What a bunch of fucking idiots:
House Republicans wrapped up impeachment hearings against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, on Thursday.... Republicans are moving ahead without evidence that Mr. Mayorkas has committed high crimes or misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment, effectively seeking to remove him for immigration policies they argue have imperiled the American public.
....The panel is proceeding at a breakneck pace, skipping efforts to subpoena any firsthand witnesses to testify to Mr. Mayorkas’s actions or support their assertion that he has intentionally endangered the country.
The Times reports that all 18 Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee are now on board with this inanity. Note that this is not just all the MAGA Republicans, it's all of them—including all the so-called moderates. They're not just idiots, they're cowards too.
"All the world's a stage..."
"They're not just idiots, they're cowards too"
Don't sell them short. They're also assholes.
right; cowards have a sense of shame, republicans believe their assholery has been blessed by god almighty
They’re so busy wasting their time conducting meritless impeachment hearings that they’ve hardly had time to stonewall the border security legislation being proposed by Biden and the Senate.
Well, it beats workin'.
Tweet from Clay Higgins:
>> Media: “Congressman Higgins, you filed Articles of Impeachment on DHS Secretary Mayorkas last year and your committee is now actually impeaching him, but what exactly would you do to secure the border, what’s your plan?”
Me: “My plan begins with F-35s and gets better.” <<
Just saying they are cowards and assholes isn’t enough. They are murderous depraved lunatics
No doubt this played well to the xits on Xitter and all the maganuts lost at sea. Big applause line! But even the most rudimentary thought of "do this, and then what happens?" and the fun'n'games are all over.
At least, for anybody willing to have even the most rudimentary thought. But it's all Revenge Comedy Nite with this crew, isn't it?
Two kinds of Republicans today, the MAGAt’s who are ignorant dangerous assholes, and the moderates who scared timid enablers for the MAGAt’s.
"Note that this is not just all the MAGA Republicans, it's all of them"
I have said those words until I'm tired of typing them or reading them. It is ALL OF THEM. There is no reason, no logic, no facts that will change them. RepubliQans will never be better people because they aren't better people. They are so rotten they are RepubliQans. The only solution - we have to OUTVOTE THEM - by a margin so big that their lying about fraud will even sound stupid to the MAGAs.
Well, my best friend is a very conservative Evangelical Christian. We don't talk about politics much, but he did volunteer to me that in both 2016 and 2020 he and his wife voted for 3rd party presidential candidates. They reasoned that no Republican could vote for Hillary/Biden, and no Christian could vote for Trump.
They are proof, to me at least, that *some* decent Republicans do still exist. Not nearly enough of them, but some.
Performance art hippy crap
Not to keep beating a familiar dead horse but “moderate” Republicans have no incentive to actually be moderate or to do moderate things. On the one hand, if a Republican “moderate” doesn’t kowtow to Trump and follow the hard right MAGA agenda, his or her political career is over because you can’t be the Republican nominee unless you win the primary and that’s difficult or impossible without the party’s MAGA base. That’s one important reason why Republicans can’t elect a governor in California. So, clearly, it’s essential to placate the MAGA cadres.
On the other hand, the Democratic Party’s leadership and consultant class is amazingly passive and ineffectual. They believe in a strong Republican Party and they tend to prefer to emphasize how effectively they are able to work together with them. Basically, Democrats only do well when the GOP does something that either antagonizes or terrifies a large number of people and cause them to vote Democratic.
So the entire incentive structure favors and greatly incentivizes “moderates” to follow the MAGA line, partly out of cowardice but also because they don’t really worry about the Democrats going after them.
Concur re the Permanent Washington Democrats, but I retain hope for the Biden WH. He so far has proven adept -- surprising people repeatedly -- at wrangling solutions that are good for the country AND make him look good WITHOUT going full Partisan Warrior. And that IMO is good for at least four reasons: (1) it is, y'know, good for the country, which people do notice eventually, (2) it "gets things done" and "solves problems," which is something people have said they want in EVERY poll in EVERY election since the Pharaohs, (3) it contrasts nicely with the frantic push-the-envelope-until-it-tears approach that MAGAts not only practice but celebrate, and (4) it keeps his powder dry, cuz it's a long time til the election.
