I’m not going to try to pick among authoritarians. I’m going to vote for Joe Biden the way I did the last time. https://t.co/f3z5fG1MxX
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
End of a godsdamned long week, let’s have some easy (yet earnest!) fun.
Give Mr. Nichols due credit: Once he left the Republican party, he hasn’t wasted his time waffling and weaseling and looking for excuses…
Dan is angry that after hearing me say for four years that the Republican party has become a violent, seditious menace, I won’t join him in picking at least one of the violent seditionist menaces to be president, so now he’ll have to support Trump because look what I made him do https://t.co/X9CoKcZ80c
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
It’s not up to me to give GOPers a better candidate than Trump. It is up to them to make Trump unelectable by saying they would never, ever, let him near the Oval, even if that means joining with Dems if all else fails at the last minute to prevent it.
but they won’t say that
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
Yes, Dan, I am well aware of the Jimmy-Clean-Hands argument in which people like you swear you don’t support him but refuse to do anything to stop him. You get what you want, while claiming to be free of the moral stain of getting what you wanted. https://t.co/cHvBmDBgiZ
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
Instead you’re setting up a preemptive excuse that unless people like me support your preferred alternative in the primary, it’s not your fault if we end up with Trump in the general again.
You can help to make Trump unelectable. But you won’t do it. /2x— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
You see? It’s not his fault. Look at what we’re going to make him do. https://t.co/NLezfIXSyD
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
What if a guy who isn’t trump did the same things, what then huh? https://t.co/rbKI9M5Mod
— Pomodoro (Dad Joke Era) (@ilpomodoro2) November 18, 2022
“While you do nothing.”
I’ve voted twice for Dems to stop Trump and I’ve written a zillion columns that have generated attempts to have me fired and threats against me and my family.Dan, meanwhile, stands back, wringing his clean hands, and says “well, if Trump wins, he wins.” https://t.co/v9DGVuGaQo
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 18, 2022
Field notes from an observer:
I’ve identified 5 ways the GOP is coping with Trump’s 2024 run:
Call Trump a “loser” without admitting GOP enabled him
More election denial
Double down on Trump hagiography
Blame him for 1/6 but falsely claim he atoned for it
Say he’s “pivoted” againhttps://t.co/K7blJX7Wus
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 17, 2022
… Indeed, all of this is about buying time, because no one really knows how durable Trump’s hold on his voters will prove. Some Republicans are betting it will be lasting, and hope to capture the benefits. Others want to loosen his grip but aren’t sure how to do so without damaging themselves.
But all their approaches appear to have one thing in common.
Trump attempted to overturn U.S. democracy. He incited mob violence toward that end. He is entirely unrepentant about it and would do it all again. The GOP embraced this MAGA extremism throughout Trump’s presidency and continued to do so even after his coup attempt. It helped result in a historically bad midterm performance. Continued fealty to Trump promises electoral disasters to come.
In one way or another, what must be avoided above all is telling Trump voters these blunt truths.
Elizabelle
We should do a book thread on Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Slim book. Can be read in a day.
And I think we should start emailing its principles to MSM horse race types, and their editors and publishers. We need to resist intending autocrats. Not marvel at their election victories. DeSantis is a continuation of Trump.
They are failing us, big time. They may be doing that for money, circulation/clicks, stupidity, greed.
But we need to get in their faces.
eclare
@Elizabelle: Agree. Open thread, beer is $80 a bottle at the World Cup?
Geminid
I appreciate the viewpoints of former Republicans like Tom Nichols and Ron Filipkowski. I think they see their former colleagues much more clearly than many Democrats, because they know their old party better.
JPL
@eclare: Beer at the world cup? oh my
JPL
@Geminid: That party died years ago when they ran from Bush Sr. I often mention to my sons, that I voted for certain republicans because of their fiscal and social views. They both laugh at me and say surely you are kidding.
Reagan was the one who changed it, though.
eclare
@JPL: I realize FIFA gots to get paid, but this is ridic. The human rights issues tower over everything, but this should get everyone’s attention.
Jackie
@eclare: Smuggled beer is costly.
eclare
@JPL: First year I could vote, I voted for HW over Dukakis. Democrat ever since.
zhena gogolia
@JPL: I used to vote for Lowell Weicker every chance I got.
That’s the only one, though.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for the book rec! Just checked it out from the local library.
There’s also “On Bullshit”, by Henry G. Frankfurt, which I’ve been meaning to read someday. According to the author (via Wikipedia article), “bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth”.
ETA: Gosh, what recently-twice-impeached person does that sound like?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
HinTN
Chicken shits comes to mind. Also quislings.
