Coop Scoop 1/28: "The GOP Coalition Now Has An Armed Domestic Wing Edition"
Militiamen and Congressmen together again!
By Marc Cooper
Pity poor Mitch McConnell, if you can stand the thought for a minute or two.
In the wake of the January 6 siege of the Capitol, Mitch seemed more than determined to toss Donald Trump into the shark-laden Straits of Florida and be done with him.
Mitch had squeezed as much as he could out of the Great Orange, confirming a battalion of right-wing federal judges to lifetime appointments. But now Trump and his acolytes, who had managed to lose the White House, the House, and Mitch’s own private Senate, who are mired neck deep in a violent conspiracy to stop the certification of Biden in Congress, who have blood on their hands from the now six dead (including three cops) at the Capitol riot, had become – in Mitch’s learned opinion—a mortal liability to the future electability of Republicans. The Senate map in 2022 is not great for Republicans and Mitch doesn’t really like being in the minority.
Over in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney as a stolid rep of the Republican Old Guard made it even clearer that she was done with Trump and wanted him impeached and removed.
Even the little weasel of Lindsay Graham said “enough is enough” after the January 6 putsch attempt and suggested strongly Trump’s time in the GOP was over.
For a moment, it looked like “regular Republicans” were ready to purge the Trumpanzees and take back the party that had been lifted from them.
Well, that was then. This is now. A lot can happen in two or three weeks. And what we see today is the total and complete, shameless, reprehensible, stomach-turning and almost pitiable capitulation and surrender of the few traditional Republicans left to the towering, all-powerful totem of Donald J. Trump.
Like a litter of blind baby rats scurrying back to Mama rat to peacefully suckle and ignore the world.
What Mitch and Liz and Lindsay realized is that they really do not have any substantial base compared to the one that remains loyal to Trump. Indeed, there is no Republican Party without him. Even if he is in Twitter-free exile in Florida.
Trump has apparently threatened to start a third Patriot Party if Republicans vote to convict him in his second impeachment trial. A third party torpedo to be deployed in primaries to unseat Republicans not Trumpy enough. It’s a totally credible threat and it clearly worked.
The disgusting procedural vote in the Senate Tuesday in which 45 Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, sent a strong signal they would not convict Trump was the definitive white flag.
What an overused cliche but I cannot think of a better term than the chickens have come home to roost. Forty years of successive radicalization of the Republican base, boosted in the last four years, and then turbo-charged with the Big Lie since Trump’s solid defeat, have completely transformed the Republican Party into something new in American politics: an explicitly anti-democratic, pro-autocratic personality cult that even has an armed domestic front.
For decades, much of the left and a lot of liberals have cried wolf that the Republicans are just “fascists.” That’s unfortunate not only because it was a sloppy and inaccurate analysis, but also because it undermines the gravity of the fact that today the GOP really is primarily an authoritarian party that tolerates and even allies with fascists, white supremacists and open authoritarians.
Really bad luck for a rank opportunist like Mitch. And even worse news for whatever Republicans might secretly possess some principles and an embryonic backbone who were hoping to shake the Trump curse off the party.
Too late, fellas. Just when Trump has become the most toxic, the most reviled, the least popular, the more out of control than ever before, he is still your Daddy. And your Mommy. And he is going to lead you into many general election defeats.
It’s not the Trumpanzees who risk getting purged from the GOP in this post-presidential era. On the contrary, the Trump cultists who run the party from the RNC down to local state parties (some of which are really insane) are more than willing to purge anybody and everybody who is not 100% loyal to their Dear Leader.
The Republican Party has ceased being a conservative party in favor of smaller government and personal responsibility. By its own hand in last year’s election platform, it has jettisoned any agenda except absolutely loyalty to Trump. This is a classic symptom of all authoritarian parties. Can anybody tell me what the Republican legislative agenda is? What their health care policy is? What their pandemic policy is? What their general popular relief program is? They have none. They exist only to obstruct, pass an occasional tax cut for their sponsors, and obstruct all progress.
