
opiejeanne
@piratedan: How the Mormons couldn’t see this coming, being classified as “other”, is amazing to me. Really bad case of not realizing the face-eating leopards will eat their faces too.
prostratedragon
For what it’s worth, the COP27 — Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — is continuing for several more days in Sharm-al-Shaikh, Egypt. The logo for the conference caught my eye; sure enough, it is two sun symbols combined into a whole. The lower symbol, representing the gifts of the sun to Nature, is the Aten. Worship of the Aten in Egypt goes back before Akhnaten, but he was especially focussed on it (to his downfall). His hymn to Aten was found inscribed in the tomb of his vizier Ay. Here it is, sung by Anthony Roth Costanzo, joined by the Met Opera Chorus who sing Psalm 104 in Hebrew. Music by Philip Glass.
lowtechcyclist
@SpaceUnit:
I’m going with this. If he doesn’t run, how else will he keep the spotlight on himself? Even absent the possibility of criminal charges, he’d become just another fading has-been, and he knows it.
MattF
[deleted]
matt
That frees up Lake to make sandwiches for Trump full time.
Geminid
I scanned Politico this morning and saw some interesting headlines:
The last story reports on text messages obtained by the Florida Center for Government Accountability. A Florida judge ordered their relase “no later than Monday night.” James Barfield, an official for the watchdog group, says that it’s clear that the DeSantis administration is still withholding more relevant documents and that his group will ask the court to compel release of them.
The documents turned over last night include text messages from Larry Keefe, a former Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney who DeSantis made Florida’s public safety czar last year. They show Keefe’s close coordination with Vertol Systems, the aviation company contracted to carry out last Augusts flight of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, as well as Perla Huerta, the just-retired Army veteran who recruited the migrants. They also show involvement on the part of a DeSantis campaign official and others.
Mr. Barstow’s group has also obtained text messages between Desantis Chief of Staff James Untmeir with Texas Governor Abbott’s CoS, Luis Saenz. Untmeir gave Saenz contact info for Keefe and advised him that Keefe “can loop in others as needed.”
I laughed at the last part. Besides a class action lawsuit against DeSantis filed by Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights, and a Treasury inquiry as to whether DeSantis misused Covid funds, Bexar County (Texas) Sheriff Javier Salazar is investigating possible criminal actions committed in his jurisdiction by Huerta ond others involved in this scheme.
2liberal
they also sell public assets to republican contributors, like our water to the Saudis, and are for cutting education to pay for tax cuts for the rich (which is what Ducey did on taking office)
LiminalOwl
@TriassicSands: Really? I thought they were blowing Trump.
(ETA: I can’t quite get a “Last Trump” comment to work; anybody wanna help me out?)
Matt McIrvin
I have a hard time believing the Republicans won’t snap back into line and fire up the old craziness the instant Trump jumps back into the ring. The turns against Trump when the movement got into big trouble were always fleeting mirages before.
Cameron
It took the Maricopa MAGA Marchers to finally jog my memory to bring back something from over 50 years ago that describes them and their movement:
https://youtu.be/o6Tmn28OyIE
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The GOP needs someone like DeSantis to make a power move. Only another big daddy can take down a big daddy.
Geminid
@opiejeanne: I think LDS Church members have seen this coming for a while
Politically, Utah is a very red state, but Trump underperformed there compared to states like Arkansa. His 56% total in 2020 was his lowest among states he won.
Mormons are aware of the history of their sect’s persecution by bigoted majorities. Their founder was lynched by an Illinois mob, and their migration to Utah was precipitated by this and other anti-Mormon violence. They are still regarded as heretics by evangelical Christian groups.
I was struck by the warm embrace of Trump by conservative evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr. Their support of the reprobate Trump in 2016 contrasted starkly with their tepid, nominal endorsements of the upright Romney in 2012. LDS Church members surely noticed this also.
Baud
@Geminid:
Mormons are screwed if liberals lose access to power.
PAM Dirac
@Matt McIrvin:
Maybe, but in 2018 he was still president and in 2020 he was still fighting and there was hope that things would be taken care of. I think the Apprentice image was a big part of his appeal to the MAGAs. There are plenty of people that can bring the hate, but drumpf was supposedly smart and successful and powerful and he would actually change things. It’s more and more clear that he’s pretty much the blowhard at the end of the bar and about as useful.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Yep. Trump hasn’t changed and the GOP never clearly rejected him. His base still supports him.
