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The state of the republican party

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by NewRoxFan, Feb 21, 2021.

  1. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    I thought this was about Margorie Taylor Greene when I read that sentence.
     
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  2. ROCKSS

    ROCKSS Contributing Member

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    Dam, that's about as stark and honest of a response as I have seen
     
  3. ROCKSS

    ROCKSS Contributing Member

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    trump speaks just like a dictator..............agree with me or I shall banish you forever!!
     
  4. peleincubus

    peleincubus Member

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    I’m happy that the world will soon move past the generation of Trump and Biden. I mean that in mostly terms of politics not the entire generation as a whole. 20 something year olds can see right through this fake crap that throw out there on the regular.
     
  5. Nook

    Nook Member

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    What I suspect would happen over a 10-25 year span is well educated upper middle class Americans looking for employment and residency in places like Australia, New Zealand, UK and possibly Germany..... the super wealthy in the short term would remain in America and the existing lower middle class and poor would have no avenue to leave. I agree that minorities that are well educated will be more likely to begin leaving.

    We are already seeing it with younger, well educated white's in their 20's.... they are looking for areas outside the USA.

    It's all a shame because it doesn't have to be this way, and it is shameful.
     
  6. Astrodome

    Astrodome Member
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    Nikki Haley '24
     
  7. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    LOL... and the battle continues...

     
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  8. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    I guess we can expect another "statement" from trump soon...



    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lisa...aign-2022-trump_n_61dc6dcde4b0bb04a6486080?ol
     
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  9. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I'm not so sure about this. There are many 20 somethings and relatively young people who are as deep into fake crap as those older. Consider that Madison Cawthorn is only 26. Lauren Boebert is only 35. Matt Gaetz is 39. Many of those who stormed the Capitol were in the 20's and 30's. While generationally Trumpism skews older there are plenty of Millenials and even Gen Z who are fully behind it.
     
  10. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I used to think that demographically Trumpism was doomed but I'm not so sure about that. While the younger generation, non whites, and immigrants overall don't favor Trumpism there still are enough support among those groups to keep Trumpism going and elect Trumpist candidates. As we should well know it's not a matter of winning the majority but winning enough key races.
     
  11. Reeko

    Reeko Member

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    Jonathan Isaac has a book deal with the Daily Wire…he and Enes Kanter are setting themselves up to be used as props after their careers are done so they can continue to make money
     
  12. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    Why would populism die when the **** that broke 2008 with all of its consequences are still alive and breathing today?

    Maybe we can hand out some stock grants and call it a day.
     
  13. deb4rockets

    deb4rockets Contributing Member
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    Excerpts from an editorial today in the Houston Chronical about the lying narcissist who Republicans still want to run again.

    EDITORIAL

    For Trump, the lust to win has no limits

    In the mind of our former president, the lust to win — to stay relevant, to maintain power, to escape oblivion at all costs — has no limits, no reason and is not confined to any realm of possibility.

    In the hearts of the millions of Americans who came to believe in him, the immaculate fantasy Trump has spun — of himself, of this country, of all who follow him — has proven irresistible. And also, impervious to the tedium of facts, logic and a raft of court rulings documenting Trump’s very real failure to win reelection in November 2020.

    We’ve spoken many times on these pages about the dangers of a president whose ego, whose fidelity to his own interests, seems to supersede any loyalties to the interests of this country.


    I couldn't have said it better. The last thing this country needs is a man like Trump taking it to a new level to seek the power he so desperately lusts for. In his twisted mind, he has never lost, and never will. It's impossible for someone so severely narcissistic to ever admit he lost, to ever admit a mistake, or to ever admit he is wrong about anything. There is nothing he won't do to seek power again, and voting for a man so obsessed with that power is scary.

    There have to be conservatives out there who realize this. There have to be conservatives who are honest, hard working Americans that believe in truth, integrity, and democracy. Trump is not the man for the Republican Party my friends. He already has the party doing his dirty work projecting his lies and deceit, and bowing at his feet. It's sick, sad, and scary.

