GA GOP Officially Tired of Winning
The White House from Washington, DC [Public domain]
This morning Georgia citizens awake to find that it’s safe to watch the local news again without being inundated by political ads. There are still votes to be counted but as of this writing, it appears that the GA GOP has performed a task that was unthinkable just a few months ago: they lost not one, but TWO Senate seats. Pastor Raphael Warnock has been declared the winner in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Johnny Isakson’s retirement. And Jon Ossoff has a lead over incumbent Senator David Perdue. Given that the remaining votes are in heavily Democratic areas, it is unlikely that Perdue can make up the deficit. There are mumblings about “too close to call” and “triggering a recount,” but for Republicans it’s all over but the shouting. And there WILL BE shouting.
Analysts will be combing through the results longer than Georgia landfills will be combing through discarded campaign flyers, but the deciding factor is already clear: Republicans did not turn out for this runoff election. Apparently, claiming that the LAST election was stolen and that the Democrats manufactured votes did not motivate the base to turn out for another election. Go figure. This is a reversal from the LAST time we had a Senate runoff in 2008. Back then, minority voters who turned out in droves for Obama didn’t show up for the runoff and Saxby Chambliss won with 57% of the vote. This time, Republican voters in rural areas that set record levels for Donald Trump decided that supporting his two toadies in the Senate wasn’t worth the gas money to the polls.
The blame and finger pointing will commence soon. Clearly, the deciding factor was Trump himself, because he’s been the largest motivating factor in our society since he descended the golden escalator in 2015. The GA GOP has been in a literal no win position ever since. Denounce Trump and his supporters stay home, and they lose. Support Trump and they drive away principled conservatives and moderate swing voters, and they lose anyway. Republicans have spent the last 2 months humoring Trump with his ridiculous claims of a stolen election to keep him on board until this Senate runoff was over. But that backfired spectacularly. The state party believed that the key to victory was to keep dragging Trump out for big rallies in rural areas to fire up his base. And Trump has gladly complied. Why would he pass up the opportunity to grandstand in front of adoring crowds again? But each time he came, he brought more headaches for Republicans. He attacked the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State – all of whom have publicly supported him. He’s made threats and hurled insults and quite frankly, Georgia voters are just sick of it. His continuing presence just motivated the Democrats to keep fighting. And it cost Republicans everything. Critics can’t claim that the two candidates didn’t support Trump hard enough. Perdue has been one of his biggest backers in the Senate. And Loeffler had announced at the last campaign rally with the president Monday night that she would object to certification of Georgia’s electoral votes in today’s Senate hearing. (No word from Loeffler if she still intends to show up and perform her last act of servitude.)
Democrats are busy high fiving each other this morning, but they did not WIN these elections. Republicans lost them. All they had to do was get the same voters who showed up in November to come back again and they failed. But credit to the Democrats for doing the hard work: knocking on doors, making calls, getting people rides to the polls. Republicans have sneered at the whole “Did you make a plan to vote?” mantra. Who needs a plan to vote? You just go do it! And Democrats did in record numbers. Republicans stayed home. Republicans have ridiculed Stacey Abrams for the last 2 years for claiming that she won the 2018 Gubernatorial race, but she hasn’t been the one holding rallies and making unsubstantiated claims on Twitter. She’s been out registering voters and building a campaign machine. One that worked better than her critics anticipated. I am honestly not surprised that Democrats were successful here in Georgia. I am stunned that they were successful in a runoff election with two extremely liberal candidates who have never held elected office before.
Another big contrast in the campaigns has been the tone. Democrats were cheerful and upbeat. Warnock ran delightful TV ads showing himself walking the dogs. Campaign workers were upbeat and polite even when insulted by text. Compare that with the Republicans campaign message that DEMOCRATS ARE COMING TO GEORGIA TO TAKE THE SENATE AND TRANSFORM AMERICA AND LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WILL BE OVER! They say candidates run negative campaigns because they work. Until they don’t. Hopefully, there’s a lesson in there for both parties. Republicans made it clear that everything was at stake for not just Georgia but the entire nation. And they still lost.
