I’m sure Marjorie Taylor Greene is blissfully unaware that she’s a bigger detriment to the Right than to the Left. It is significant that Mitch McConnell — evil but not stupid — put the word out Monday night that Greene needs to be kept on a short leash, if not in a padded cell. And tomorrow the House will vote on stripping Greene of her committee assignments.
But that’s not all. House Republicans also plan to debate Wednesday whether to retain Rep. Liz Cheney in her leadership position after her Jan. 13 vote to impeach President Donald Trump.
Plus, some House Republicans, who are basically spoiled six-year-olds, offered an amendment to a House bill that would remove Rep. Ilhan Omar from her committee assignments. I understand Rep. Omar is being accused of antisemitism, a charge that an opinion writer for the Forward (“Jewish. Fearless. Since 1897”) says is so much bovine effluvia.
I assume Greene can be removed from her committees by a simple majority vote, in which case she’ll probably be removed. Not that I’m a fan of Liz Cheney, but I do think that if Republicans remove her from her leadership position it would amount to them shooting great big bullets through their own feet. I’m betting Mitch is making some phone calls about that now.
At the Washington Post, Colbert King points to a time when the Republican Party was, relatively, sane, and their problem candidate was David Duke, the neo-Nazi former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. King writes,
At a Nov. 6, 1991, news conference 10 days before Louisianans went to the polls to vote for governor, GOP President George H.W. Bush urged them not to support Duke, the Republican on the ticket. Bush said:
“When someone asserts that the Holocaust never took place, then I don’t believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust,” Bush said. “And when someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that such a person can legitimately aspire to leadership — in a leadership role in a free society. And when someone has a long record, an ugly record, of racism and of bigotry, that record simply cannot be erased by the glib rhetoric of a political campaign.
“So, I believe that David Duke is an insincere charlatan,” Bush continued. “I believe he is attempting to hoodwink the voters of Louisiana, and I believe that he should be rejected for what he is and what he stands for.”
The Democratic candidate, Edwin Edwards, won. And the Republican party of the time seems to have been okay with that.
As recently as 2016, when Duke announced a run for a Senate nomination, no less than human anagram Reince Priebus, then the RNC chair, announced the party would give him no support.
David Duke was bad, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is the distillation of pure, toxic ignorance. And a lot of Republicans in Congress are rallying to her side. See also An ugly truth links Marjorie Taylor Greene to Trump — one the GOP won’t confront by Greg Sargent.
And then we come to the impeachment trial. This will amuse you —
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Wednesday that he has offered to represent Donald Trump in the former president’s second impeachment trial, asserting that he would be willing to resign from his seat in the House of Representatives “if the law requires it.”
Please, oh please …
Marjorie Taylor Greene
I’m sure Marjorie Taylor Greene is blissfully unaware that she’s a bigger detriment to the Right than to the Left.
IMO that’s short sighted. It’s an open question what faction of the right is going to win, and whether our country can fight them off. IMO Trump would’ve won were it not for COVID. Greene is Trump.
Gaetz, is the kind of guy who likes to start a fight, but then when the fight's about to go down, yells at his friends to "hold me back!"
As we used to say in my NYC neighborhood "That boy's all show, 'n no go!"
Gaetz ain't giving up his House seat anytime soon.
Liz is safe.
But something like 61 RepubliKKKLAN members did vote to take away her leadership position.
I would have bet my life, that if I lived to be 250, I would never have any positive thing to say about anyone named Cheney – unless, that is, that was the last name of the greatest Giants QB ever, or the Yankee outfielder who was better than Mickey Mantle or Joe D! (And even then, I'd check for any family ties with the neo-con clan before giving them my heart).
But I was wrong.
It takes a tough man to make a tender chicke…
Whooops!
It takes a tough man… A tough person to admit a mistake.
I admit it: I sold Liz Cheney short.
I now realize that she draws the line at bombing countries into submission at us here: The good old USA!
That is good to know.
I wasn't too sure before.
Interesting that 135 of the House Republicans who voted against impeachment voted to defend Cheney. I'm not suggesting these jellyfish have any integrity but the two votes illustrate how much of split-personality disorder GOP members of the House are showing, wanting to embrace Trump and not sanction a rebuke of Cheney.
They want to impress the Trump fanatics and not lose the corporate donor class. The GOP has seen voters changing registration from Republican to Independent in serious numbers.
I read that the Cheney vote was secret. It's their base they're terrified of – the mob with the pitchforks.
Moonbat – I'm listening and I'm trying to understand. Almost 200 voted NOT to impeach and there's been all kinds of grand theatrics about GOP unity. But of the 200 House Republicans sucking up to Trumpsters, 135 broke the other way to legitimize Liz Cheney's vote for impeachment. The votes should have tracked almost exactly the same.
Since there's not an ounce of integrity to be found in the GOP jellyfish who voted against impeachment, where did the change in values come from? I don't know. There's something I haven't figured out here.
In any retelling of the legend of Frankenstein, there's the moment when the doctor realizes the monster he created is out of control. The reaction usually isn't that the doctor will participate in destroying it, just getting it back in the lab for a tune-up. And the architect of the beast hasn't given up on a really bad idea.
