Republicans Are Fetishizing Fascism And Exercising Authoritarian Minority Rule

Two important opinion pieces which deserve your attention.

The First is from Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative, a founder of the Lincoln Project and Resolute Square, and The Enemies List podcast. He writes at Resolute Square, Today’s GOP: Fetishizing Fascism:

Joe Biden leveled up this week on the world stage. It’s hard to rival such singular moments of high international political drama like Ronald Reagan’s ringing call to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall” or John F. Kennedy boldly declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner!” in the frigid depths of the Cold War, but there’s something about confronting the Russian nee Soviet threat that brings out the best in Presidents.

President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, and his bold rallying of NATO and European allies this week was a high point in post-Cold War American foreign policy. He understood the stakes, the risks, the rhetoric, and the optics of the moment.

For the first time in history, the world saw a bold American president travel into a country under powerful assault where no American forces were there to protect him. They saw a man well into the sunset of his life and career board the train to Kyiv, ride 10 hours and meet with the leader of that embattled country on a sunny day in a war-torn city. He stood there, aviator shades in place, beside President Vladimir Zelenskyy as air raid sirens howled their fateful cry.

Biden wasn’t there to mouth platitudes or speak in the quiet tones of elliptical diplomacy. He was there to deliver the unmistakable message of American and European resolve. Biden put Vladimir Putin and his corrupt and doomed regime on notice that the same values, capabilities, and will that defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War is now more present than ever. NATO is more unified than at any time since the early 1960s. The American resolve and capacity to unify an organization that Trump attempted to extort and routinely insulted have been made clear.

Biden understood from the beginning that NATO is one of the most valuable adjuncts to American national security. Across generations, our work with this organization prevented any number of catastrophes in the bad old Soviet days. It’s now ensuring that the corrupt Russian State can never expand to its old Soviet-era borders – denying Putin his life’s ambition.

Biden then went from Kyiv to speak to the Baltic nations, firm American allies, high on Putin‘s list of future victims. His resolve there was just as clear. While Trump wanted to make NATO’s Article 5 a cash-and-carry transactional proposition, a real American president this week stated in the firmest possible terms that the unshakable commitment of America to Article 5 ensures the safety and security of the Baltics and Eastern Europe.

From Kyiv, Biden took his message to Poland and delivered a speech reflecting the best traditions of American national security leadership. Not belligerent, not boastful, but determined, firm, and with a resounding commitment to the value and benefit of freedom.

This is, of course, why Republicans are losing their damned minds.

Vladimir Putin knows only one thing can save him in this war. It’s not the Wagner Group’s mercenary thug army. It’s not Iranian drones, North Korean ammo stockpiles, or Chinese backing. It’s not human wave attacks. It’s not dragging World War II-era Soviet armor out of the depots, hitting it with a coat of Krylon and some WD-40, and sending it to the front.

No, the only thing that will save Vladimir Putin now this his American fifth column. It’s tempting to consider them clownish right-wing trolls, but the hard truth is they’re overtly, proudly, vocally on the side of Russia, Putin, and his war against the Ukranian people.

Tucker Carlson, The Lord Haw-Haw of the Ukraine War, is the loudest of pro-Putin voice in conservative media but is hardly alone. In Congress, Putin’s handmaid Marjorie Taylor Greene bleats out that the world is engaged in a “War on Russia” so frequently it’s like she’s angling for an apartment in the Arbat and pension from the FSB.

As for Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and the cast of That’s So Vlad! In Congress, their treachery to the ideals of democracy and human freedom is damning.

The list of Putin sympathizers is longer and most certainly growing; by now, they number at least a plurality in the House and a dangerous cohort in the Senate.

Let us be clear on what Putin’s Fifth Column are and what they believe; They’re not worried about federal spending on Ukraine — after all, most of them were here during the Trump era’s financial blow-out and never blinked an eye — but instead have a clear, political objective. They won’t admit it, so we should state it publicly again and again so the American people understand that the pro-Putin Republican faction has clear goals: the defeat of Ukraine, the triumph of Putin, and the destruction of Western democracy.

Anti-Ukraine is pro-Putin, hard stop. There is no middle ground here. There is no compromise. There is no acceptable excuse, reason, or rationale to side with an autocratic dictator who runs a dangerous kleptocracy intent on expansion, repression, and invasion.

The weakness and cowardice of the men and women who now spend their days eagerly cheerleading for Putin’s victory and the slaughter of the Ukrainians aren’t trolling. They’re not just doing it for clickbait. They’re not doing it to get hits on Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson’s pro-Putin propaganda hours.

Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and their ilk aren’t just cheerleading for the Russian slaughter machine every night and every day on their platforms for contrarian fun.

They’re doing it because they’re on the other side. They’re doing it because they don’t believe in the West. They don’t believe in democratic and pluralistic societies. They don’t believe that Putin is evil and Russia’s actions are dangerous. Instead, they run into the arms of the authoritarians. They’re dictator-curious, at best.

Just as Donald Trump’s ugly authoritarianism aroused them during his era and their current infatuation with Florida Ron DeSantis provides the only way to get an erection, apparently, Putin’s appeal also gets them hot. It’s not a very heavy lift to imagine what Tucker Carlson’s radio show on the Fox Radio Network would have sounded like in the late 1930s and early 1940s: “That Mr. Hitler is not such a bad fellow after all. Those Jews could be very dangerous to Western values.”