This turn must be taken very seriously as it completely upends our traditional understanding of American politics, especially going forward.
Our two-party system, already a burden on any possibility of a vibrant political culture, was bad enough to begin with. Now it is worse.
I am not a big fan of the Democrats (because they have been too similar to the Republicans). But I don’t think it a partisan or unfair statement to make saying that, in general, the Democrats respect and play by the constitutional rules.
Over the last 15 years the Republicans have slowly and now abruptly broken with any respect or concern for constitutional primacy. This is quite destabilizing and can lead to some very big conflicts very soon.
Aggravating this trend, is the concrete alliance between the congressional Republican Party and a domestic movement of violent rightwing extremists who, among other crimes, beat one Capitol Police office to death, poked the eye out of another with a thin blue line flagpole (!), broke several ribs of another officer and in total injured as many as 140 other police. This while the Capitol invaders rifled through the desks of legislators, hunted (unsuccessfully) for others who they threatened to kill, while others among these “patriots” smashed windows and doors, stole what they could and some who literally shit on the Capitol floor as their personal contribution to Making America Great Again.
Makes no difference, apparently, that many of the Republican Senator/Jurors in the impeachment trial were actual witnesses and potential victims of the January 6 assault, they seem to want to treat the siege as nothing more than, say, a raucous frat party (of the sort they hazily remember passing out at).
Look at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Another Trumpanzee who threatened to break out of the cage after 1/6, but has now crawled back in. I think it is today or tomorrow that he says he will be “speaking with” newly elected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) who, as an open Qanon booster, has endorsed internet threats to literally murder Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats.
Some Democrats have petitioned McCarthy to refuse to seat her. Fat chance! Kevin also wants to get re-elected and in his conservative California district would have problems beating a primary opponent running to his right (or better said running as more loyal to Trump). I am sure he will give Marge a limp slap on the wrist, a wink and then move on.
There are manifold global examples of what the Republicans are doing. It’s hardly the first time that a major political party operates openly and legally while maintaining an armed and often illegal auxiliary contingent in the streets. But first time, really in the modern US).
Back in the 80’s, the Northern Irish Sinn Fein Party was really the legislative arm of the Irish Republican Army. Maduro’s ruling party in Venezuela maintains a veritable army of “volunteer” militias (and death squads). Same with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. In El Salvador the ARENA Party held the presidency while still cooperating with its own death squads. And so on and so on.
I don’t think at this point that the armed insurgent faction of the Republican Party is going to grow any time soon into a viable guerrilla movement and is more likely to engage in smaller acts of violence and terror.
The emergence of this new Republican coalition does mean we have to update and revise our take on the state of play. It will be a grievous error to continue with the media-marinated fiction that our political parties are a two-way battle between Liberals and Conservatives.
News Flash: The Democratic Party as a whole is anything but liberal (except in the European sense of being pro free market and pro free trade). And the Republicans nowadays are more radical than they are conservative. And lots of conservatives (who are not elected officials) hate Donald Trump and for very good reasons.
I think, in the short term, the major divide we face today in early 2021 is between liberal democracy and authoritarian autocracy. And this is not some abstract threat. The Trumpanzees have an excellent chance of taking back the House in 2022, perhaps the Senate and GodOnlyKnows what awaits in 2024, provided we have not gone extinct from some new strain of COVID.
There are lot of implications in that statement I made about democracy versus autocracy.
This means that we absolutely cannot and should not normalize this new Republican Coalition by granting it any negotiating status in the U.S. Congress. Yes, the Democrats have a very tenuous majority but they better damn well use it before it’s gone.
The really sick obsession the media has with promoting “bi-partisanship,” along with Biden and his team constantly promising “unity” is a skip load of bull. And purposely deceitful.
I’m all for worthwhile compromises. I am not at all for compromises that are made just to satisfy the seditious caucus in the congress.
There’s a cynical word game that Democrats play when they talk of “unifying the country.” First of all, that’s impossible and undesirable unless you are fan of the Chinese system.
American voters and I stress VOTERS are much more divided than they should be as the powerful consciously divide them by class, race, gender, region, party and by any means necessary.