The idiotic myths churned out by Limbaugh and Jones served a purpose – a base of reliable voters detaches from reality. The KKK bigots, the evangelicals and the tinfoil-hat crowd had no influence over the policies of the GOP for a long time, law taxes for the rich, subsidies for big oil, endless funds for the military machine, privatization of govt functions to benefit the connected.
Nobody in the GOP asked if this was a good idea over the long run, Until now. The second movie in the Alien genre featured a conspiracy by the 'corporation' to breed the monsters as a potential weapon. To make sure the investment isn't destroyed, the company man, Burke, accompanies the team of marines. Burke betrays everyone in an effort to bring back some of the monsters alive and is himself taken. There's a moment in the movie when Burke is face to face with the monster drooling and showing nested sets of teeth. That's the first moment Burke realizes the magnitude of his error.
That's where McConnell and McCarthy are – facing forces they brought into being that they can not control and probably can not survive. Trump seems to have endorsed Greene – the nuttiest of the nutty love her. She loves the spotlight and won't tamp down the rhetoric, seems poised to up the crazy.
Two key components to this drama don't get much discussion. SOME in government, including the police and military, are infected with the crazy. We don't know exactly who or how deep the rot runs. 140 capitol police were injured, some seriously, so there's no reason to think it's a majority but the degree of unpreparedness suggests a deliberate conspiracy (to me at least.)
The second component is the reaction of corporate America to put a lid on this. It's not just that Amazon, Apple, and Google pulled the plug or that Twitter and FB are laying permanent bans. Major corporate contributors have suspended donations, especially to the members of the House who voted to pause the election count (and eight Senators.) The 'donor class' is threatening to not donate if the GOP can't get a grip on this.
So members of Congress in the GOP either look like they have a multiple personality disorder as they simultaneously denounce and defend Greene OR they pretend they don't know who she is or what the controversy is about. They are literally running away from reporters.
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The House is composed of extreme partisans, thanks to gerrymandering, the Senate less so. Gerrymandering is a disaster for trying to get anything done.
I'm in my 50s. If you're in your 30s, it is probably *impossible* for me to explain how devastating it is to hear "far worse than David Duke as a congresscritter" said about someone WHO IS ACTUALLY IN CONGRESS.
And what's worse, it's true. Someone like David Duke might say "the only good (slur) is a dead (slur)" and might nod and agree when hearing someone say "I wish someone would shoot that (particularly hated person)" – but wouldn't shout it on the metaphorical street corner. It wouldn't surprise me if, in his day, someone at a David Duke rally rammed a car into protestors, killing one, and being immediately denounced, with everyone there agreeing "those who'd do that have no place here!"
I'm not saying he *would*. But it really, honestly, wouldn't surprise me, and remember for David Duke, the "no place here" might well mean "at this Klan rally, or in the Klan itself!" So, you know, talk about your low bar to be immensely less horrid than the person WHO IS ACTUALLY IN CONGRESS.
David Duke lost but he did receive a majority of the white vote in both his governor and senate races. Nearly 60% in each.
“I can no longer be prosecuted for this crime because I am no longer a bank robber”
Kansas's Kris Kobach is KKKrazy. MTG is upstaging him. She is the new wave of toxic Republikkkanism. She is Q powered.
One needs to understand the power of delusion like MTG does. Thomas Edsall provides a scholarly window to such an understanding in his NYT opinion piece. His writing inspired incredibly thoughtful comments.
I like to rail about two word combinations which are red flags of nonsense. Frank of Pennsylvania's comment did it for me:
When you use the word theory in conjunction with conspiracy it implies that facts, evidence, and/or scholarly authority can either support or refute the validity of the theory. Yes Frank, and this commenter (Wendy from NY) provides a fantastic supporting parable.
Yes the librarian had a fantasy not a theory. Q-nuts generally have conspiracy fantasies, or delusions. They have even been shown to ascribe to incompatible conspiracy theories. From the Edsall article citing studies cited within:
Opinion | The QAnon Delusion Has Not Loosened Its Grip – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
No a conspiracy delusion.
Somewhat off topic, but goes to the Big Lie at the heart of this mess: subpoena Trump to appear at the impeachment trial, put him under oath, and ask him this question: did you win the election?
Not off topic at all. Not only does the credible press say he refuses to testify but If he did all you would get (in all probability) is incoherent babble, The big lie, and conspiracy delusions.
He is not mentally ill probably by definition (it is a legal not a psychological definition). He has probably refused any idea of an insanity defense.
All of this is speculation, and we can only try to understand human behavior the best we can. What we would like to be human behavior lacks the cookie cutter consistency we expect – I keep learning the hard way day by day.
We will get no Perry Mason moment I fear.
Psychopaths have low harm avoidance (low anxiety response, preferring to not look before leaping), low conscientiousness (hence the poorly developed specialized abilities and preference to just wing it), and extremely low agreeableness (no empathy, guilt, compassion).
I see Machiavellianism as what happens to a psychopath who also happens to have a significant amount of harm avoidance. They’d rather get their control jollies by being a covert puppetmaster, than manipulating crowds which can intimidate them.
It's a shame they haven’t more neatly defined the causal differences between common psychopathy and malignant narcissism. It could be the MN, hates his followers as much as any psychopath hates his targets, but they just wants bigger crowds to control.