So, the Republican Civil War starts today. Lines will be drawn between the Trumpist and what’s left of the reality-based GOP. There will be blood. The only question is: will there be anything left of the former Grand Old Party for the winning side to control?
“Democrats were cheerful and upbeat.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVIeqjACvUsReport
And, nevertheless, there is a pic of Loeffler and with Chester Doles, a former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. In 1993, Doles nearly beat a Black man to death. In 2017, he marched in Charlottesville.
She might not have looked for him, but definitely he looked for herReport
A picture! In a statewide campaign, you only take a couple of those. Only your closest advisors, typically.Report
This was a fascinating election and an exquisite surprise. I had resigned myself to GOP control of the Senate so the endorphins today are finger licking good. I know, now, how sports fans feel.
I’m sure there’ll be a million autopsies but what stood out for me is that the GOP performs even worse without Trump on the ballot than they do with him on it. 2018 was a terrible showing by the GOP and Trump wasn’t on the ballot; now these special elections are an astonishing wipe out and Trump isn’t on the ballot. It suggests to me that the GOP is not in a good place even once Trump leaves the building; even if he doesn’t run again. It looks to me like a lot of those voters despise their own party- it’s only a question as to if they despise the Dems enough to vote against them or if their animus against Dems is low enough for them to not bother voting at all.
I’m not going to comment on the intra Democratic considerations- defeat is an orphan but victory has a million parents. Every segment of the left’s coalition (including my own market/moderate liberal tribe) will be rushing to claim credit for this win. I think the only people who can unambiguously be given credit are, first and foremost, the candidates themselves along with Stacy Abrams and finally possibly Joe Biden.Report
The GOP gave up winning political fights on the merits decades ago. This just reinforces that. As the nation diversifies, what passes for GOP ideology and policy is not going to carry the day, even with social or economic conservatives. The GOP cravenly chose power over governance, and it finally, if meekly, bit them in the ass.
That said, I have zero expectation that Democrats will go bold on ideas or legislation. Mr. Biden is a neoliberal centerist, which is to say he’s well left of the GOP currently but well right of anything liberal. He’ still going to prefer policies that support business over labor, but only in a nicer wrapper. Absent a whole lot of pressure from the AOC wing of the House, and Sanders an Warren in the senate I doubt he’ll even raise taxes.
And we still have 74 million Americans who can’t stand effective functional democracy to contend with.
The work is only just beginning, but at least now we can do it.
Maybe.Report
I’d argue that this election was a pretty stern repudiation of the “bold Democratic lefty ideals or legislation” agenda. Then again, I would being a market/moderate liberal myself. Still, no radical or even militant lefties have won in any district except ones where a potted plant would win if it was the Democratic nominee. So I’d say the bold radical left has some proving to do before Biden or anyone in the Democratic coalition owes them anything.Report
Single payer would be bold in this context (and save $3Trilloion in healthcare costs over 10 years).
Modernizing voting would be bold in this context (including universal mail in ballots and a national holiday).
Energy policy that acknowledges that markets killed off coal and are killing off oil would be bold in this context (https://www.ecowatch.com/bp-green-energy-investment-2646892538.html).
Revamping unemployment insurance and state systems so it doesn’t take 6 months to get new benefits would be bold in this context.
Actually taxing Americans progressively to fund the government we seem to want would be bold in this context.
permanently raising the federal minimum wage and indexing it to inflation would be bold in this context.
Redistricting based on a full count of all persons in the US would be bold in this context.
