Republicans: continued

[Tero]

GOP Sen. Susan Collins thought the mostly white pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol was 'the Iranians' at first

“My first thought was that the Iranians had followed through on their threat to strike the Capitol, but a police officer took over the podium and explained that violent demonstrators had breached the entire perimeter of the Capitol and were inside,”Collins wrote in the Bangor Daily News.

The mob that stormed the Capitol wore “Make America Great Again” hats or carried Trump flags to exhibit their support for the president. The insurrection was also filled with members or sympathizers of extremist groups, who had made their plans for unrest at the Capitol quite clear online in the weeks and days leading up to the riot.


Wajahat Ali
@WajahatAli
White Supremacy, Islamophobia, and racism are so rooted in the American mindset and culture that when hundreds of overwhelmingly white violent insurrectionists overrun the US Capitol & kill 5 people, Susan Collins immediately thinks, "Oh, it's the Iranians!"

What a wild country.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/gop- ... ?r=US&IR=T

[Seabass]

From the conservative Bulwark.com. Can't write this one off as "democrat hypocrisy" or "left bias".

The Alt-Right Is Now the Entire Right

The voices of reason, reality, and responsibility are a cowering minority in the Republican party.



Remember the alt-right? The sludge of white supremacists, misogynists, neo-Nazis, and various chauvinists leaked out of the putrid corners of the internet in the years leading up to Donald Trump’s election. Although their various hatreds, grievances, and conspiracy theories were old, they saw themselves as something new. Their very name placed them in opposition to the status quo. They weren’t the American right, the coalition that included politicians like then-House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain, as well as the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the intellectuals in the conservative think tanks and magazines. No, they were the blood-and-soil, tiki-torches-and-khakis alternative.

The one new thing about the alt-right, apart from its embrace of internet anonymity as a modern-day successor to the Klan hood, was its leaders. There was Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist proprietor of InfoWars, famous for his concern over gay frogs, and Richard Spencer, a neo-Nazi provocateur known for getting punched. For those who preferred stronger flavors, there was Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and self-described “Campus Conservative,” and Milo Yiannopoulos, who mixed white nationalism with defenses of pedophilia. The chief impresario was Steve Bannon, who made the website he took over, Breitbart, into a “platform for the alt-right.”

That was then. By its own definition, the alt-right is no more. Because it’s no longer an alternative to the right. It is the right.

Most of the Republican party is now more or less where the alt-right was four years ago, at least in embracing conspiracy theories—starting with the most consequential conspiracy theory of the last year: that Trump won the 2020 election but it was stolen from him by some combination of Democratic fraudsters, foreign and domestic socialists, and voting-machine companies, backed up by Big Tech. Courts asked to weigh in on these claims repeatedly slapped them down, and the pro-Trump lawyers who filed them increasingly revealed themselves to be unhinged. But about three-quarters of Republicans believe that President-elect Biden’s victory was illegitimate. And a majority of the Republicans in Congress supported the baseless claims: Two-thirds of the GOP representatives objected to certifying Electoral College votes last Wednesday, and over a quarter of GOP senators did (and/or said they intended to do) the same thing.

And what of the other big conspiracy theories in recent years? Among Republicans who have heard of QAnon, 41 percent say it’s somewhat good or very good for the country. Just 26 percent labeled it “very bad.” A plurality of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that the statement “the coronavirus outbreak was intentionally planned by powerful people” is probably or definitely true. The figure is even higher for self-described “conservatives.”

Of course, belief in conspiracy theories isn’t an isolated metaphysical phenomenon. It brings with it moral and political ramifications. Rare indeed is the conspiracy theorist who believes the world is controlled by a secret, powerful cabal—be it the Jews, the Illuminati, or the lizard people—and decides to stay on its good side. Embedded in the conspiracy theory itself is the need to fight the conspiracy, often violently. No wonder Republicans are so tolerant of violence. According to one poll, more than two-thirds of Republicans said the storming of the Capitol on January 6 was not a threat to democracy. A plurality (45 percent) approved of the insurrection.

Nor are most conspiracy theories (and for that matter, conspiracy theorists) devoid of other ideological stains: The QAnon conspiracy, after all, is based in part on a warmed-over version of the thousand-year-old anti-Semitic blood libel. Some Republicans spent years defending themselves and their co-partisans against accusations of racism, only to have the regime of “they’re not sending us their best,” the Muslim ban, “good people on both sides,” “go back where you came from,” “shithole countries,” family separations, kids in cages, and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” make racism an integral part of the modern Republican platform. Last week, QAnon apostle and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert live-tweeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location as the U.S. Capitol Police were being overrun; Republican Rep. Mary Miller told a crowd that “Hitler was right about one thing” (she has since apologized); and Trump himself told those engaged in armed insurrection against the U.S. government, “you’re very special.”