It has the potential to be a good strategy. Get as much done as he can for now -- it looks like that will be CR after CR to keep the government open. He can still pivot, once the campaign gets well underway, to attacking the do-nothing GOP -- I'm confident they will do nothing before November except conduct futile show trials and fight among themselves over the appropriations bills, which they will never agree on sufficiently to bring them to the floor. Oh, yeah, they'll probably vacate the Speaker's office someday again, or at least try.
A motion to vacate won't necessarily cause such chaos next time, no matter what MTG threatens. Dems had good reason to let McCarthy get fed to the sharks in his own party, but if Johnson plays his cards right they could work out ways to defeat a removal vote and keep him in the chair. Of course they'd prefer to get Jeffries in, but if the chaos would shut the government down or doom supplemental aid, I think Jeffries would strike a deal that would defeat a motion to vacate in return for doing the right things. If it would sow even more distrust and backbiting in the R caucus, so much the better.
“You can’t be the Republican nominee unless you win the primary and that’s difficult or impossible without the party’s MAGA base. That’s one important reason why Republicans can’t elect a governor in California.”
Uh, there is no Republican primary for governor in California. Nothing would keep a moderate Republican from placing second in the jungle primary.
Immigration is all they've got. Nothing else is working. They can see just like anybody else that inflation is not going to work this year.
And of course they want to force the Democrats in the Senate to vote against impeaching the guy. Oh boy is Fox gonna go to town on this one.
Does the Senate even have to bring the charges to a vote?
Yes. Once the articles of impeachment have been presented to the Senate by the appointed House managers, all other Senate business is halted until the trial is resolved.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SMAN-113/pdf/SMAN-113-pg223.pdf
I should have remembered that. McConnell rushed tfg's second trial through so fast it seemed as though it didn't even happen.
They're not just idiots, they're cowards too.
And to mention for clarity what one presumes is obvious, they're a bunch of racists, because their supporters are a bunch of racists.
Ya think there'd be this kind of panic if it were, oh, to take a cue from a former President, Norwegians on the southern border?
In the end, our downfall will be due only in part to the modern Nazis, and it will be due at least as much (if not more!) to the modern Good Germans, who steadfastly refuse to see what's happening in front of them.
They're not just idiots, they're fucking idiots. They look like the threat that they are: vengeful, petty partisans.
That'll play poorly with independents and actual moderates, painting the GOP as the Party of Revenge. Abortion was sure to make 2024 a blue tide, but now, they're turning it into a blue tsunami.
Good job, Republicans!
Most individual GOP elected officials probably do not really care if their Dear Leader gets elected as long as they do. And since their base, who can anoint or reject them in the primaries, are totally supportive of revenge politics being seen as a member of the Party of Revenge is a positive not a negative.
".. probably do not really care if their Dear Leader gets elected .."
They do care, and prefer that he will not get elected, because with him as president they don't have much power, so earn less money. But they are afraid to say that in public, because they are fraid of losing in primaries and of violence against them and their families.
I think you're spot on about the abortion question and can't imagine for the life of me why it's being so completely ignored by the pundit class and "political knowers" (ht Atrios) of all stripes. The day Dobbs was announced my immediate thought was it was going to ignite a long, slow, very very deep burn that would be generational. But all the smart folks have been talking like it'll be just a one or two cycle flash in the pan, shrug shoulders and go "oh well" kind of thing. No. It's only just begun to have political salience. And it'll get stronger in proportion as the anti-abortionists ramp up, which they say they're planning to do in all states.
So at this point 2024 is shaping up to be immigration scaremongering and endlessly relitigating the Big Lie vs individual self-determination and federal investment in our collective future, something along those lines, against a backdrop of Inflation Reduction Act money sweetening the general mood over the summer. That looks like the bet now, at least.