     
  14. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    Pressed on his election lies, former President Trump cuts NPR interview short
    Some Republican leaders are trying to move on from former President Donald Trump's failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election that he lost.

    "While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state," Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And if we simply look back and tell our people don't vote because there's cheating going on, then we're going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage."

    But Trump — who has endorsed dozens of candidates for the 2022 midterm elections and still holds by far the widest influence within the GOP — is trying hard not to let them.

    "No, I think it's an advantage, because otherwise they're going to do it again in '22 and '24, and Rounds is wrong on that. Totally wrong," Trump told NPR in an interview Tuesday, referring to his false and debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

    The interview was six years in the making. Trump and his team have repeatedly declined interviews with NPR until Tuesday, when he called in from his home in Florida. It was scheduled for 15 minutes, but lasted just over 9.

    After being pressed about his repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election, Trump abruptly ended the interview.

    Trump's mixed messages on getting vaccinated
    The interview began with the pandemic and vaccinations.

    Trump, whose administration oversaw the development of the COVID vaccines, recommended that people get vaccinated, but said he's firmly against mandating they do so.

    "[T]he mandate is really hurting our country," Trump claimed, adding, "A lot of Americans aren't standing for it, and it's hurting our country."

    He continued, "The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it's got to be individual, but I recommend taking them."

    The opposition to mandates is popular with Republicans, and the Supreme Court is currently weighing the Biden administration's vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers. But his comments come during the record omicron surge, as the unvaccinated are far more likely to be hospitalized or die from the disease, and as Republicans are far more likely to be unvaccinated.

    Epidemiologists and health experts warn that if more people don't get vaccinated and the virus continues to morph, it could prolong the pandemic — and delay any sense of getting back to normal.

    The former president said he wants to see therapeutics, used to treat the virus after someone is infected, produced and distributed more widely.

    Trump's firm grip on the Republican Party, but tenuous grasp on reality
    Trump is not just any former president.

    Even many members of his own party have blamed him for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but since then Trump has only tightened his grip on the GOP.

    He remains one of the most popular figures in the Republican Party and is considered the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, if he decides to run again.

    When he ran in 2016, Trump was seen as having a shoestring campaign, fighting an uphill battle with few allies among Republican elected leaders.

    Today, it's a different story. Trump's political organization has become a juggernaut. Not only are most Republican elected leaders falling in line, but he has also installed allies controlling many levers of political power across the country. In state after state, Trump allies are running local Republican parties, serving as state representatives and in charge of political action committees.

    It's a political army ready to be mobilized at his beck and call. What he says — what his message is to them — matters because they follow.


    To secure his power, he will do whatever he can to cast aside those who don't show fealty. That includes threats, bullying and intimidation, like badgering and name-calling.

    Referring to South Dakota's Rounds in a statement after he appeared on ABC, for example, Trump said Rounds "just went woke," called him a "jerk," "weak," "ineffective" and questioned whether he was "crazy or just stupid."

    He also called him a RINO, an acronym for an insult some conservatives reserve for more moderate Republicans they disagree with — Republicans In Name Only.

    In the interview with NPR, he partially blamed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for Rounds and other senators feeling as though they can speak out and say — correctly — that Trump lost the election.

    "Because Mitch McConnell is a loser," Trump said.

    Trump has called McConnell worse — and all because the Kentucky Republican has crossed Trump, blaming him for the insurrection on Jan. 6 and saying President Biden won, even if McConnell doesn't do so forcefully every day.

    It's par for the course for Trump, who has demanded unflinching loyalty — and chafes at truths he disagrees with, especially about him losing.


    https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072...interview-presidential-election-lies-vaccines
     
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  15. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    (continued)

    Won't accept losing an election he lost
    Many Republicans prefer to focus on Biden as this year's congressional elections approach. Trump is pressing candidates in a different direction.

