Today’s Republican Party ‘Is A Party Built On Fraud, Fear And Fascism’

Above: Armed demonstrators right-wing thugs, who identified themselves as Liberty Boys, pose for fellow demonstrators’ pictures outside the Oregon State Capitol on Jan. 17, 2021, in Salem, Oregon (AP Photo/Noah Berger), eleven days after the violent insurrection in the nation’s Capitol led by Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers militias on January 6, 2021. Armed right-wing thugs began storming state capitol buildings in May of 2020 at the direction of President Donald Trump “to liberate” states from Covid-19 safety protocols, as a practice run for the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection in the nation’s Capitol. A failed insurrection is just practice for the next insurrection. These right-wing thugs are not done yet.

Dana Milbank writes at the Washington Post, GOP ‘built on fraud, fear and fascism’? If the jackboot fits … (excerpt):

After Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) implied that Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson is a Nazi sympathizer, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison referred to Cotton as a “little maggot-infested man” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Fake news! Cotton might go low, but, at 6-foot-5, he is not little. Also, maggots typically feed on dead things, and Cotton, though stiff, is not currently deceased. The man likes to carry on, but he is not carrion.

Harrison went on to censure the Republican Party as a whole: “It is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism.” Interestingly, a statement from the Republican National Committee taking offense at the “maggot-infested” charge did not dispute the “fraud, fear and fascism” formulation. As your self-appointed fact checker, I have therefore examined the merits of the accusation.

Fraud

Sixteen months after President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud failed in some 60 court cases, we have finally found evidence of potential voter fraud. Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, reportedly registered to vote in 2020 using the address of a mobile home he never lived in. And former Trump State Department official Matt Mowers, a current congressional candidate, voted twice during the 2016 primaries, in New Hampshire and New Jersey.

The “big lie” about a rigged election, accepted by two-thirds of Republican voters, has spawned new frauds about the dangers of coronavirus vaccines (leading to sharply higher death rates in heavily Republican counties) and the promise, touted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), of the deworming drug ivermectin to treat covid-19; an exhaustive new study finds the drug useless.

Then there are the little everyday frauds. Just days after Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) told the world that his colleagues engage in coke-fueled orgies, Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) declared at a Trump rally that it was Trump who “caught Osama bin Laden,” record-low unemployment is at a “40-year high” and there weren’t “any wars” during Trump’s presidency. Never mind Syria and Afghanistan.

Fear

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said people like Ketanji Brown Jackson become public defenders because “their heart is with the murderers.” Cotton said Justice Robert H. Jackson “left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.”

Republican senators used the Jackson confirmation to stir fear of minorities and vulnerable groups with manufactured crises about transgender athletes (of the 200,000 participants in women’s collegiate sports, perhaps 50 are transgender) and “critical race theory” (which isn’t taught in public schools),

Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance released an ad saying “Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), in his latest dalliance with white nationalists, was listed as a “featured guest” at an event on April 20 (Adolf Hitler’s birthday) of a white-nationalist-tied group. His office denies he’ll participate, but Gosar shared details of the event on Instagram, the Arizona Mirror reports.

At a Trump-hosted screening at Mar-a-Lago this week of “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” a poster showed Mark Zuckerberg “devilishly grabbing cash,” The Post’s Josh Dawsey reported. The film repeatedly describes the Jewish billionaire’s money as “Zuckerbucks” — even though the Anti-Defamation League objected to the term as an antisemitic trope about wealthy Jewish control.

Fascism

Sixty-three House Republicans — 30 percent of the caucus — voted against a resolution this week affirming unequivocal support for NATO as authoritarian Russia attacks democratic Ukraine.

A Republican National Committee resolution, never rescinded, refers to the Capitol insurrection not as an authoritarian attempt to overthrow democracy and keep the defeated Trump in power but as “legitimate political discourse.” And Trump expresses regret he didn’t march to the Capitol with the insurrectionists.

Republican-run states are racing to follow Florida’s “don’t say gay” legislation that bans teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity, which follows similar efforts to ban certain teaching about race and history, and widespread efforts to ban books about race, sexuality, gender and police brutality.

The Florida legislature approved an “election crimes” police force for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), with the potential to intimidate voters, while various GOP-led states move forward with new provisions providing residents with incentives to inform on each other.

The newly revealed text messages of Justice Clarence Thomas’s activist wife, Ginni, show her sharing with the Trump White House her “hope” that the “Biden crime family” as well as elected officials, bureaucrats and journalists would be taken to “barges off GITMO to facemilitary tribunals for sedition.”