Spanky
A Republican will vote for any candidate with an (R) after their name instead of even the most perfect (D), even tfg. Not sure what all the chaff in the Nichols tweets is supposed to accomplish.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Best we can hope for from the GOPer losers is they feebly protest as the DOJ goes after Trump. Nichols is right, the Republicans are just useless.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: In Massachusetts there was always a repub you could vote for even though that was decades ago for me.
HinTN
@eclare: Can’t buy it half the time either.
Scout211
@eclare: They just banned beer in the stadiums at the last minute. Link
HinTN
@JPL: Rockefeller Republicans. Yep, I was raised that way.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@zhena gogolia: I met Pete McCloskey at a fund raiser for Barbara Boxer’s last campaign. When I told him he was the only Republican my wife had ever voted for he laughed.
MattF
@zhena gogolia: I think there was a Connecticut Republican I once voted for, it might have been Weicker. But that was fifty years ago.
Jackie
@eclare:
“DOHA Nov 18 (Reuters) – Alcoholic beer will not be sold at Qatar’s World Cup stadiums, world soccer governing body FIFA said on Friday, a last minute reversal which raised questions among some supporters about the host country’s ability to deliver on promises to fans.
The announcement comes two days before Sunday’s kickoff of the World Cup, the first to be held in a conservative Muslim country with strict controls on alcohol, the consumption of which is banned in public.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/soccer-qatar-announce-no-alcohol-sales-world-cup-stadium-sites-source-2022-11-18/
HinTN
@Scout211: Fuck FIFA. They’re quislings too.
Citizen_X
Lordy, what a posturing twit.
eclare
@Spanky: My 92 yo very Republican aunt told me a few days ago that if TFG is the Republican nominee, she will vote for Joe.
This is seismic.
BruceFromOhio
I have a family member that not only applauds this, also wants it to happen as many times as possible until America is a ruined, smoking hellscape run by white men with guns.
BruceFromOhio
@eclare:
Gaia bless Auntie and please tell her thank you.
eclare
@BruceFromOhio: Thank you! Unfortunately we are in TN, so doesn’t really matter, but baby steps count!
Scout211
Judge in Georgia rules to allow Saturday voting for the runoff election.
JPL
@Scout211: whoa
thank you
Baud
@Citizen_X:
Right. “I wonder how Trump took over the GOP?”
Amir Khalid
@eclare:
Paying $80 for a bottle of beer, particularly if it’s American Budweiser, is its own punishment.
Danielx
@eclare:
By comparison with my dearly beloved auntie, an unreconstructed Roosevelt Democrat. She had to quit watching the news because Trump infuriated her to the point her doc told her it was affecting her health.
Jackie
@Scout211: The Washington Examiner has a much different take: “Judge Hands Warnock Win” I didn’t need to read the article!😂
I didn’t know only Warnock voters could vote on Saturdays //
Danielx
@Danielx:
91 year old auntie
Amir Khalid
@H.E.Wolf:
On Bullshit is available to read for free at this link, if anyone’s interested.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: Hahaha….so true!
Geminid
@JPL: The late M.D. Russ wrote a good article for the conservative journal Bearing Drift that traces this current wave of radicalism back to Nrwt Gingrich’s Contract with America. One could trace it back to the party realignment of the 1970’s, when the racist southern Democrats became a major power center within the party.
I sometimes trace the party’s radical element all the back to 1860, when the nativist American (“Know Nothing”) Party dissolved itself and added its sizable numbers to the fledgling Republican Party. That might seem like a long time ago, but I think their ideological descendents were the “Taft Republicans” of the 1940s and 50s that Eisenhower gained temporary ascendency over.
Now its like the Know Nothings and the White Citizens Councils have joined forces with the politicized Bible Thumpers to dominate the party. But I think this took a while, and culminated with the nomination of Trump in 2016.
That was Russ’s punchline: “Trump did not hijack the Republican Party….Trump just answered the casting call.”*
M.D.Russ, “Trump is the Republican President, Bearing Drift June 20, 2020).
Dangerman
After last week, I have a better chance of being the next Republican nominee for President (Dangerman/Baud 2024?) than Trump does; I don’t know how they kneecap the fucker without him going 3rd Party, but zero chance he’s their nominee. Republicans will for give a lot of things (Racist, Adulterer, etc) but being a stone cold loser isn’t one of them.
Amir Khalid
@Jackie:
Hush! Don’t let Walker voters find out.
nclurker
@eclare: i pooched it even worse.
nixon was my first,and last republican vote.
Geminid
@MattF: I once thought of voting for Republican Senator John Warner. But then I said to myself, “Nah, Democrats are taking it on the chin this year, I gotta support the team.” So I voted for Mark Warner.
eclare
@nclurker: Hey, we both learned!
Josie
My first time voting was for LBJ. Sorry, Raven.
ETA: Democrats ever since.
lurker
voted for hw twice. gingrich was an eye opener to what i had been seeing but not really exposed to or understanding while growing up in the 80s. have not seen a repub candidate for president since who i could support, and looking back on hw it is pretty clear i got that wrong too…
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Warning on a PDF, please. Some devices download without warning.