Think I’m exaggerating? Think again. The Germans loved nothing more than patsies like William “Lord Haw-Haw” Joyce. Putin, undoubtedly, feels the same pleasure now that Hitler experienced watching and listening to people like Charles Lindbergh and Father Charles Coughlin make fools of themselves on his behalf as he prepared a war to burn Europe to the ground and launch a genocide of unimaginable ferocity.

Contrast that with the supreme courage the Ukrainian people are showing the world. Under withering assault and brutal bombings, they get up every day and show the best and bravest of humanity. They fight on despite the odds they face, enduring savage attacks on their civilian population, on schools, churches, and hospitals. They face the war crimes committed by Russian soldiers on the orders of Putin and his military in places like Bucha.

Putin’s American allies are for this. This is what they favor. This is what they desire. This is what they crave – violence, chaos, and death all wrought at the hands of the authoritarian figure of Vladimir Putin.

They’ve abandoned the American legacy of a foreign policy where we protect our allies and interests from the authoritarians. Don’t let them tell you it’s about anything else.

The second opinion comes from Jim Small at the Arizona Mirror, Minority rule is anti-American, but it’s how Republicans are governing in Arizona:

When Ben Toma won the contest to be speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, there was a sigh of relief at the Capitol.

The Peoria Republican is unquestionably conservative, but had built a reputation as someone willing to engage in good faith with those who hold opposing views — a person who could guide the razor-thin GOP majority as it navigated newly bipartisan political waters. And a Toma speakership meant that the fledgling far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, which backed founding member Joseph Chaplik, wouldn’t hold the reins.

Two months into the session, it’s clear that Toma is little more than a figurehead and that the extremists in the Arizona Freedom (sic) Caucus are calling the shots, remaking the chamber — and the legislature as a whole — into a dystopia of anti-democracy policies that are a slap in the face to Arizonans.

First, it was the sweeping rule changes that, most critically, neutered any possible attempt at forcing Republican leaders to negotiate sincerely with Gov. Katie Hobbs by guaranteeing they couldn’t be undercut by GOP lawmakers independently working with Hobbs or other Democrats. [As occurred in Gov. Janet Napolitano’s first term, when Republican leaders got rolled by several Republicans working across the aisle with Democrats.] The threshold for forcing a vote on a bill — a parliamentary move reserved only for the most extreme circumstances — went from being a majority of the 60 members to a majority that also must now include Toma.

Not satisfied with that, the chamber on Tuesday imposed minority rule, setting new standards for Democrats even to have their bills considered that effectively mean none will be. 

Immediately after lawmakers finished debating dozens of bills, Republican leaders approached Democratic legislators whose measures had cleared the debate step and handed them green sheets of paper listing the GOP legislators. Unless they could get 16 of the 31 Republicans to sign those sheets, affirming they backed the Democratic bill, the measure wouldn’t be put up for a formal vote, they were told.

But as Democrats scrambled to comply with this new requirement, it quickly became clear what was happening: Republicans were largely refusing to sign the sheets. Some who voted on a bill in committee suddenly weren’t sure about the measure, or couldn’t remember what it did. Others promised they’d be the 16th signature, knowing the promise was empty because they had been “explicitly told not to sign the green sheets,” as one Democrat was told by Republican colleagues.

Republicans are insisting that the policy isn’t only for measures introduced by Democrats, as if that makes it any better. The un-American result is still that barely 25% of the elected officials in the House of Representatives have the power to kill any piece of legislation, even if it’s supported by every other member of the chamber.

A tyranny of the minority of MAGA Fascists.

This idea is one that has been spearheaded by the Arizona Freedom Caucus, which is so fundamentally opposed to even working with Democrats that it wants to ensure no one else can, either. The group’s political posture is so extreme that rock-ribbed Republican Congressman David Schweikert recently said he quit the congressional House Freedom Caucus because he was sick of voters believing he was a member of the local group.

The move to institute minority rule was previewed late last month by Rep. Alexander Kolodin [an unethical GQP attorney who brought frivolous legal challenges to the 2020 election, and earned himself a bar complaint for it], a Scottsdale Republican and Arizona Freedom (sic) Caucus member, who was upset that several bills easily won approval in the chamber without the support of 16 Republicans. 

That prompted a response minutes later from House Minority Leader Andrés Cano, who said he was troubled by Kolodin’s remarks.

“Sixteen Republicans should not decide a 60-vote body,” he said, noting that moving to such a standard would send “a strong message to the people of Arizona (about) the partisanship that’s gridlocked this state.”

But that’s exactly what’s happening now. A minority of far-right Republicans are now dictating what proposals will even have a chance to stand in the marketplace of ideas that conservatives claim to love so dearly.

Cano laid out the absurdity of the unofficial rule on Tuesday, noting that even bills with the support of a supermajority of the chamber will die if enough Republicans decide to oppose them.

1️⃣ There are 60 AZ House Members— 31 Rs and 29 Ds.

2️⃣ To pass legislation, 31 votes are needed.

3️⃣ Today, the @AZHouseGOP told Dems they won’t consider Dem bills unless 16+ Republicans sign-on.

4️⃣ 29 + 16 = 45… a supermajority!

▶️▶️ House Dems say NO to this abuse of power.

— Andrés Cano (@AndresCanoAZ) March 1, 2023

Toma and his family escaped communist Romania when he was a child, and he speaks regularly about the evils of communism — and how American democracy is the best form of government.

Yet he’s overseeing a gross counter-majoritarian perversion of the democratic system he claims to love so much. Why?

IOIYAR.