Which of those are so radically lefty they won’t pass?Report
Suggestions 1, 5, and 7 result in loss of the House in 2022, maybe worse. Others might be worth exploring as part of Covid response. Note those are the ones around bolstering existing systems, not using foreigners illegally in the country to undermine the electoral process or blowing up a massive load bearing column of the economy and support system people have and are used to.Report
Considering Manchin is the deciding vote in the Senate and the filibuster ain’t going anywhere the bleak reality is that it’s very likely that none of those items can pass into law but I’ll happily opine on their odds of passing and whether even seriously proposing them would help or hurt the Democratic party.
Going in order:
Single Payer- No chance in heck of passing and proposing it would hurt the Dems. Every time you get to the actual, real price tag of single payer and the actual reality of eliminating insurance the voters react with revulsion. It couldn’t even carry the day in the Democratic Primary, why on earth would you think it’d be a winning thing to push now?
Energy Policy that acknowledges Coal is cooked? Probably the a plausible one to pass, especially since it could likely be enacted administratively in the EPA. As long as it’s presented either dispassionately or ideally compassionately towards coal workers/regions it could be a mild positive for voters but it would require serious political finesse and there’re a LOT of landmines in the politics of it. Much better to quietly do it administratively than trumpeting it loudly- that would bring the risk in line with the rewards.
Tax reform. The one constant north star in the degraded GOP that exists today is that they’ll go to the matt to protect their plutocratic paymasters. On the other hand, you can do a lot on taxes through reconciliation. The politics of taxes is a real pickle. You can go after the super wealthy and in that case you won’t raise much money or you can go after the top quintile and then you’re not only damping the economy on the heels of the COVID-19 recession but you’re also nailing the Democrats own constituency right in the pocketbook. Very high risk politically but it could, if managed correctly, play well with voters.
The GOP would fight like hades against minimum wage changes but it’d depend heavily on how much you’re proposing to raise it to. Politically it is potentially a winner but with a huge freighted risk- if you set the same minimum wage from urban San Francisco to rural Alabama everything we know about economics says you’re going to annihilate a lot of jobs or create bigger black market for labor which could really hurt you politically. Depends on the deets.
If I recall correctly districting is determined on the state level for the most part or constitutionally, both of which are out of reach for Congress. So I’d say this one is non-sequitur.
Voting reform including a voting day holiday? I personally enormously favor this policy and the GOP knows it’s pure poison for them electorally. Alas they’ll filibuster unrelentingly on this one. On the plus side I see no political downside on this policy so I hope it’s one of the first things Pelosi, Biden and Schumer take a run at. That said I don’t know if I’d describe voting reform as being even remotely radical or lefty. If you add in making DC and Puerto Rico states then it’s lefty by but by itself it’s pretty damned centrist.Report
Energy Policy that acknowledges Coal is cooked? Probably the a plausible one to pass, especially since it could likely be enacted administratively in the EPA.
The big question for that is what happens when an EPA rule regulating CO2 is challenged in the courts again. The lineup of the SCOTUS has changed substantially since Massachusetts v. EPA. Kennedy, who was the swing vote, and Ginsberg, who was part of the majority, are gone. The new lineup appears much more antagonistic towards regulation in general. If Massachusetts is reversed, the Clean Air Act is going to have to be revised.Report
I read something earlier today: Running Trump traded a lot of middle-class educated conservative women, and a slightly lesser amount of men…for poorer less-educated men.
And that tradeoff was a really bad idea. Not only did it not help Republicans at all _for that election_ (It mostly came out even), but the second of those people are much less likely to vote.
In fact, the poorer you are, the less likely you are to vote, period, simply because it’s _harder_ to vote. (And Republicans have spent decades making sure of that.) This is why Republicans win special elections and state elections and stuff like that…
…until they don’t, because they traded away the suburbs. They lost them. I know it doesn’t look like it, Republicans still hold a commanding lead there, and mostly they didn’t switch to Democrats, but…if 5% of the suburban Republicans wander away and don’t bother showing up at the ballot box, you get crazy things like the Democrats winning GA Senate seats, and Georgia turning blue about 5 years before it should based on demographics.