It will be interesting to see how much he starts bashing the GOP leadership and demanding that they bow down to him. Might he demand that they make him the 2024 nominee and defer the primary process?
In any event, I don’t plan on paying much attention to him as long as he concentrates his energies on the Republicans.
And I am still hoping he sees some jail time down the road.
Brit in Chicago
@SpaceUnit: ” a conman always knows when the jig is up”
I wouldn’t deny that he’s a con man, but narcissism is a more important element of (what passes for) his character.
Ken
The Lake letter thanks Cheney for increasing Lake’s lead by 10 points, so I guess she would have lost by 12 points otherwise?
Also, I expect Lake won’t be hearing from Trump, nor will any of the others. As he similarly said about McCain, Trump prefers Trump-endorsed candidates who win. And eventually he’ll even turn on those, as Youngkin learned.
Geminid
@Baud (#71)
Mormons would not be screwed immediately. At least, there won’t be lynch mobs after them soon. And while evangelicals are a powerful member of the Republican coalition, they do not dominate the civil intiutions of very many states.
I would bet, though, that LDS Church people are keeping a keen eye on the Bible Belt states where the evangelicals are ascendent. I think they understand that things can get worse for them.
I once read of a poll of American Jews where over 50% said they believed another Holocaust was possible. I expect Mormons feel similarly, that someday they could again see systemic anti-Morman oppression accompanied by mob violence.
Baud
@Geminid:
Well, we still have a long way to go before liberals lose access to power.
Ken
I still think at least a few state Republican parties will forget about their 2020 rule changes, and realize a few days before the primary that they have to allocate their delegates to Trump. Then when they try to change that, hoo boy….
Brachiator
@PAM Dirac:
Trump’s base deeply believe in him. They think that he understands them and will fight for them, not only against the Democrats, but also against weak Republicans.
Trump also fears DeSantis and any hint that any other Republican might be able to beat him at his own game.
Ken
Oooh, Popehat* had a good one last night: “Out of the box idea on winning the war on cancer: get Tulsi Gabbard to endorse it”, followed by a link to a Strzok list of 10 endorsements of failed GOP candidates.
* One of the more unforgivable things about the Musk takeover is that Popehat has stopped changing his nym.
Geminid
@PAM Dirac: The office of President magnified Trump’s personal power, both for those who loved him and those who hated him. I think he’s been hemorrhaging that power slowly but steady ever since he left office.
Trump is no longer the 800lb. Gorilla he was while in office, and he desperately wants to regain that status. The Republican primaries will reveal the strength of his hold on the party. We may find out that he is at least a 600lb. Gorrilla, able to wrest his party’s nomination from vigorous challengers and wage a strong general election campaign. But we could also find out that Trump is just a 350lb. mangy monkey.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I think we miss the extent to which Republican politicians who will tell you in confidence that they don’t actually like Trump are still afraid of literally being murdered by his fans. (Democrats have gotten used to the danger and don’t really have a choice.)
And then there are all the Lindsey Grahams, people with no spine or shame who will hang on to “stay relevant”.
Matt McIrvin
@SpaceUnit: Predictions that Trump will lose interest and give up running for President have been endemic since 2015 and those bets always lose.
randy khan
Any commentary on candidate quality and the GOP has to acknowledge that it’s not just this cycle – basically they’ve managed to lose at least one winnable major race (usually Senate and usually more than one) in every cycle in the last 12 years by nominating someone who shouldn’t have been allowed within 10 miles of a line on the ballot. The problem is that the base loves those candidates, and they’re the ones who vote in primaries. Heck, Virginia Republicans probably would have nominated Amanda Chase, who calls herself Trump in heels, for governor if it had been a regular primary instead of a weird process that allowed Youngkin to buy votes.
Ramalama
@piratedan:
Bat phone to Biden: offer Sinema an ambassadorship to someplace small but exotic.
Maybe Maldives? But then that’s where all the Blackwater & Steve Bannon types bump into other fascist arseholes to plan things.
Brachiator
@Ken:
I don’t think these states will forget about this.