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Is the GOP “a party built on fraud, fear and fascism”? Certainly, not all Republicans think this way. But too many others are subverting democracy, cavorting with white nationalists, spreading racist fears and fantasizing about extrajudicial punishment for political opponents and the media. For them, the jackboot fits.

Milbak’s colleague at The Post, Jennifer Rubin adds The GOP is less popular than Biden. Why would voters put it back in power?

President Biden’s low approval ratings understandably receive a lot of media attention. But that doesn’t mean Republicans are getting rave reviews. To the contrary, GOP congressional performance draws even less support than Biden does. And some of their most public stances get thumbs down with the public overall.

Take Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Republicans spent weeks falsely claiming she is weak on child pornographers and analogizing her representation of detained combatants to representing Nazis. (The latter accusation from Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas drew a stinging rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League.) But poll after pollshows that voters approve of her nomination by much much greater margins than recent GOP-nominated justices enjoyed. Republicans’ efforts to smear Jackson have not gone over well with voters.

We’ve seen how the American people expresses overwhelming support for NATO and for admitting Ukrainian refugees. But the GOP’s pro-Russia hangover persists. Republicans’ support for NATO and for letting in refugees dramatically lags that of Democrats. On Tuesday, 63 House Republicans shockingly voted against a resolution supporting NATO.

When it comes to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, the public is quite favorable. Republicans in Congress, however, vilify it and threaten to shut it down.

Meanwhile, some Republicans are back to arguing for repealing the Affordable Care Act. The law remains popular with voters. Polls also show a high percentage of voters don’t like book-banning, telling teachers they cannot talk about race, or sheltering kids from topics that might make them uncomfortable — all of which Republicans have proposed.

So if the GOP’s performance, its cult leader and its policies are so out of step with the public, why would voters decide to give them back the majority in one or both chambers of Congress? Well, this wouldn’t be the first time voters’ views defy logical explanation.

In another post, Rubin writes, What’s a White House to do about clueless voters? “So why do voters seem determined to believe things that aren’t true? One can attribute some dissatisfaction to the relentless “sky is falling” media coverage … And so confirmation bias is likely setting in for a lot of Americans, telling them everything must be bad.” “[Biden] need only explain what [Republicans] have been doing: They obstruct. They create chaos. They try to steal elections. They aren’t for anything.”

There are a few reasons voters who disapprove of Republicans’ performance and don’t like their positions may still vote for them. First, voters (and the media) remain hyperfocused on the presidency. President Biden isn’t on the ballot in November, but voting against “D’s” is the only way voters can express their negative views about him.

Second, the White House and Democrats more generally do a poor job of calling out Republicans for their obstruction, radical views and antagonism toward things voters care about. It’s a truism that the minority party wants to make midterm elections a referendum on the administration in power; unless and until Democrats provide a powerful, focused argument that voters have a choice between flawed Democrats and dangerous Republicans, voters will remain in referendum mode.

Third, one cannot underestimate the importance of inflation in souring voters’ mood. They don’t particularly care whether Biden’s policies caused price increases. And they don’t focus on the GOP’s failure to come up with a plan to address inflation. They are upset about gas and other price hikes, and that colors their views to an extent Democrats may not appreciate. As the Brookings Institution’s William A. Galston warned in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal: “Inflation is now, incontestably, the leading issue for the electorate, and voters are giving the Biden administration low marks for handling it. This is a political crisis for Democrats, who are battling to retain their House and Senate majorities in highly unfavorable circumstances.”

Democrats better explain that to them. Otherwise, the tide of negativity will carry a great number of Democrats out to sea.

So you will vote to end American democracy and install a fascist regime – one without any plan to address inflation by the way – because global corporations are taking advantage of the global pandemic and the Russo-Ukraine war to war profiteer and price gouge their customers in order to increase dividends to their executive shareholders? Are you effin’ insane? And you dare to call yourself a “patriotic” American?

How dare you disgrace the sacrifice and service of millions of patriotic Americans who fought a Word War to rid the world of fascism. Now you narcissistic crybabies would willingly vote to bring fascism to America? WTF is wrong with you? You disgust me.

The 2022 Midtern election is a “choice” election between pro-democracy Democrats and the anti-democracy authoritarian cult of Republicans. That’s the whole ballgame. Nothing else matters. Which side are you on?