There was a very specific sort of suburban Republican voter that the Republicans had. That sort of voter had a very specified conception of themselves….not-racists-but-hand-up-instead-of-handout, pro-border-security-but-still-not-racist, Christian-values-by-which-they-mostly-mean-not-sex, thinks-social-security-shouldn’t-be-cut-but-has-deluded-themselves-that-the-Republican-won’t, pro-business-by-which-they-think-they-mean-small-business-but-don’t, okay-with-gay-people-as-long-as-schools-aren’t-pushing-it, etc. Like, there’s this whole framework. There are dozens of names for them, and a few varients, but they were the _actual_ Republican base.
And Trump blew it up to raise the turnout for loudmouth overt racists. Or, not even ‘it’…just a very small fraction of it. 5%-10%. But…the GOP couldn’t lose those people. They were the most reliable Republican voters.
I don’t know if they’re gone for good or not, but, in a lot of places…it doesn’t really matter. Like in Georgia, by the time they come back…the demographics will have already shifted.
Trump destroys literally everything he touches.Report
Was it NRO? I think I read something along those lines there.
This is a perfect opportunity for me to congradulate you on Georgia, incidentally, by my recollection you have been absolutely 100% correct on your predictions regarding the Peach State.
That reminds me, have we done an opening of our predictions capsule for the elections yet? I am worried I missed it.
As for the moderate suburban Republican vote- I agree with you that Trump definitely repelled them- especially the women voters- but I’m nowhere near confident enough to say the disaffection is permanent. That said Biden has a serious opportunity to prove something now and the dominoes are lined up for him to do so: A vaccine is available for Covid, there’s a lot of pent up demand, foreign relations would be improved enormously by simply reverting to the mean, national security can be a slam dunk as long as he simply doesn’t get into a war. It’s set up that by simply not doing anything idiotic Biden could preside over a boom term which is more than Obama got.Report
I don’t think I’ve been there today, but…who knows. I think a lot of people are saying things like this.
As I’ve been pointing out even _pre-Trump_: The Republican party has been making bad tradeoffs for almost three decades at this point, where it lets extremists screw up their voting blocs.
It started with Fox News and Gingrich yelling about RINOs in the mid-90s and impeaching Clinton, and just continued onward. I know we like to think Trump was some unique thing, but…honestly, he wasn’t, at least not in that way. The party keeps ending up in places it absolutely should not be due to Republican voters making very bad primary decisions. (Even Bush wasn’t that great a decision, but it was a poor one in other ways, not extremism.)
Like, what they started several decades ago cost them Hispanics, which is so astonishingly stupid it’s almost inconceivable whe looking at the future of this country. As is the fact they didn’t learn their lesson from alienating Black voters…Alienating entire demographic groups means They. Don’t. Ever. Come. Back. They tried to correct this last thing in the 00s, but…then Trump.
And they just keep doing this, doubling down on stupid positions. They are unable to moderate anything, and at this point, it has basically destroyed their party. It wasn’t _Trump_. Trump was just a slight fast-forward. They seriously needed to stop pulling to the right. (And I’m not sure the NRO has any ground to complain about the actions of theres here.)
I don’t say that as someone who wants the country to move to the left…I mean, I do want that, but I mean, just for sheer practical reasons, the Republican party should have swerved a bit to the left. But could not.
This is ironic, considering that the _Democratic_ Party is the one worried about electability. But…’electability’ on the GOP side isn’t really the problem…those people _do_ win general elections, because the election process is completely gerrymandered.
Honestly, I think we’re seeing the fundamental problem of a party that never has to course-correct because they have managed to rig the system so badly they win regardless of their positions.
The problem is a lot of them _shouldn’t_ have won, and shouldn’t have won from the point of the GOP as their winning ultimately rebounded on the GOP in negative ways.
