Business Insider reports, Liz Cheney says the Republican party is ‘very sick’ and still under the control of ‘a dangerous former president’:
Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday said that large portions of her Republican party are “very sick” and says that they still believe in what former President Trump says.
[A personality cult of Donald Trump, similar to Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, which ended in everyone “drinking the Kool-Aid” in “revolutionary suicide” in Jonestown, Guyana.]
“I think, one, it says that people continue to believe the lie, they continue to believe what he’s saying, which is very dangerous,” Cheney told Johnathan Karl, host of ABC’s This Week when asked what her recent defeat says about Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.
“I think it also tells you that large portions of our party, including the leadership of our party, both at the state level in Wyoming, as well as on a national level with the RNC, is very sick.”
Cheney – who only received 30% of the vote for the Wyoming At-large Republican primary — told Karl that she believes that so many in the Republican party are under the grips of former President Trump, saying that her party needs to decide what its values are.
“We really have got to decide whether or not we’re going to be a party based on substance and policy or whether we’re going to remain as so many of our party are today, in the grips of a dangerous former president,” Cheney said.
Despite her loss, Cheney said she would continue to fight for her principles in the constitution while her party was still under the influence of the former president.
“What I’m fighting for is the Constitution. What I’m fighting for is the perpetuation of the Republic. What I’m fighting for is the rule of law — the fact that everybody’s got to abide by the rule of law,” she said.
“What I’m fighting for is the fact that elections have to matter and that when the election is over, and the courts have ruled and the electoral college is met, that the president of the United States has to respect the results of the election.”
She added, “What I’m fighting for is the principle that we have a peaceful transition of power, and that we don’t determine who rules based upon violence,” Cheney said.
Tom Nichols of The Atlantic writes, Can GOP Voters Handle the Truth? (excerpt):
It’s rare to see a politician speak hard truths to surly—and even dangerous—fellow citizens, but that’s exactly what Liz Cheney did in her concession speech[.]
* * *
Cheney nodded to the GOP’s free fall in her concession speech. “I believe deeply in the principles and the ideals on which my party was founded,” she told her supporters. “I love its history, and I love what our party has stood for, but I love my country more.”
Notice the use of the past tense there.
The remarkable thing about Cheney’s speech is that it was aimed squarely at the voters. It was certainly not aimed at Trump; Cheney, as well as anyone, knows the pointlessness of addressing Trump in anything like an adult conversation. It wasn’t even really directed at the institutional Republican Party, which is beyond repair at this point. Instead, Cheney grabbed Republican voters by the lapels and told them to snap out of their Trump-induced trance.
“To believe Donald Trump’s election lies,” she said, “you must believe that dozens of federal and state courts who ruled against him, including many judges he appointed, were all corrupted and biased; that all manner of crazy conspiracy theories stole our election from us; and that Donald Trump actually remains president today.”
Nor did she shy away from accusing Trump of fomenting violence. The former president, Cheney charged, “knows that voicing these conspiracies will provoke violence and threats of violence. This happened on January 6, and it’s now happening again. It is entirely foreseeable that the violence will escalate further, yet he and others continue purposely to feed the danger … No patriotic American should excuse these threats or be intimidated by them.”
All of this was said almost as a challenge: Are you really one of the people who can believe this madness? Are you the kind of person who is going to let Trump goad you into violence because of lies?
Likewise, Cheney warned against electing even those in her own party who have already vowed to undermine the rule of law:
Today, as we meet here, there are Republican candidates for governor who deny the outcome of the 2020 election, and who may refuse to certify future elections if they oppose the results. We have candidates for secretary of state who may refuse to report the actual results of the popular vote in future elections. And we have candidates for Congress, including here in Wyoming, who refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and suggest that states decertify their results.
“No American,” she continued, “should support election deniers for any position of genuine responsibility, where their refusal to follow the rule of law will corrupt our future.” She might as well have pointed to the voters and added: And by no one, I mean you.