    Josh Mandel, a pro-Trump Republican from Ohio, launched his campaign for U.S. Senate just weeks after Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.

    "I think over time we're gonna see studies come out that [show] evidence of widespread fraud," Mandel, a former state treasurer who is angling for Trump's endorsement, told WKYC-TV.

    In the year since Mandel made that prediction, the opposite has happened.

    Even more evidence shows a free and fair election.

    In one disputed state, Arizona, Trump allies held a widely criticized review of millions of ballots, but even Doug Logan, who led Cyber Ninjas, the firm that ran the review, couldn't find much.

    "The ballots that were provided to us to count in the Coliseum very accurately correlate with the official canvass numbers," Logan said.

    As he does with any information or person he doesn't like or disagrees with, Trump dismissed the findings in the NPR interview.

    'Lying or delusional'
    Trump repeated a number of false claims about voting systems in the U.S. in the interview, including that the discredited GOP-led ballot review in Arizona showed evidence of malfeasance — despite the fact that it also reaffirmed Biden's victory.

    Republican officials in Maricopa County, however, debunked the characterizations of Trump and his allies in a 93-page rebuttal issued last week.

    "The people who have spent the last year proclaiming our free and fair elections are rigged are lying or delusional," said Bill Gates, the GOP chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

    Asked why even Republicans in the state accepted the findings, Trump reverted to an old attack.

    "Because they're RINOs," he said, "and frankly, a lot of people are questioning that."

    Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County election official and now an elections expert at Democracy Fund, was presented by NPR with a number of Trump's claims about voting and noted that in the 14 months since the election, no proof of any of his claims has come to light.

    "It hasn't been presented in any of the courts. It hasn't been surfaced in any official election audits, not by the Department of Justice, not by the FBI," Patrick said. "Allegations of fraud hinge upon being able to produce actual instances of fraud — not merely thoughts, feelings or beliefs about it."

    To Republicans who know how elections work, the election has always been obvious.

    "The facts show that it was President Biden who won fair and square," said Trey Grayson, who used to run elections as the Republican secretary of state in Kentucky. "It wasn't rigged."

    He's thinking about those Republican T-shirts that said, "F--- your feelings."

    "And here we are looking at the 2020 election," Grayson said, "and we are the ones who are basing it on feelings, not on facts, not on the law."

    The Pennsylvania example
    Most Republican voters now say they feel the election was stolen, according to surveys. That gives Trump leverage with Republican candidates who want to win primaries this year.

    In Pennsylvania, numerous Republicans are running for governor and senator. They've made lots of moves to prove their fealty to the former president. One candidate for governor is Bill McSwain, who happened to be a U.S. attorney during the 2020 election.

    "Bill McSwain left office without announcing any investigations or outcome of investigations for the 2020 election in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania," said Chris Brennan, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has covered his story.

    But then McSwain prepared to run for office. Last summer, he produced a letter for Trump, appealing for his support — and implying that he was blocked somehow from investigating unspecified claims of fraud.

    "But it doesn't actually say that," Brennan said. "So even he, when you carefully read it, does not claim that he was blocked from investigating fraud."

    Trump nonetheless made the letter public, and gave his own interpretation at multiple rallies.

    "We have a U.S. attorney in Philadelphia that says he wasn't allowed to go and check," Trump said at a rally in Florida.

    Grayson has watched similar stories unfold in multiple states.

    "I think he's been really active in moving 2022 candidates toward his point of view," Grayson said. "The way I look at it is, I can't imagine that the party on its own would.
     
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  16. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    (continued)
    be pushing this narrative if he weren't pushing it."

    Repeatedly in the interview, Trump presses his party to adhere to his point of view and false claims, and he adapts his arguments to account for more and more proof that he lost. That's a typical strategy among purveyors of disinformation and misinformation.

    Trump did correctly note in the interview that he received more votes than any sitting president ever. But his broader point that that is somehow evidence that he won in 2020 is nonsensical, said Patrick, seeing as the election saw record turnout.