Bannon, for his part, having been discarded by Trump in early 2018, was arrested last August aboard a 150-foot yacht belonging to Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui in what turned out to be the perfect metaphor. After a relatively short stint as Trump’s senior advisor, he had become obsolete. The president didn’t need a theorist of white-grievance politics whispering in his ear; he didn’t need the man who gave a platform to the alt-right. Trump had become the embodiment of the alt-right, its leader and avatar, a human Pepe the Frog meme.

Yes, there are still non-racist, non-conspiracy-theorist, “normal” Republicans left in the party. Some freshman Republican members of Congress, like Reps. Nancy Mace and Peter Meijer, bear no responsibility for the ugliness of the last few years and have reacted with suitable outrage to recent events. But they and Larry Hogan and Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger aren’t the dreaded “GOP establishment” against which Trump has channeled such hatred and contempt for the last six years. Today, they are the alternative, and Trump and his team are the establishment.

Lisa Murkowski, in almost the same breath as she called for Trump to leave office, considered what she had in common with her fellow Republicans anymore. “If the Republican party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”

Good question. Parties have reinvented themselves before, including the Republican party, in its conservative turn of the 1960s-70s and again over the last few years. But it’s hard to imagine a new, reasonable, reality-minded Republican party building itself from the wreckage of today’s GOP.

https://thebulwark.com/the-alt-right-is ... ire-right/

[Tero]

But I liked alt country, whereas I don't like country.

[JimC]

What about alt Disney?

[Brian Peacock]

[Tero]

Trump court makes you visit doc to get abortion pill:
Federal courts, citing the Covid-19 pandemic, had previously blocked the enforcement of Food and Drug Administration rules that require an in-person visit with a medical professional to pick up the medication.

Tuesday, the Supreme Court said it believed the administration should be able to enforce the rule despite coronavirus concerns.

Medication abortion, a nonsurgical procedure effective until about 10 weeks into a pregnancy, typically entails taking two drugs several days apart. The contested regulation concerns mifepristone, the first drug, which works to block the hormone progesterone that is necessary for a pregnancy to continue.

CNN

[Tero]

Nikki Haley Launches PAC Ahead Of Rumored 2024 Presidential Run
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasre ... ntial-run/

[Tero]

Freedom caucus ( they want freedom from fed govt) up in arms:
Members of the House Freedom Caucus circulated a petition Wednesday to force a vote on a resolution calling on Cheney to resign from her post. The resolution states Cheney's position "has brought the Conference into disrepute and produced discord."

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/95671424 ... each-trump

[Brian Peacock]

Lol.

[Svartalf]

Wearing a mask is a sure sign that you have become a crypto-Marxist...

Well, I'm not crypto, and I hate wearing the godforsaken thing

[Svartalf]

The virus doesn't care who you vote for. It just needs you to be wet and warm.

It has good taste, I too love places that are wet and warm... shame I havent been in one in years.

[Brian Peacock]

The first 20 years are the hardest.

[Tero]

66F60003-36EB-4B21-B82F-3D2695078E55.jpeg (88.35 KiB) Viewed 728 times

[Tero]

Missouri would be happy if Hawley got replaced. Even with another republican
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/ ... y-missouri

[Tero]

it's time that Republicans get back to doing what they are good at: resisting spending and government. But Trump is stuck in their ideology.

Most Republicans want GOP in Congress to stand up to Biden: poll
Nearly six in 10 (59%) Republicans questioned in a Pew Research Center poll urge GOP leaders in Congress to stand up to the incoming president, even if it’s harder to address critical issues facing the country.

According to the survey, 38% of Republicans say their congressional leaders should try to work with the incoming Democratic president, even if it means disappointing some GOP voters.

But Trump’s approval rating among Republicans in a new ABC News/Washington Post national poll -- released Friday and conducted Jan. 10-13 -- remains a robust 79%. But that’s down from a sky-high 88% in October 2020, the last time ABC News and The Washington Post asked the question.

And a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in the three days immediately following the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 and released at the beginning of this week showed the president’s approval among GOP voters at 71% approval. That’s a drop from 89% in last month’s Quinnipiac poll.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/most-r ... biden-poll