Trump’s candidate for AZ Gov Kari Lake: “The largest standing Army in the world are American gun owners. We’ve got over a trillion rounds of ammo out there. And that fact is the only reason we’re a country right now .. It is the only thing keeping us free right now.” pic.twitter.com/UuucO6Qzin
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 16, 2022
Tom Nichols earlier wrote that we are in a new era of political violence, i.e., Republicans who see violence as a means to seizing power, rejecting the American credo of “ballots over bullets.” The January 6 seditious insurrectionists are an anti-democracy insurgency now. January 6, 2021 was just the beginning. The New Era of Political Violence Is Here:
I’ve been thinking about the threats against law enforcement and Trump’s barely veiled warning to Attorney General Merrick Garland about a “country on fire.” We should no longer wonder if we can avert a new era of political violence in the United States. It’s already here.
A Deepening Void
Civil war is among the many terms we now use too easily. The American Civil War was a bloodbath driven by the inevitable confrontation between the Union and the organized forces of sedition and slavery. But at least the Civil War, as I said Friday on Morning Joe during a panel on political violence in America, was about something. Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.
The United States now faces a different kind of violence, from people who believe in nothing—or at least, in nothing real. We do not risk the creation of organized armies and militias in Virginia or Louisiana or Alabama marching on federal institutions. Instead, all of us face random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes. These people, acting individually or in small groups, will be led not by rebel generals but by narcissistic wannabe heroes, and they will be egged on by cowards and instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio—or from behind the shield of elected office. Occasionally, they will congeal into a mob, as they did on January 6, 2021.
There is no single principle that unites these Americans in their violence against their fellow citizens. They will tell you that they are for “liberty” and “freedom,” but these are merely code words for personal grudges, racial and class resentments, and a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives. These are not people who are going to take up the flag of a state or of a deeper cause; they have already taken up the flag of a failed president, and their causes are a farrago of conspiracy theories and pulpy science-fiction plots.
What makes this situation worse is that there is no remedy for it. When people are driven by fantasies, by resentment, by an internalized sense of inferiority, there is no redemption in anything. Winning elections, burning effigies, even shooting at other citizens does not soothe their anger but instead deepens the spiritual and moral void that haunts them.
Donald Trump is central to this fraying of public sanity, because he has done one thing for such people that no one else could do: He has made their lives interesting. He has made them feel important. He has taken their itching frustrations about the unfairness of life and created a morality play around them, and cast himself as the central character. Trump, to his supporters, is the avenging angel who is going to lay waste to the “elites,” the smarty-pantses and do-gooders, the godless and the smug, the satisfied and the comfortable.
Much of this is driven by the anti-democracy Christian Nationalist and Dominionist theocracy movement in the Christian Right which sees Trump as their “savior,” or even as a “god” (which is sacrireligious and heretical to the actual Christian faith). See, for example:
Politico: The sanctification of Donald Trump.
Rolling Stone: False Idol — Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump.
Baptist News: How Donald Trump became god.
Salon: Evangelicals told Trump he was “chosen” by God. Now he says it himself.
CNN: An ‘imposter Christianity’ is threatening American democracy.
The MAGA/QAnn personality cult of Donald Trump is a politico-religious cult. It is not Christianity.
I spoke with one of the original Never Trumpers over the weekend, a man who has lost friends and family because of his opposition to Trump, and he told me that one of the most unsettling things to him is that these same pro-Trump family and friends now say that they believe that Trump broke the law—but that they don’t care. They see Trump and his crusade—their crusade against evil, the drama that gives their lives meaning—as more important than the law.
I have heard similar sentiments among people I know.
Some of these people are ready to snap and to resort to violence. A Navy veteran in Ohio was killed in a standoff last week after he attacked the Cincinnati FBI office; a man in Pennsylvania was arrested and charged today for threatening to “slaughter” federal agents, whom he called “police state scum.” But that doesn’t stop charlatans and con artists from throwing matches at the fuses every day, because those hucksters, too, have decided that living a normal life and working a straight job is for saps. They will gladly risk the occasional explosion here and there if it means living the good life off of donations and purchases from their marks.
