The leading republican candidate for the presidency... security risks. Someone was kind enough to create a threadreader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1710274096628465759.html
I admit to having some Schaudenfraude watching Republicans attack each other but this isn't a game where we can just enjoy while the other team bickers and commits error after error. Given they are the majority in the House, still control many state houses, what they do does affect the whole country. Even while Democrats might consider this great fodder for the next election that is still more than a year away and a lot can happen between now and then. The country does still need a serious Republican party that is committed to governing and following Constitutional norms. Debates over things like abortion, spending, border policy, etc.. are all important but being able to make sure the country can run is more important. And if Republicans are threatening to burn it all down it more than just them that will be caught in the fire.
What sort of candidate sets up a stunt like this outside the men's room to film and audio tape her blathering empty talking points. Congressman Gallego gamely tries to engage her in a conversation. kari lake is devoid of any integrity. Hopefully the people of Arizona reject her so she will claim this election was stolen...
Don't Be Naive, the Republican Party has become an autocratic movement Stuart Stevens has been a lifelong conservative and political strategist for several Repulican presidential campaigns, including Bob Dole, GW Bush, McCain, Romney, etc. He has written this op-ed. It’s often said that Donald Trump has a cultlike following. But that’s far too benign. “Star Wars” has a cultlike following. Taylor Swift has her cult of “Swifties.” A political organization that has no platform other than loyalty to the leader is not a cult, it’s an autocratic movement. The tragicomic chaos in the House in the last week is the natural result of a political party that has lived under Trump’s thumb. It should end any pretense that the current Republican Party is a serious governing party. As Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. The totalitarian movements, each in its own way, have done their utmost to get rid of the party programs which specified concrete content and which they inherited from earlier, non‑totalitarian stages of development.” It seems like another time in another galaxy, but not that long ago there actually was some ideological diversity within the Republican Party. Today, there are no Republican governors who support abortion rights, and many are actively working to criminalize abortions in their states. The Republican Party three decades ago was overwhelmingly a white-dominated party, but it allowed for at least some dissent and disagreement. While it is difficult to attribute any deliberate or methodical plan to Donald Trump, whose mind operates like an old-fashioned pinball machine on tilt, his basic antidemocratic, strongman instincts have crushed dissent in the Republican Party, empowering the underlying authoritarian impulses within the party. It’s possible that Trump will not be the Republican nominee in 2024, but his success in molding the party to his image ensures that anyone who wins will continue down an authoritarian path. What’s unfolding in the Republican Party is an inevitable step in the cycle of authoritarian movements. What once was deemed sufficiently pure is judged to be inadequate and in need of purging. The Night of the Long Knives, the murder of Leon Trotsky, the Red Guards, the Khmer Rouge — each was the result of a radical movement further purifying its core membership and ideology, and something very similar is taking place among today’s Republicans. There is a childlike need for many Republicans in what was once “the establishment” to believe that the Trump years were some aberration, that the party was “hijacked” by Donald Trump. The problem with this is that the passengers on the hijacked plane do not cheer for the terrorist. But in the Republican Party, the hijacker is the most popular person on the plane. Trump and Trumpism dominate the Republican Party because he represents what the Republican Party wants to be. There is no “normal” for the party to return to. It is an autocratic movement, not a traditional American political party. To believe this movement cannot win and end democracy as we know it would be as dangerously naive as thinking that the Donald Trump who announced his candidacy in 2015 with 3% of support within the party could never be elected president.
As The GOP Candidates uniformly attack Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian money that had been held in a South Korean bank , No One Mentions Trump's Dangerous Intel Leak About A Secret Israeli Intelligence Operation Republicans are piling on Joe Biden about a prisoner swap with Iran and the release of $6 billion of Iran’s money, but they won’t talk about Trump’s 2017 Oval Office leak. Israeli intelligence officials were incensed upon learning of the leak because, given Russia’s close ties to Iran and Syria, they had to assume that their local source for the information had been compromised and possibly killed, according to Israeli press accounts at the time. “If indeed Trump, out of innocence or ignorance, leaked information to the Russians, then there is a real danger to sources that it took years to acquire, and to our working methods,” an Israeli intelligence source told journalist Ronen Bergman. Shabtai Shavit, who led the Mossad intelligence agency in the 1990s, told the Times of Israel: “If tomorrow I were asked to pass information to the CIA, I would do everything I could to not pass it to them. Or I would first protect myself and only then give it, and what I’d give would be totally neutered.” Despite this, not one of the candidates running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has criticized Trump for his lack of discretion, even as they uniformly attack Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian money that had been held in a South Korean bank. Their attacks link that decision with the assault on Israel by the militant group Hamas.