ETA: Document appears to be blank. (Viewed with Firefox on Win10.)
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: I remember him from the Watergate hearings. He was very impressive.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: On a computer, sometimes it’s not at all clear that it’s a .pdf. You click it and it opens in your browser, just like any other web page.
CaseyL
I don’t think I could be a normie if I tried. I’ve been politically aware and active since I was… 14? Maybe longer: my parents weren’t much into politics, but my (maternal) grandparents were very active on a local level for Democrats, and they weren’t at all shy about proselytizing.
How politically aware was I as a child?
Well.
When I was 5 years old – which would have been in 1961 – I had a bad case of something or other, possibly the flu. Bad enough that the doctor came to see me. (Yes: doctors once routinely made house calls.) He resembled JFK enough that, in my fevered state, I was convinced The President had come to see me and make me get better.
I think the only time in my life I haven’t ardently followed politics was when I had to go back to Florida for a few years in the 1980s. Being a liberal Democrat in South Florida (even back then) was a tough row to hoe, and I think I just gave up rather than seethe all the damn time.
CaseyL
Yikes. Previous comment is in the wrong thread. Sorry, y’all!
zhena gogolia
@CaseyL: not really
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
The file name/URL will have a .PDF extension, which you would see if you put it in a link.
geg6
I voted for John Heinz for Senate. He was NOT the same animal as today’s GOPers. A good man, gone too soon. I also voted for Arlen Specter once. Again, not the same animal.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen_X: But his “conscience and his regard for country” CAN allow him – indeed, apparently, COMPELS him – to vote for the party of violent insurrectionist fascists?
He’s beyond a posturing twit. He’s traitor trash.
Matt McIrvin
In 1976, when I was 8, I supported Gerald Ford. Why? I think I had this pleasant intuition that the President was ipso facto a good guy and it would be pleasant for him to be reelected. Years earlier, Watergate had mystified me: was Nixon, by virtue of being the President, not by definition a good guy? Why were people picking on him?
My parents did not agree but they didn’t get upset.
By 1980 I was a committed liberal, just in time for Democrats to lose all the time and “liberal” to become a nationwide term of abuse. And that’s how I’ve thought about politics ever since, that the gist of it is that most people probably hate me.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
You were a committed liberal at 12?
Geminid
@Baud: Sounds like Rep. Marcy Kaptur. She started doing volunteer work for the Democratic party when she was 13 years old.
Baud
@Geminid:
I was less precocious.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I don’t actually look at the link. I click 3 times to copy the whole thing and I paste it in. I bet I am not alone in that.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: yes
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Sometime between 8 (Nixon all the way, baby!) and 17 (Oh, dear God, people are going to elect the fucking ACTOR?!), I became committed Democrat.
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
The White Citizens Councils didn’t join forces with the politicized Bible Thumpers; they just rebranded themselves. Politicized bible thumping is just the way they’re selling their racism these days.
SFBayAreaGal
My first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter.
Have voted Democratic Party since.
MobiusKlein
@Matt McIrvin:
I was 8 at that same time, and had same feelings about Ford. Fast forward to Junior High school, where a cheer went up at the news of Reagan’s shooting.
Cameron
I sometimes (not often) wonder if George Romney could have won if he had beaten out Nixon in the primaries in 1968. I think I could have voted for him with a clear conscience. Not so much his offspring.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
Who knew Nixon was so popular with the children?
Geminid
@Roger Moore: Well, I know that. But the the rise of the political evangelicals was still a seperate phenomenon, I think.
frosty
@nclurker: McGovern, Ford, Anderson … then Yellow Dog Democrat ever since.
@SFBayAreaGal: Hard to believe I missed two chances to vote for Carter!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Was always interested in politics. We would exchange newspapers after finishing reading the paper we used to get with our neighbors. So I grew up reading 2 daily newspapers and one afternoon paper (called Mid-day) and one evening paper.
TV News in India was pretty boring when I was growing up.
Misterpuff
First vote at 19 in 1976 at college for James Earl Carter and have never voted R since (except once: Lowell Weicker for Governor of Connecticut in 1990) Owed him for leading the charge against Nixon when he was a Senator. Not a bad record though I’ve been on the losing side – a lot!
Never told my son how to vote but now he is a progressive and a Democrat.
So, I’ve got that going for me,
Oh yeah from a family of Republicans but early on knew I was lefty. Best part: I have about 13 nieces and nephews —- 75% progressive and Dem
James E Powell
@Geminid:
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s interesting that they have had close to zero impact on Republican voters.