When enough Americans decide that a cult of personality matters more than a commitment to democracy, we risk becoming a lawless autocracy. This is why we must continue to demand that Trump and his enablers face the consequences of their actions: To cave in the face of threats means the end of democracy. And it would not, in any event, mollify those among our fellow citizens who have chosen to discard the Constitution so that they can keep mainlining jolts of drama from morning until night.
We are going to be living in this era of political violence for the foreseeable future. All any of us can do is continue, among our friends and family and neighbors, to say and defend what is right in the face of lies and delusions.
And if these violent unhinged MAGA/QAnon Trump cultists succeed politically because enough Americans are “sick” and under the spell of this violent anti-democracy cult, they will face a Popular Resistance movement to their insanity from patriotic Americans who hold our American democracy and values dear, much the same way that patriotic French citizens formed a Popular Resistance movement to the Nazi-loving Vichy French traitors.
Yeah, I get that, and I’m pretty sure the 1A is what keeps John Kavanagh from getting me locked up or worse.
But jeeze, they’re accusing people of training children so they can f*** them.
Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s literally what they’re saying and that is so far beyond a disagreement on how to govern.
And they make a joke out of it.
Grand Old Party is just trash.
Unfortunately… or fortunately… political speech is the most protected category under our laws. You have to prove malicious intent and knowing falsehood. It is possible to prevail in court against a libeler or slanderer, but as Elon Musk proved it is very hard to win against a respondent with deep pockets, even if you call an innocent, non-public figure “pedo guy”. Even if you prevail, most people will find it very difficult to prove substantial damages, so you spend a bunch of money and are very unlikely to get much out of a victory. Litigating against a such hyperbolic rhetoric is like wrestling a pig: you get dirty and pig enjoys it too much.
Colorado state Sen. Kevin Priola was a Republican for 32 years. On Monday, he announced that he couldn’t be one any longer. So he defected to the Democrats. “After decades in GOP, Colo. senator says: ‘We need Democrats in charge’”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/23/colorado-republican-democrat-party-switch/
There is “too much at stake right now for Republicans to be in charge,” Priola wrote in a two-page letter explaining his decision, adding: “Simply put, we need Democrats in charge.”
Priola cited two reasons for the switch: Many Republicans peddling false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and the party’s efforts to block legislation that would fight climate change.
[On] the whole, Republicans are in the midst of an internal battle between two factions vying to control the party: candidates loyal to former president Donald Trump who are willing to parrot his false election claims and rivals who want to move the party past all that, The Post has reported.
Priola decided to leave the GOP altogether. In the letter he posted Monday morning, Priola said he became a Republican in 1990, enamored with Ronald Reagan’s willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union and cooperate with Democrats on immigration.
“I haven’t changed much in 30 years; but my party has,” he wrote.
Priola said he watched in horror on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters mobbed the U.S. Capitol. He thought the insurrection would lead his fellow Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, he wrote.
Instead, Republicans turned on a handful of their own — including Vice President Mike Pence, who affirmed Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win, and Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), who voted to impeach Trump after the riot.
“I cannot continue to be a part of a political party that is okay with a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election and continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen,” Priola wrote.
He then moved on to the second way in which the GOP had disappointed him: its inaction on climate change.
Republicans have repeatedly denied that humans are causing climate change and continue to block legislative efforts to fight it, even as Coloradans endure “near year-round” wildfires and “a seemingly never ending drought,” Priola wrote.
“I believe it’s immoral to saddle the next generation of Coloradans with even worse impacts,” he added.
Let’s not forget that Rusty Bowers has been enabler of the conservative crazies in the Arizona legislature for years, which includes him. His sudden epiphany after Donald Trump and MAGA/QAnon thugs turned on him does not excuse his past conduct. Nevertheless, E.J. Montini writes, “Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers blasts ‘fascist’ Republican cabal that ousted him”, https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2022/08/22/house-speaker-rusty-bowers-blasts-arizona-gop/7869841001/
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, the hardest of hard-core Republicans, was censored by the Arizona GOP and ousted in the Republican primary after refusing to ignore his oath, abandon the law and the Constitution, void the decision of voters and declare Donald Trump the winner of the presidential election in Arizona.
In a wide-ranging, blunt interview with Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, Bowers talked about how all of that puzzles him. Disappoints him. Even breaks his heart.