    "Each election compares those candidates facing off in that election — it doesn't matter how the numbers compare to the last election," Patrick said. "It doesn't matter how many points a team scored the last game or how many times Alabama has won the national championship. What matters is who has the most points or votes at the end of the game."

    For the record, the University of Georgia won the college football national championship Monday, defeating Alabama, 33-18. And Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump in the popular vote in 2020, and got 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232.

    Repeated losses in the independent judiciary
    Trump doesn't have a case of widespread fraud.

    He and his lawyers tried to prove that he did — and they failed. Many judges, including some appointed by him, ruled that way in dozens of cases.

    Here's a section of the interview on this:

    NPR'S STEVE INSKEEP: Let me read you some short quotes. The first is by one of the judges, one of the 10 judges you appointed, who ruled on this. And there were many judges, but 10 who you appointed. Brett Ludwig, U.S. District Court in Wisconsin, who was nominated by you in 2020. He's on the bench and he says, quote, "This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits."

    Another quote, Kory Langhofer, your own campaign attorney in Arizona, Nov. 12, 2020, quote, "We are not alleging fraud in this lawsuit. We are not alleging anyone stealing the election." And also Rudy Giuliani, your lawyer, Nov. 18, 2020, in Pennsylvania, quote, "This is not a fraud case." Your own lawyers had no evidence of fraud, they said in court they had no evidence of fraud, and the judges ruled against you every time on the merits.

    TRUMP: It was too early to ask for fraud and to talk about fraud. Rudy said that, because of the fact it was very early with the — because that was obviously at a very, very — that was a long time ago. The things that have found out have more than bore out what people thought and what people felt and what people found.

    When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don't know what his game is, but I will just say this: You look at the findings. You look at the number of votes. Go into Detroit and just ask yourself, is it true that there are more votes than there are voters? Look at Pennsylvania. Look at Philadelphia. Is it true that there were far more votes than there were voters?

    INSKEEP: It is not true that there were far more votes than voters. There was an early count. I've noticed you've talked about this in rallies and you've said, reportedly, this is true. I think even you know that that was an early report that was corrected later.

    TRUMP: Well, you take a look at it. You take a look at Detroit. In fact, they even had a hard time getting people to sign off on it because it was so out of balance. They called it out of balance. So you take a look at it. You know the real truth, Steve, and this election was a rigged election.

    When pressed, it was excuse after excuse — it was "too early" to claim fraud, his attorney was no good, things just seem suspicious.

    But it all comes back to the same place: He has no evidence of widespread fraud that caused him to lose the election.

    The tone of the interview changed. Trump then hurried off the phone, as he was starting to be asked about the attack on the Capitol, inspired by election lies.

    A judge is considering whether Trump can be held liable for his actions in court.

    If he can be, then Trump or his lawyers would someday have to answer the questions he didn't answer before he cut short his conversation with NPR.

    Audio for this story was produced and edited by Taylor Haney, Lilly Quiroz, Amra Pasic and H.J. Mai.

    https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072...interview-presidential-election-lies-vaccines
     
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  17. IBTL

    IBTL Member

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    SNOWFLAKE ALERT!!

    Dems worried about 2024 ..and leading gop candidate can't make it past 9 minutes of an interview.

    The gop leading candidate will continue to yell clouds and sounds like he needs a straight jacket.
    To see him flame like this is pathetic and talk about cognitive decline!
    Sad!!

    And just like I voted for biden I would vote for anything with a pulse over damaged goods orange. Repugs still don't get it lol
     
  18. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    I think the big takeaway here is that the Republican platform for 2024 that the party will be forced to run on is "2020 was Stolen." That's it. That will be the central message and policy position. There's just no way it wont be IF Republicans allow this idiot to be their candidate which... we all know they will be.
     
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  19. No Worries

    No Worries Contributing Member

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  20. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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