But the main thing is that right now I don’t think that the GOP can stand up to Trump or defy him.
Of course, it will be important to see where the big donor money goes. And if Murdoch media properties continue to snipe at Trump.
And if Fox News stops covering his rallies favorably and stop taking his calls, who can he turn to?
Other MJS
Steve Bannon Says “Kari Lake Is The Future”
Geminid
@Brachiator: This raises an important question: how big is Trump’s base? It’s not by any means the whole Republican base. They all voted for Trump to be sure, but Trump’s personal base is a subset of Republican voters. The few Republicans I know voted Republican that year despite reservations about Trump’s leadership. They would much rather have been voting for a Bush or a Romney.
I am certain they will vote for a solid alternaive to Trump when Republicans hold their Virginia primary in June, 2024. I suspect there will be a lot like them in Virginia and other states. Trump may get a plurality win, but I very much doubt he’ll get more than 40% in a Virginia primary. Especially because Independents will be voting and I think that a whole lot of them are fed up with Trump.
My Republican acquaintences are white, upper middle class, retired professionals. These are not such a large group numerically, but they and their businessman peers punch above their weight in the party. They also have a streak of pragmatism that seperates them from the diehard Trumpers. They want to win and they know Trump’s a loser now.
Another component of the Republican coalition, political evangelicals have a similar pragmatic view of temporal politics. Southern Baptist leaders are very influential with this group, and unlike their Pentacostal rivals, these Baptists are not enthusiasts. They are coldblooded, calculating, and power hungry. I think they also can see that Trump is damaged goods. I suspect that they have been quietly promoting DeSantis through their onformal networks that extend over most of the country.
I can guess the theme: “He’s one of us. And he’s a winner.”
Evangelicals are a
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Apart from Pence, has Trump’s rabble really threatened any other Republican? And despite the clear danger of the January 6 madness, I don’t know that other Republicans really take Trump’s more extreme supporters seriously. And you haven’t heard much from them lately. Especially the ones who have not yet been tried and convicted.
azlib
@Geminid:
I am descended from Mormon royalty and have read a bit about their theology. The religion came out of the “Great Awakening” in the early 19th century. It is hardly a Christian sect. Its worship trappings are somewhat congregational, but its theology almost science fiction in significant ways. They believe Jesus is master over the earth, but any Mormon Priest (all male, BTW) can ascend and have their own world to rule over.
My paternal Mormon relatives are generaly kind and hard working people and for the most part are not anti-science. Politically, they are too conservative for my own taste, although one of my aunts who never renounced her faith was crazy liberal.
I was never raised Mormon because my father, who served in the Navy in WW II, married a lapsed Catholic, who refused to convert. I was raised Naval Base Chapel Protestant and am now a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Phoenix. Interestingly, we have several lapsed Mormons as members and their faith journeys are quite interesting.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
True enough. But they are noisy and energetic and believe that they hold the key to GOP success. I don’t know if they are right. I just enjoy the chaos and confusion Trump may sow.
People like Bush and Cheney have been pushed aside. DeSantis is currently the golden child. The GOP future appears to be Trump or Trumpism. Pragmatists need not apply.
Nettoyeur
@Kelly: Actually, red state snti vaxers died at 2x the rate of blue state vaxers. The herd is already being thinned.
Ken
From his mouth to the FSM‘s orecchiette.
Geminid
@randy khan: Amanda Chase led early polls for the nomination.. Virginia Republican leaders feared that she would be crushed in November, and would drag the rest of the ticket into the Great Dismal Swamp. So, at the last minute their State Central Committee adopted a ranked-choice “Unassembled Convention” to determine their nominee. In the event, around 33,000 prequalified “delegates” submitted ballots at 27 voting sites around the state on a Saturdayin May, and Youngkin was determined the winner
Youngkin won that, but I think he would have won a primary too. Youngkin’s team would have mounted a ten week version of their effective general election campaign. They would have been well organized and would have made the most of Youngkin’s skill at retail politics.
Chase, on the other hand would have been deficient as a candidate. To call Amanda Chase “dumb as a post” would be to insult posts. She would have quickly trailed Youngkin, businessman Pete Snyder, and the former House of Delegates Speaker. I think Youngkin would have won out.
