DC Unrest Megathread

[Virginiá]

I want to say that if Republican party leaders are smart, they would remove Trump via impeachment to permanently keep him from screwing with the party anymore, but the fact is, the GOP base has completely lost their sanity and removing the person they worship more than God himself would probably hurt the party noticeably more than just letting him continue taking a wrecking ball to the country for 2 more weeks.

Let's face facts here, Trump didn't storm the Capitol himself, his ignorant horde of supporters did, because Trump encouraged them and spent >2 months claiming without proof that the election was "stolen" from him, and virtually the entire Republican Party base believed him, with, again, zero proof whatsoever, and tried to violently end the electoral vote certification based on this.

If Republicans want to fix their party, they should burn it to the ground and start from scratch.

[Virginiá]

Burning it to the ground, which is certainly the move at this point, IS impeaching Donald Trump and IS what would hurt the party the least, even in the short term.

I don't know what the sources were, but I remember seeing that after the Depression losses and Watergate, there was actual talk in the GOP of starting over/rebranding under a different name at least. Granted, it didn't happen, but that is more of a controlled demo of a party that borders on institution in this country. Impeachment/removal is like an uncontrolled demolition that blows chunks everywhere and still leaves a rump of a building/party left, splitting their vote into some 3rd party, leaving masses of voters disillusioned from elections, and so on. I feel like that would cause more long-term problems because you still have the old diehard Republicans who chose to stay and keep that party in Trump's corner.

It's all pointless fantasy talk anyway. The GOP has a massive amount of political power up and downballot in this country, and once the Congresspeople making these bold considerations settle down and think about it, they'll probably just decide to wait the rest of his presidency out. The whole reason we're even at this point in the first place is because the GOP is filled top-to-bottom with spineless hacks who just want power at any cost. At the end of the day, this is just one of those costs and most will happily pay it, even if they might do so with a frown.

(I'll leave my comments at that since I don't want to derail the thread)

[Virginiá]

It'd be lovely to be able to say that the Capitol Police merely tried to exercise restraint and appeasement to avoid bloodshed in a completely non-biased manner, but with what we've seen from police over the years (and more recently), it's virtually impossible to think that without laughing out loud. Especially considering reports of police taking selfies with the insurrectionists.

[Virginiá]

The video:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1347334804052844550

This is the moment Donald Trump became President of the United States

[Virginiá]

One of the frustrating things about all of this is it could have been avoided right from the start if Republicans had just picked basically any other candidate, in what was a large primary with lots of acceptable choices (relatively speaking).

Instead, they opted for the biggest loudmouth on stage, who despite having a very long and storied history of lying, scamming and disloyalty, earned enough votes to be nominated because people liked that he didn't talk like a regular politician. Guess what, those other pesky things like ethics, decent behavior and critical thinking actually matter when choosing leaders.

So for the love of god Republicans, next time have some decency and don't put the country through this kind of bs again.

[Virginiá]

The fact that Trump has not tweeted a message of sympathy and condemnation for the killing of Sicknick is the most disgusting thing he has ever done. He literally does not care his supporter beat a cop to death, despite his constant professions of support for the police.

That's because Trump has long been very hesitant to ever condemn any of his supporters in any meaningful way. His "support" for the police is paper-thin, like his support and loyalty for everything else except himself. It only exists so long as it serves his own interests.

[Virginiá]

Hard to feel that great about people like Murkowski turning on him considering it's literally a couple weeks before he is leaving office anyway. If this happened a year ago, I think we'd be seeing far less dissent in the GOP ranks.

When dissent like this actually mattered, all these people were nowhere to be found or so much less forceful in their denunciations and actions that they might as well have done nothing at all.

[Virginiá]

CC: Murkowski party switch watch (or indie caucusing with Democrats)

https://twitter.com/AK_OK/status/1347656319486943234

A lot easier for her to thread that needle now that Alaska has a top 4 RCV system in place for 2022.

[Virginiá]

At this point, why does it matter if the GOP is coddling or not coddling Trump?  They have no power anymore.  Thanks Ossoff.

The GOP has more actionable and durable power in the US and has for some time. They control the federal judiciary and have a comfortable majority on SCOTUS, the country's real policy-making engine (hence why they care so much about it), and total control in nearly a majority of states. Probably will have a lot more post-2022. And the entire election system is biased in favor of their party by so much that they don't even need majority support to cling to power.

The amount of power they have is scary given the direction they've been heading in the past 10 years. And quite frankly, the Democratic Party as it exists right now is ill-equipped to fight back, if it even had the Congressional majorities they would need to do so. That's the problem of being the party of good government. They aren't willing to do what it takes to push back against a party whose primary reason for existing right now is to consolidate as much power in their hands by almost any means necessary. If they were, the filibuster would be gone Jan 21st and we'd be looking at a larger SCOTUS, several new states, HR1 & a new VRA, just to start. Instead, we'd be very lucky to see to DC statehood, although I'm happy it's at least a theoretical option. It wasn't before January. It's something, I guess.

[Virginiá]

Going through the social media of rightwingers (including family and community members), none of these people have learned their lessons. They are absolutely hysterical right now, believing a dictatorship of The Left is imminent and we'll be a socialist/communist/Nazi country within a week and a half. A guy who previously was a member of my local Democratic Party (i'm not friends with him, but he popped up in the comments of a mutual friend) and is a police officer has been posting almost nonstop for the past 24 hours the most insane right-wing stuff about how the downfall of America is imminent and we're going to become a totalitarian state.

These people are in full-on psycho mode. They are 100% convinced that the End Times are here or whatever and there is a massive conspiracy against them happening right now. The violence definitely isn't over. I'm genuinely worried about what will happen next week.

What is so profoundly irritating about this is that they are completely at fault for causing this in the first place. They cheered on as Donald Trump exhausted every single avenue available to him to overturn a free and fair election he decidedly lost. They all provided justification after justification for his actions despite him providing zero evidence to back up his claims. And this all culminated in them literally storming the Capitol to enact the result they wanted by force after they failed to achieve it by democratic means.

I live in a pretty conservative area and I've heard a few similarly apocalyptic visions of the future, and a big part of me wishes they would just have some sort of epiphany and see that the people that actually won the election are looking at them and their behavior and thinking similar things. I mean, we had no idea what that mob was trying to do, or if Trump has plans to keep doing his thing. When you storm the seat of government when they are certifying the results, in an era where their party has increasingly distanced itself from democracy (quite explicitly in some cases), people should be forgiven if they get a strong impression that the free society they knew is on the verge of falling apart. So does it not make sense that this society is going to recoil and react strongly against the people they believe to be agitating for the violent overthrow of a presidential election?

And yet, here we are, with conservatives once again seemingly unable to see this through any other lens other than them being the persecuted ones, even as they are beating the crap out of capitol police as they force their way inside, and stirring up violent mobs on their "free speech" fever swamp websites.