Honestly, it’s just me being wildly optimistic so I don’t cry.Report
An interesting tweet from Tapper:
If he’s not making it up, then expect the Republicans to not notice that they’re in the wilderness.Report
If that operative describes the Trump term as “fiscal austerity” I don’t think he’s coherent enough to to comment on Jake Tappers shoes. Tapper would be better off citing the drunk hobo on the corner who says his shoes were stolen by elves.Report
I read that as not having the Oxford comma in a deliberate attempt to make “and” work with the last two.
Like, if I were to use parens, it would be “Ending (neoconservatism and fiscal austerity)”.
That’s the only way that that sentence even makes sense.Report
Oh you’re right. How great that the GOP has ended what it created and now is bringing back. /sarc
*edit* Oh.. on further thought though there is something profound there. The check debate was one of the first times in the last 4 years that older school GOP fiscal austerity nostrums were trotted out again- and the moment they came out the voters handed Mitch his hat and penalized the GOP by two senate seats. Wow.Report
I think that austerity can work.
It just can’t work with “we need to bail out the banks!” and “we need to bail out the industries so they can pay bonuses to execs while they lay off everybody on the floor!” and “there is no fat in the budget to cut!”
If all austerity means is “bailouts for me but not for thee”, then, yeah. Austerity is dead, dead, dead.
Good riddance.Report
I…also thought that.
No kidding, I seriously thought he was praising the GOP for ending fiscal austerity. And it wasn’t until North’s comment that I reread it and realized what was really being said.Report
If they’re defining “austerity” as “giving money to Joel Osteen but not to Joel Osteen’s congregants”, then… yeah? I guess refusing to send out $2000 checks is austerity?
But they are the only people in the argument using that definition of Austerity.
If they pivot back to a Tom Delay-esque position that there is No Fat In The Budget To Cut, they’re either insane or have their heads so far up their own butts that they’re double ouroboroses.
Or on the take, I guess.Report
I am personally pleased with the result: my thing is climate change and our energy sources, and it will be possible to start reversing some of the things done under Trump and maybe move on. The westerner part of me does feel somewhat slighted. US Democratic Senator results from 2018 and 2020: Interior West, +4; rest of the country, -2.Report
I gotta say, this surprised the hell out of me. Now the Dems have to show the doubters they know what they’re doing.Report
Something I’m going to keep my eye open for:
“Well, we couldn’t do X because of the Republicans. That’s why we had to do Y.”
(Where Y includes bombing the Middle East.)Report
Manchin’s gotta be licking his chops.Report
Also, will having had supported Trump be a help or hindrance for those who have to run in 2022?Report
I don’t know.
Half of me is saying that Republicans will officially pivot to This Never Happened for 2016-2020. Any attempt to bring it up will get a huge backlash of Whatabout and we enter the eternal spring of 2015. Do you think it’ll be Jeb? Or do you think it’ll be Rubio?
The other half thinks that begun this clone war has. Robots versus Clones. And all Democrats will need to do is hold their breath and not talk that much and the Republicans will do all of the “Vote Blue!” heavy lifting themselves.Report
I think we will enter a state of quantum superposition where both those things are happening at once, depending on how the talking heads want to spin things each week.