The way any president can “unify” the country is by promoting and enacting highly popular policies that bring people together in agreement regardless of party sympathy. It is NOT by winning over 5 or 10 or 20 Republican elected officials! Forget the Republican Party as a party and try to win back some of its voters, or at least build up your base among those who have not voted before so you create a real governing majority.
Why propose unity with a party that is now engaged in sedition? At least as apologists for it? Mitt Romney, who was the only Republican who voted to impeach Trump last year, said it best this week…and he’s talking about his own party!
“I say, first of all, have you gone out publicly and said that there was not widespread voter fraud and that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States? If you said that, then I’m happy to listen to you talk about other things that might inflame anger and divisiveness,” he explained to Dennis Romboy of Deseret News. “But if you haven’t said that, that’s really what’s at the source of the anger right now.”
Look at the policies that Biden is promoting right off the bat. The massive COVID relief program (which at $1.9 trillion is probably only half of what is really needed), the re-opening of emergency medical insurance marketplaces, the re-entry into WHO and the Club of Paris, his movement on climate change, raising the minimum wage, nibbling away at systemic racism and criminal justice reform… all these measures have overwhelming popular support, far above the 55% of the votes Biden got in the general election. Pass these measures are and you further unify the electorate.
I have lots of friends who are “progressives” or socialists (as I am) who are now going to yell that I am proposing some sort of a united front with who knows who to water down more radical changes.
Wrong. I am arguing that as a democratic socialist you cannot even dream of socialism or radical reform unless your democracy is in running order. You cannot organize very well under authoritarian governments, comrades. Also, the democratic left has overestimated its size and strength since Bernie ran in 2016 and AOC got elected 2 years later. We need to build much much more capacity and somehow revive mass civilian engagement in politics. Being a spectator does nothing.
Moreover, the political fight for preserving and enriching democracy, the fight we are faced with today, can be a seamless movement toward more radical reform. I am not proposing a strategy of “stages.” Rather, no matter how far left or not you find yourself on the political spectrum, our immediate goal must be to organize – independently of the Democrats—so we have some leverage against the militias, against Republican obstruction and flex some muscle to keep Biden and Company on the straight and narrow.
So, yes, I am in favor of working with anybody – liberals, centrists, conservatives, Republicans—who are committed to opposing the fascist trend in the Republican Party and who support strengthening democratic and constitutional rule.
I am also acutely aware of the one vote majority the Democrats have in the Senate. And that brings us to a discussion of the filibuster.
No question that the Dems are in a tight squeeze. The brief hospitalization of Sen. Patrick Leahy this week reminded everybody that if only one of the ancient Democrat Senators checks out, so goes their majority status.
This is very thin ice. And if you or if Joe Biden think that this newly radicalized Republican Party is going to do anything except to try to crack that ice, you are ingesting too much ice or smack.
The Democrats CAN pass most of the current agenda through the so-called reconciliation process and that requires only the 51 votes they have today. No need to sit around and beg nine or ten Republican Quislings to vote with you to break the filibuster that we know will be thrown at every single piece of legislation brought by Democrats. And in the process negotiate away half of what you need.
Reconciliation is an arcane but easily accessible process that has been used a lot in the recent history (the final vote on Obamacare) and the public generally doesn’t understand it. Slate’s Jordan Weissman explains it in perfect detail including how the Democrats can broadly use it in this piece.
None of these acrobatics would be necessary if the Democrats just used their 51 votes to knock out the filibuster – this obsolete tool that has been the major roadblock to so much progressive legislation. It simply strengthens unfair minority rule, something the system already has built into it with the electoral college and the apportionment of Senators by state rather than by population.
The filibuster is a senate rule. I want to emphasize that those rules can be changed anytime by a simple majority vote.
So why on earth don’t the Democrats just can it right now and get on with their program without having to worry one minute about pandering to Republicans or squeezing legislation through reconciliation?