They are trying to distract the base from realizing that the votes aren't there to impeach Biden. Mayorkas is now the booby prize of impeachment.
And it's much easier when the target of your cockamamie charade is named Alejandro. Does anyone suppose they're just itching to accuse him of bring biased in favor of immigrants, & that is causing him to (supposedly) be derelict in his duties?
Irresistibly tempting to them, but the problem Mayorkas presents is that he and his family were refugees from Castro. Cuban immigrants and their descendants have been a dependable core gop constituency in South Florida for generations now. A little savvy targeted advertising and word of mouth could begin to change that, if they actually go ahead and impeach him. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when this dawns on the gop brains trust (Comer? Comer? Calling Comer and Jordan!).
There is no reason to distinguish between "Maga" and "not-Maga". "Not-Maga", as you note, are simply untrustworthy mopes with less courage than Lindsay Graham(!). They (A) aren't going to cross Dear Leader, (B) are hoping to be on his "good side" if he wins, and (C) are betting they can pretend to have been against him if he doesn't.
Any nationally elected official with an (R) after their name is complicit and, if not guilty of something worse, deserves to spend the rest of their careers asking loyal Americans if they want fries with that.
I developed a formula back in the Tea Party days that covers this: if there's an R after their names, they're dead to me. There used to be a time when that wasn't automatic, but they've long since earned it.
"Misdemeanors" means whatever Congress wants it to mean. Given the literal meaning of "demeanor", a misdemeanor could just be a disapproved facial expression.
No member of the Democratic Party shall be allowed to engage in governance at any level, regardless of the outcome of elections.
Useful idiot Chip Roy makes another campaign ad for the Democrats:
https://www.alternet.org/chip-roy-trump-failed/
He actually makes a valid point, that inn 2017-2018 republican had the House/Senate/President, and didn't do any serious effort to pass legislation to sort out the border.
When is it time to consider getting out before it’s too late? My grandparents were able to flee their European home country in 1940 because they had made a safe haven elsewhere in the mid 1930’s. Many of us who live in fire or earthquake zones maintain bug out bags, perhaps the time has come to look at political cataclysm in the same manner? To at least make plans if not preparations.
What a bunch of fucking idiots…
My gut instinct tells me that there is so much intense political negativity out there these days, that even Republicans are seeing diminishing returns from ginning up bogus political scandals. That said, it’s not self-evident that raising the salience of border security (which is clearly what this is all about), is “idiotic” for the GOP in an election year. I believe there is fairly strong evidence that this issue (and the wider issue of immigration problems) tends to hurt Democrats, especially when they own the incumbency brand.
The opportunity costs of all these shenanigans are staggering. I just think about all the debate about AI regulations that needs to be conducted and I weep for our country.
"What a bunch of fucking idiots ..." No argument here.
I was listening to an interview of the owner of a store dedicated to selling Trump paraphernalia. A university professor walked into his store and tried to tell him that his actions were harmful. No argument here.
Then he said he told her to leave his store. He wasn't going to listen to her because she wasn't going to listen to him.
Then I started thinking back to all the times I've heard a MAGA Republican say that same thing: "I'm not going to listen to them because they're not going to listen to me."
If you say they're hypocrites, I agree. My point is that hypocrisy is a symptom of immaturity, and there are two options. Fight immaturity with immaturity is the first option. Fight immaturity with maturity is the other option. One of these options is not like the other.
The border is and will be the centerpiece of the MAGA 2024 election nationwide. The TV ad's for George Santos vacated seat started a few weeks ago, with the DNC tying the GOP candidate with the MAGA nut jobs in congress, who will ban abortions and cut social security. About a week ago, the GOP started their ads tying Tom Suozzi to Biden and the millions crossing the border, and illegal immigrants involved in crime (add in wreaking the economy just for fun).
If the border is the centerpiece of the MAGA campaign here in true blue NYC and Long Island, I'm sure its also going to happen nationwide. The impeachment will be part of the whole scheme.
It sounds like Benghazi II.