The second will be the most common observation of events by outside observers.Report
Question: why would we see a Republican Civil War now? There’s nothing immediately on the table that they need to present a united front against, and there’s no need for a single voice. Typically, a party out of power goes voiceless for a while (maybe a year or so). There will be arguments, and some committees will write analyses of the election results, but those are more for airing grievances than for determining a future path. The most pressing policy matter, the distribution of the vaccines, has been an issue for the states; whatever happens, the governors are likely to remain important in the process. All told, I don’t see why any politician would see the need to try to resolve his party’s issues right now.Report
Under normal circumstances I’d agree with you Pinky. In this twilight of Trump I think matters are more fluid. If any anti-Trumpers wish to try and seize the party back from him this would be the time to try and that would precipitate one heck of a fight. To do that, though, they’d have to come up with an alternative ideology and that’s a tall order for the right currently.Report
Why would this be the time? Wouldn’t six months’ wait be better? And what does “seizing” the party mean if there’s no specific brass ring to claim?Report
Six months from now would be, in my mind, the same time period window we’re talking about now. At the moment the various party actors mantras are “If Trump wants to run again in 2024 he’s our nominee” and if anyone in the GOP wants to try and buck that idea I’d think that starting sooner than later would be necessary. That said the GOP faces the same problem that Clinton haters faced in 2009 after Obama won. If they wanted to start talking about someone other than Clinton having the nod in 2016 they would have needed to have started doing so around then (a little) and there would have been risks and costs to doing so.Report
Six months of nomination fights, legislative negotiations, vaccine distribution, sex scandals, money scandals, and the new issue that none of us expected to be talking about. As a practical matter, that’s not much different from saying “there will be no Republican Civil War”.Report
Eric Trump sez,
This. Is. The. Time.
https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1346657388934406144
“I will personally work to defeat every single Republican Senator / Congressman who doesn’t stand up against this fraud – they will be primaried in their next election and they will lose.”
Eric Trump, with the gloves off. Not just working, but PERSONALLY working to primary any who dare defy the will of Trump.Report
Kidding, right?Report
Eric Trump is the answer to a 2022 bar trivia question.Report
I dunno. Maybe I’m wrong. After all, Eric Trump just tweeted something.Report
No, you may be right about the Civil War within the Republican Party.
It’s just that I see the Trump children fading away to irrelevance (you know the thing where big 70’s bands reunite to play a gig at the State Fair? Something like that level of irrelevance).
(Caveat: Ivanka might, someday, get a job on one of the competitors to The View.)Report
McConnell seems to be noticing that things are not, in fact, slowing down.
Report
BTW, someone needs to write an article here about how the media is completely ignoring the violent street clashes in Washington, the unrest caused by extremists busing themselves in from out-of-town, and them trying to seize control of the US Capitol, with the police unable or unwilling to do anything.
We can call it ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’.
Oh, wait, I think we already had an article called that.
(Reposted where it belongs.)Report
If you want to write “Why We Need To Back The Blue”, I’ll put it up.Report
Oh, no, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m on the side of ‘protestors are allowed to use property damage if their cause is just and they cannot produce change other ways’.
I mean, this cause _isn’t_ just, unlike BLM, and is clearly very stupid, with morons convinced of very untruth things, but that’s the sort of shit you get when you allow that sort of misinformation to continue to happen.
But I’m condemning what is going on not because of what is going on…there _are_ some situations where using force to stop the vote of Congress would be acceptable…but because this very obviously is not one of those situations!
—
What _I_ want to see are the people who condemned _any_ sort of violence whatsoever showing up to condemn this and whatever political party supports it, or even supports vaguely the same things as it. Like they did for BLM…if a few people causing property damage tars that movement…Trumpism and the Republican party just got tarred with this.
Which…just became a lot worse.
Except, of course, that’s never the way it works. These sort of far right-wing extremists (Literally praised by the president.) never reflect on the party, whereas three people standing near BLM throwing Molotov cocktails proves the entire BLM movement is like this.Report
Well, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
There are a *LOT* of people yelling “CHANGE PARTNERS!” over this and I see a lot of BLM proponents arguing for police to start firing live rounds and DTOM afficionados saying, sotto voiced, “but a riot is the voice of the unheard”.
It’s two years until the next election. Arguably the most important election of our lifetimes.