And his feelings, now, about the Arizona Republican Party that kicked him to the curb?
“The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves – that to me is fascism,” Bowers said.
He faced a brutal backlash for testifying
Bowers testified before the Jan. 6 House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He told the truth about how he refused to bow to the pressure exerted on him by former President Donald Trump and his cronies to go against the will of the people, telling them, “I’m not doing anything like this until you bring me something. Let’s see it. I’m not going to have circus time at the house of representatives.”
The evidence of election fraud never showed.
He spoke of how he checked out the vote counting process himself, with a legal team, saying, “I saw incredible amounts of protocols that were followed and signed off by volunteers – Democrats, Republicans, independents. Yes, Republicans for crying out loud! And they did it by the book.”
Likewise, he wouldn’t bend to the pressure from his Republican colleagues in the Legislature when they tried to introduce bills that would give politicians the power to overturn an unfavorable (to them) election result.
“I was trying to send a definitive message: this is hogwash,” Bowers said, “Taking away the fundamental right to vote, the idea that the legislature could nullify your election, that’s not conservative. That’s fascist. And I’m not a fascist.”
Bowers refused to give in to bullies
The threats and intimidation continued following the election and his appearance before the Jan. 6 committee.
He recalls protests outside his home, while inside his ill daughter was near death. In one instance he described how he got up close to a man cursing him and carrying a pistol, saying, “I had to get as close to him as I could to defend myself if he went for the gun.”
But he didn’t back down. And he still has not.
“I never had the thought of giving up,” he said. “No way. I don’t like bullies. That’s one constant in my life: I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.”
Of the Republicans nominated for the state’s highest offices, Bowers said, “The suite of candidates that we now have representing what used to be a principled party is just like, wow … It’s like being the first colonizer on Jupiter.”
‘The place has lost its mind,’ he said
He said the Republican party now “doesn’t have any thought. It’s all emotional, it’s all revenge. It’s all anger. That’s all it is,” adding, “The veneer of civilization is this thin. It still exists – I haven’t been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.”
What seems to surprise him most about recent events, which he considers a real threat to democracy, is that the danger comes from Republicans.
I’ll let Bowers have the last word. He has earned it.
He said, “The constitution is hanging by a thread. The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”
The Arizona Republican Party’s social media accounts appear to be under the control of “Q” himself – these conspiracists are deep down the rabbit hole with the QAnon cult and will radomly acuse anyone who does not share their mental derangement of being a “groomer” for pedophiles. Case in Point: https://twitter.com/JimSmall/status/1560042107225636864?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
@Jim Small
Accusing your opponents of being pedophiles is the Republican way in 2022.
Dignity and respectability have left the building.
Kathy Hoffman is a mother and a teacher, and without comparison the finest Superintendent of Public Instruction this state has had since the days of Carolyn Warner. Her immediate predecessors were the batshit crazy Diane Douglas, our racist blog troll “Thucky” (John Huppenthal), the racist (anti-Mexican Studies) Tom Horne, who is running for this job again, and the school voucher privateers, Lisa Graham Keegan and C.Diane Bishop. Republicans have been a disaster for public education in this state for over 30 years, not just in the Superintendent’s office but in the legislature and governor’s office. We need to restore a level of sanity to this state ny voting every one of these MAGA/QAnon Republicans out o office.
Why is it okay for conservatives to make false claims of crimes? They do this all the time.
We got lawyers here, sorry for the pro-bono ask, but what’s the deal?
The Republican Party of Arizona knows the statement is false, and knows they have no evidence, and there’s clearly malicious intent.
Can’t we sue them into honesty?
Or better yet, sue them out of business?
This isn’t open mic night at the Comedy Club, it’s a political party speaking to their well armed and not entirely sane base.
Kathy Hoffman technically has a defamaton claim against whomever posted that vile Tweet for the AZ GQP, and it could be imputed to the party as an official communication. But federal courts have held that false statements in political speech are protected by the First Amendment. See, “False Speech and the First Amendment: Constitutional Limits on Regulating Misinformation”, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12180