The answer is that 51 Democrats are not up for it. They throw up a lot of smoke obscuring the real reasons. We are told, hey, one day the Republicans will be back in control and we want that filibuster. It’s a ridiculous argument because when and if the Republicans get back in control THEY can also abolish the filibuster on the first day leaving the Democrats powerless to obstruct.
My proposal, which I am confident will not be followed, is that beginning today Biden and Schumer use that paper thin majority to absolutely steam roll right over the Republicans and pass the legislation that we have been wanting for a couple of decades that keeps getting obstructed.
That would really be putting country above party or person because a democratic blitz might cost them an election but that is a low price to pay for righting the ship of state.
Will this alienate congressional Republicans and raise cries of a one party “divisive” dictatorship? Of course it will. But who cares what a seditious party says? The Biden agenda is popular (because he’s been listening a lot to his more progressive base). I think, perhaps naively, that getting $2000 checks out to Americans, making it easier for them to get vaccinated, making health care more accessible, taking real measures of criminal justice reform and moving to reverse climate change, will go over much much better with the American people than the inevitable whining of Republicans about “divisiveness.”
There’s a reason McConnell tried to force Biden into including a ban on abolishing the filibuster in what is usually he routine bill to organize the senate when a new majority is seated. That didn’t work.
It didn’t have to. Two Democratic Senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia – always incorrectly called “moderates” instead of what they are, conservatives by the media-- quickly raised their hands and told Mitch not to worry they would never vote to abolish the filibuster.
I understand that both represent relatively conservative districts but these folks are basically DINOS, Democrats in name only. What they really care about is not the future of the country but only about their re-election.
There are other Democrats apparently lurking in the pro-filibuster clubhouse including the markedly impaired Dianne Feinstein and perhaps the newly elected Senators Mark Kelley (D-AZ) and Jon Osoff (D-GA).
Excuse me, but why isn’t there any internal Democratic pressure being levied against these folks?
The truth is that much of the Democratic Leadership is also downright afraid of canning the filibuster because they fear they will all lose their majority status if, say. Manchin or Sinema are punished by losing re-election.
Look, all that is a possibility. But consider where we are – objectively – no wishful thinking allowed.
Trump roared into office, broke all the furniture, wiped his ample read end with the constitution, ignored all the rules, bungled the pandemic which put the deaths of hundreds of thousands at his feet, and left office with the country broke and diseased. We’ve seen a record rise in unemployment and poverty, and the pandemic has become a veritable plague thanks to Trump. And we have inherited an emerging fascist movement as well.
It’s a rather unique and radical moment in history and we are anywhere except out of the woods.
To the chagrin of many I will repeat one more time that our immediate and mid-term political topography in uncharted and an unknown. We can hope for the best and brace for the worst.
In the short term here’s what the worst could look like. Biden tries to make the COVID relief package bi-partisan by getting enough votes from the Sedition Party to get to 60. He gets jerked around for months. Finally, in March or April, he gives up and passes SOME of the bill through the reconciliation process. This effectively means nobody in America gets any relief until the late Spring.
Vaccinations don’t get completed until late summer meaning that unemployment stays high into early next year. Just in time for midterm campaigning! By now, Biden’s popularity is back down in the 40’s.
The Republicans take the House in 2022 which they can easily do even if Biden remains popular because of the historic trend of the incumbent party almost always losing seats in the midterms.
That happens, and Biden is 90% a lame duck.
Here’s the best scenario. Biden and Schumer and Pelosi face the reality that most likely the administration has about 18 months of viability before gridlock sets in after the midterms.
Sinema and Manchin’s genitalia get squeezed hard enough and they actually vote with other frustrated Democrats to abolish the filibuster. Congress then blitzes though the entire Democratic agenda with no filibuster obstruction, hopefully radicalized by pressure from the base, and we have in a year and a half substantially changed America.
Is that going to happen? Almost certainly not. Yet, I will end this as I end most of these screeds. The outcome does not depend fully or even primarily on the political courage or acumen of Joe Biden or the Democrats. It depends on how many shit sandwiches the American people have a stomach for before they are ready to make their weight felt as the supposed sovereign of this republic. +++
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