We have to make sure that we achieve some measure of stability in those two years.Report
BTW, considering the Capitol police have been doing _literally nothing_ to control the situation, that they just let the protestors breach the barrier at the bottom of the steps and wander up to the front of the building and break windows and enter the building…
…I think we’ve pretty much proven what side of this the police are on. The things that everyone has always been saying, about how the police behave towards different sorts of protestors.Report
I am pretty sure that there will be now opportunities to discuss Police Reform in the coming months that many weren’t willing to have in the middle of the summer.Report
Oh, look, the BUILDING HAS BEEN BREACHED and Congress had to flee.Report
Trump is egging it on.
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Ooop, wait! Someone physically snatched the phone out of his hands!
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Let us all take a moment of silence for the death of the right wing nostrum that violent protests are the exclusive domain of the left in general and Black Lives Matter specifically. *bows head*Report
Nope, not dead when news outlets on the right are actively saying “Trump supporters are not violent, Antifa has infiltrated the protest and is responsible for all of the violence at the Capitol.” This was heard multiple times yesterday from people calling into C-SPAN. C-SPAN!!!Report
Correction: Apparently Congress is still there, and it is Pence who had to leave? Which…maybe Congress is in their respective chambers to stupidly debate Arizona? And Pence…wouldn’t be with either of them?
That’s a guess, I am not sure what is going on, obviously do not listen to me for updates, I have no information other people don’t have.
Update: …and MSNBC says the vote counting _is_ stopped. So even my correction was wrong. I don’t know.
On the plus side, this got a little too big for the media to just ignore it.Report
A couple of notes: While these protests are out of control, they don’t seem to be particularly _large_. I can see part of the lower-level of the Capitol steps, and people are just milling around in front of it.
I have no idea how many people are inside, of course. But honestly this crowd is maybe a thousand people, just as a random guess? It’s not a giant protest, it’s just _in the wrong place_….the Capitol steps/balcony and now partially inside the Capitol building.Report
Wonder why the Capitol police aren’t shooing them off?Report
They’re still not doing anything! What the hell! People are not allowed to be on the front of the Capitol building! Or the steps!
What the hell is this?!
I understand clearing the building can be hard, but march up to the damn steps, grab the lowest person on them, and remove them. Do it to the next person. Repeat until the outside of the building is clear.
Meanwhile, inside the building, from phone videos, police seem to get into _standoffs_ with completely unarmed people. Just sorta…try to talk them out of the building. Or run from them!
This is utterly goddamn incomprehensible that these are the same ‘police’ that feel completely free to spray tear gas at random people in the screet who do not disperse fast enough, or slam them to the ground.
But this people are White Republicans.
I have never seen such obvious blatant favoritism show to one group over another in my entire life. This is absurd. It is…incomprehensible . I don’t have any other words than that. This is not even ‘treating with kid gloves’, this is ‘not stopping an attempted overthrow of the government’.
Because, again, White Republicans.
Or, to put I another way: Fash knows fash.Report
BTW: The news media keeps calling this a ‘failure’ of the police.
Sure is weird how when the police ‘fail’ when dealing with white right-wing people, it’s by completely failing to constrain them, whereas when they ‘fail’ with black people and protestors of the police, it’s by…beating them and shooting them randomly.Report
Wonder why the Capitol police aren’t shooing them off?
Easy answer is … they’re white people protesting for other white people’s interests. I just saw a video of cops tasked with manning the barricade *removing* the barricade to let the protestors through. Hmmm, I don’t recall seeing that type of behavior during the George Floyd protests…Report
Also, North, to continue our conversation from the other day, if Pelosi were a real leader she’d file articles of impeachment against Trump tomorrow morning for inciting an insurrection against the US government.Report
“…in the wrong place…” is doing alot of work here.
“He didn’t shoot him… he just put his bullet in the wrong place.”
“He didn’t rape her… he just put his dick in the wrong place.”
“They didn’t storm the Capital… they just protested in the wrong place.”Report
Shit has, officially, gotten real:
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And Twitter blocked him for 12 hours. He’s gonna be gruuuumpy!Report
AOC is showing leadership. Golly!
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