Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

MSNBC’s Morning Joe notices something ‘strange’ about the GOP ‘personality cult’

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough noticed something “strange” about the “personality cult” that has developed around former president Donald Trump in the Republican Party.

The GOP has lost control of the House, Senate and White House since Trump was first elected, but the “Morning Joe” host said the more they lose, the more they seem to love the twice-impeached one-term president.

“It really is strange,” Scarborough said. “The more Republicans lose, the more of a personality cult Donald Trump seems to develop. You can look at his losses in ’17 and ’18 — historic losses. I mean, Republicans losing like they’ve never lost before in the House of Representatives, just as far as a pure, pure vote totals, [and in] ’19, they started losing governorships in the South and then in ’20, they lost the big race, lost the race for their presidency, lost Georgia, lost the Senate, lost the House.” Continue reading.

Republicans struggle to define a new governing coalition as Trump closes grip on party

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WATERFORD, Mich. — The Republican Party’s metamorphosis starkly showed this week in the faceoff between a parade float championing Donald Trump and “Mr. Perks,” an 18-foot pink pig on wheels emblazoned with the words “End Washington Waste.”

Americans for Prosperity, a free-market group that helped propel the tea party uprising in 2009, drove in the pig to make a point at a conservative rally about federal earmark spending. The Trump rig, equipped with a sound system and pulled by an old ambulance, posed a threat.

“This event is not about Trump,” said Annie Patnaude, the Michigan director for AFP, explaining why the Trump display had to move away from the live band and full buffet tables she had set up. “This is about pork.” Continue reading.

‘Why do they tolerate Trump?’ Conservative calls on Republicans to recover some ‘dignity’ and cut ex-president loose

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Donald Trump personally insults the Republicans whose support he demands, and one conservative wonders why they keep sucking up to the twice-impeached former president.

The former reality TV star and 2024 frontrunner has infamously insulted John McCain’s military service, Ted Cruz’s wife and father and Jeb Bush’s vitality, but Republicans keep resisting any chance to cut the scandal-plagued party figurehead loose, wrote The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis.

“The big question is: Why do they tolerate Trump?” Lewis wondered. “Why doesn’t their primal desire for pride and honor and dignity ever kick in?” Continue reading.

The Party Of Surrender…To Tyranny

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When the violent mob finally dispersed from the Capitol late on January 6, it left behind a troubling choice that Republican congressional leaders are only now being forced to make.

This week, they had to decide whether to fulfill their constitutional oath by supporting a full and independent investigation of that day’s terrible events, which inevitably will reveal all the dimensions of former President Donald Trump’s responsibility for the insurrection, or to surrender to Trump by attempting to kill that investigation while muttering excuses that only underline their cowardly dereliction.

We know how that went. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with a majority of their caucuses, showed abject obedience to the would-be dictator, who now rules the Republican Party with a clenched fist. He publicly ordered the pair of them to oppose the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex, as the legislation is titled, and they heeled like whipped dogs. Continue reading.

‘An unfinished battle’: Poll reveals the ‘true drivers of GOP identity’ — and the dangers for Democrats

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Although Democrats presently control the White House and both branches of Congress, they have only a narrow majority in the U.S. Senate — and their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is smaller than it was before the 2020 election. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, in a recent Democracy Corps/Greenberg Research memo, has a warning for fellow Democrats: Republicans will be seriously motivated going into the 2022 midterms — and former President Donald Trump will do everything he can to whip them into a frenzy.

Greenberg, who heads Democracy Corps with veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, explains, “We conducted a large, mostly cell phone survey with an oversample of Republicans in the 2022 battleground for the U.S. Senate, governorships, and House, and it is painfully clear Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and Kevin McCarthy know their party. The Trump loyalists who strongly approve of (Trump) are two-thirds of those who identify as, ‘Republican.'”

According to Greenberg, “The survey also finds that the critical bloc of non-Trump conservatives and moderates is only a quarter of the battleground electorate — compared to 30% in our national poll last month. The non-Trump conservatives are a healthy 16% of Republicans, but there are just fewer moderates, 9%, in the battleground.” Continue reading.

Arizona Vote Review Is ‘Political Theater’ and ‘Sham,’ G.O.P. Leaders Say

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Leaders in Maricopa County, Ariz., are hitting back at Donald J. Trump and fellow party members in the State Senate over a review of the county’s ballots.

The Republican leaders of Arizona’s most populous county issued a blistering rebuke on Monday to a review of the November election that had been ordered by Republicans in the State Senate, calling it “a grift disguised as an audit” that had spun out of the legislators’ control.

The senior Republican in Maricopa County, Jack Sellers, the chairman of the board of supervisors, said flatly that the county would stop cooperating with the review and suggested that it would challenge in court any of its conclusions that pointed toward improprieties.

“This board is done explaining anything,” Mr. Sellers said at a special meeting of the five-member board, four of whose members are Republicans. “People’s ballots and money are not make-believe. It’s time to be done with this craziness, and get on with this county’s critical business.” Continue reading.

Chuck Todd clashes with Dan Crenshaw over GOP fraud claims: ‘Why should anybody believe a word you say?’

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Days after House Republicans ousted Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from her leadership position for challenging former president Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) on Sunday insisted that the conflict doesn’t interest most Americans.

Instead, he argued, voters want to hear about border security, inflation, and the gas crisis. “These are things that affect people, not this internal drama,” Crenshaw said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But host Chuck Todd pushed back, noting that Trump continues to make baseless claims that the election was stolen — a view that many GOP leaders have declined to challenge or openly embraced. Continue reading.

Democrats confront reality on voting rights: Congress probably isn’t coming to the rescue

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Asked about the path to enact new voting-rights laws, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly offered a pat reply: “Failure is not an option.”

Faced with a barrage of new state laws aiming to restrict voting outside Election Day — pushed by Republican legislatures egged on by former president Donald Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud — most Democrats agree with Schumer that the need for a federal backstop is essential.

But failure is very much an option — it is, in fact, the most likely one. Continue reading.

Republicans’ conflicting message: Embracing Trump election lie is key to prominence, just stop asking us about it

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The Republican Party’s contorted response to Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen was on stark display as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stood in the White House driveway.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) had helped engineer the ouster Wednesday of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as the No. 3 House Republican leader for saying former president Trump’s claim of a stolen election was a lie. Yet he insisted later that day, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.”

In fact, the majority of Republicans — spurred on by Trump and party leaders who for months have been spreading falsehoods and sowing doubts — say in polls that they still question the legitimacy of the election. Trump has continued to spread his lie, writing on his blog on Tuesday that he lost in “an election rigged and stolen from us.” Continue reading.

Cheney seen as merely first victim of Trump election attacks

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Former President Trump‘s false charge that the election was stolen has rattled the core of the GOP, sparking a nasty clash over who commands the soul of the party.

The baseless claims have launched a splinter group of disgruntled Republican officials and toppled a conservative icon, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who was ejected this week from the leadership ranks.

Cheney and party unity are unlikely to be the only casualties of Trump’s assault on last year’s election, however, according to a growing chorus of historians, political scientists, legal experts, pundits, and state and federal lawmakers. Continue reading.