UncleEbeneezer
Two major mistakes in my voting: 1.) Arnold for CA gov and 2.) Nader in 2000. I was young and clueless on both cases. Since then, nothing but Dems.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: 8 yo children who grew up in a staunchly Republican household and staunchly Republican suburb where George McGovern might as well have been Old Scratch? Yeah.
Geminid
@James E Powell: You are right, but I’m not saying that they do and I’m not implying that either..
I don’t appreciate them because they are effictive at converting Republicans. I appreciate them because they give sounder analysis of the adversary than do many Democrats, who often describe their opponents as if they are two-dimensional cartoon figures.
randy khan
@Geminid:
John Warner was my last Republican vote, but it was a very special case – that was the year that the Dems decided they didn’t want to field a candidate (an idea I hate) and so his only opponents was a Lyndon Larouche acolyte named Nancy Spannous, who I think said she was a “Larouche Democrat,” but ran as an independent. I could have chosen not to vote that line, but I decided it was important for her to lose as badly as possible (and she got about 18%, only 2/3 of the crazification factor).
And I remember the Warner-Warner election, with the “Mark not John” and “John not Mark” bumper stickers, since a “Warner” sticker didn’t really mean much.
randy khan
McLaughlin, who desecrates the sport and its history by using the Twitter handle “baseball crank,” is one of those right-wingers who fancies himself an intellectual and proves on a daily basis that he’s not. (For those who aren’t into baseball history, in the early days of the game the people we call fans today were known as cranks; I do not know why, but I am happy that term faded away.) I have rarely seen anything from him that was not either intellectually dishonest or just flat wrong. So while I appreciate Nichols giving it the old college try, it was predestined not to work.
Matt McIrvin
I would have held my nose and voted for Republican Bill Weld against transcendently awful Democrat John Silber in the 1990 Massachusetts governor’s election, but I was still registered in Virginia and voting absentee at the time, so it was moot for me.
Achrachno
@Elizabelle: As has become usual I’ve arrived at a dead thread, but just in case anyone is still around I have another book suggestion. Free and on line! The Authoritarians.
I’ve not read it again since the rise of Trump, but should.
https://www.evcforum.net/DataDropsite/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
Geminid
@randy khan: I think John Warner was the most popular Virginia politician in my lifetime.
Warner was an accidental Senator. He was selected to replace Republican nominee Dick Obenshain, who died in a plane crash. Warner then won the general election.
I thought Warner hit the sweet spot in the Virginia electorate. Independents especially loved him. Since Warner’s retirement the Virginia Republican Party has moved steadily rightward, and they would not now tolerate Warner’s moderation and bipartisanship. They’ve gone from center-right model that Rove and others projected to a Right party.
StringOnAStick
I was born a liberal D. Unfortunately into a family of John Bircher R’s. Not a happy childhood or adolescence to say the least.
TriassicSands
Both my parents were staunch Repubicans.
My first, and worst vote ever, was for Richard Nixon in 1968. We were in the midst of the Vietnam War and LBJ had constantly escalated the war. That was in stark contrast to his “Great Society” agenda. He chose not to run for re-election and Hubert Humphrey got the Democratic nomination. For many reasons, I couldn’t stand HHH and I voted for Nixon, who despite ultimately proving to be a crook, did do some very good things during his time in office, among them creating the EPA and opening relations with the People’s Republic of China. I would have voted for either Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy had one of them gotten the nomination.
However, when Nixon nominated G. Harold Carswell to the SCOTUS in 1970, I decided I would never support Nixon again. I was already souring on Nixon, his secret plan to end the war remained secret and nonexistent, and Carswell simply didn’t belong on the Supreme Court. Nixon’s contempt for the importance of nominating highly qualified judges convinced me absolutely he should not be president. Senator Roman Hruska, (R-Nebraska) made one of the more famous political quotes of our time: “Even if he [Carswell] were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?” OMG.
In 1972, I voted for McGovern and never looked back. I’ve been relatively lucky since then in having reasonably decent, sometimes excellent Democrats to vote for. I haven’t been even slightly tempted to vote for a Republican for president, governor, senator, or representative since 1972. Eight years of Reagan, and his deification by the GOP set my opposition to the Republican Party in stone. People like Gingrich and G. W. Bush/D. Cheney hardened the stone from granite to diamond.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
I wasn’t saying or implying that you did. I just find it interesting & made an observation.
I feel like there were enough of them that they had some impact on the Village narrative in 2020. I could be imagining that, but it seemed that way at the time.
I wonder how they feel. I’m sure that back when they were cheerleading the right-wingers they thought they had followers & fans
James E Powell
@Geminid:
I wasn’t saying or implying that you did. I just find it interesting & made an observation.
I feel like there were enough of them that they had some impact on the Village narrative in 2020. I could be imagining that, but it seemed that way at the time.
I wonder how they feel. I’m sure that back when they were cheerleading the right-wingers they thought they had followers & fans