The Diassembled Convention was a sure thing for Youngkin, though. It had a very compressed time frame. There were only two or three weeks for “Delegates” to qualify once the Central Committee chose the process. This placed a premium on informal networking and preparedness, and Youngkin’s campaign was prepared, well funded, and well organized.
In the leadup to the crucial Central Commitee meeting, a writer for Virginia political journal Bearing Drift commented on a singular practice of the state’s Republican Party. Most Republican state parties mandate primaries. A few mandate caucuses and conventions. Virginia’s is the only state party that can chose either option.
This anomaly, the Bearing Drift writer observed, allows a well organized campaign to shape the result by shaping the process. And this is what the Youngkin campaign did, I believe.
Just One More Canuck
@dmsilev: why stab someone in the back when you can shoot them in the face?
Geminid
@Brachiator: The kind of pragmatism I’m talking about is not policy pragmatism but electoral pragmatism. The kind of pragmatism Karl Rove and his kind argue for on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. I think there are plenty of Republicans, including rank and file, who share this pragmatic outlook when it comes to Trump and whether he’s a winner or a loser.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
These pragmatists you speak of ran away, got chased away, hid away while idiots and bigots took over their party. And then they prudently voted for Trump to stay on the good side of the mob.
Now they pipe up and try to pretend that Trump was not their guy.
It is very early. The electoral dust has not settled. We will see what happens next.
ETA. In California Republicans still insist that the GOP has not been conservative enough. As a result they have marginalized themselves and cannot win state offices anymore.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@gene108: Not ther person you asked, but…Personally what I have against Ricki Lake was her making the bullshit documentary “The Business of Being Born”
All about how doctors and hospitals are just in it for the money and the best place to give birth is at home. And that ‘interventions” are bad, and that they lead to C-sections.
Lets see, people in my family who would be dead or severely brain damaged without OBs/interventions/with home birth:
My mom and my brother, placenta previa
My daughter – footling breech
My nephew – nuchal cord
My niece – 11 lb 10 oz baby – shoulder dystocia.
Ricki Lake and her, “birth is perfectly natural” you know what else is natural, dying in childbirth
A lot of doctors choose Not to become OBs anymore, to the point that there are going to be some serious lack of OBS in rural and already under-served locations.
Yes we need national health care and lower maternal mortality. “Trusting birth” is NOT the way to get there.
Uncle Cosmo
I made a semi-serious study of the LDS 20 years back after developing a second-childhood-crush on a little lady from SLC I met in a theatre on Piccadilly Circus (who is still My Favorite Mormon though out of touch for many moons).**
I concluded that if some time-traveling mischief-maker had swapped the infants L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith in their cradles, the former would have concocted something akin to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the latter would have devised something a short walk from Scientology.
** I know, I know, TMI. Complain to my Guangdong lawyer, Su Mi.
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
@piratedan: Yes, to all of that, except we don’t yet have the AG race in AZ yet. Still too close to call, though she is ahead. But ahead is really only ahead based on the votes the are in and not the votes that are to come.
Geminid
Events will prove or disprove my contention that electorally pragmatic Republicans will turn away from Trump.
But I think you are influenced too much by the question of the proper moral judgement to be made of various parts of the Republican coalition. I make make moral judgments too but I do not center them in my analysis and so I look beyond them.
You are also talking about what Republicans did from 2016 through January, 2021. That is not necessarily so predictive of what they are doing now and up through Summer, 2024. This is a dynamic situation and not a static one
Be that as it may, I’ll stand by my prediction that Republicans who want their party to retain and expand their party’s power will support candidates other than Trump in large numbers. I’m not saying Trump can’t win, but that he’ll have to fight hard for this nomination.
@Brachiator:
Paul in KY
@Jackie: Kari needs to watch her back from now on. They’ll be another, darker response from the Cheneys some day…
Paul in KY
@dm: The very definition of ‘catty’
Paul in KY
@Ramalama: How about Luxembourg?
Ramalama
@Paul in KY: Perfect! I was there briefly in the before-times (internet, Berlin Wall…). Luxurious, beautiful. Close to other big places.
Ramalama
@Ramalama: Oh WAIT. I was thinking Liechtenstein. Nestled between Switzerland and Austria. Which I liked more than Luxembourg. But yeah. Send her to Luxembourg. Keep Liechtenstein safe.