General Discussion

UCmeNdc

(9,601 posts) Fri Jan 17, 2020, 05:16 AM Jan 2020

They are all tied together. It started with the 2016 GOP convention

Link to tweet

We are missing something. What is really controlling these Republicans? They are doing a control all parts of the government power grab. Someone is pulling their strings.

McConnell, Barr, Trump, Nunes, Graham, on and on the list goes.....

What is going on behind closed doors within the United States government?

9 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

They are all tied together. It started with the 2016 GOP convention (Original Post) UCmeNdc Jan 2020 OP

Russian money, Russian compramat, Russian disinformation lapfog_1 Jan 2020 #1

Add to this the thing that allowed much of this to go forward BumRushDaShow Jan 2020 #5

The fact that Russia, with zero intentions of allowing free flow of guns, was sucking up to the NRA NCLefty Jan 2020 #2

The RNC was hacked just as the Dems. While the Russians used the Dem hack to good effect utilizing airmid Jan 2020 #3

But I bet the GOP politicians did hear about the RNC hack through Russian blackmail attacks UCmeNdc Jan 2020 #4

I have thought this since Linsay Graham's complete 180 after playing golf with Trump. airmid Jan 2020 #7

They are drowning our government in the bathtub intrepidity Jan 2020 #6

Constitutional Convention creating Theocracy bucolic_frolic Jan 2020 #8

I too would like to know scarytomcat Jan 2020 #9

lapfog_1

(29,228 posts)

1. Russian money, Russian compramat, Russian disinformation

Reply to UCmeNdc (Original post)

Fri Jan 17, 2020, 05:30 AM

Jan 2020

all on the GOP as a party.

In 2008 there was a palpable fear that the GOP and the Conservative movement would soon be "a permanent minority"... and the GOPer couldn't stand that. They has a report generated that suggested they do outreach to minorities, be more supportive of women, etc. They, instead, went to the "dark side".

The Dark Side meant doing a number of things.

First, control the messaging and use RW media to push their agenda and stop Obama (see Tea Party)

Second, use any tactics possible to either keep probable Democrats from voting or redistrict them so their votes don't count (gerrymandering / voter suppression)

Third, funnel dark money from "sources" into their campaigns (turns out to be Russian Oligarch money)

Fourth, encourage social media disinformation and divisive messaging (again Russian black ops "Internet Research Agency&quot

Fifth, use the internet to do selected targeting of the disinformation (Cambridge Analytica)

They know that their agenda is not favored by the majority of Americans... so all they can do is lie, cheat, and steal their way into power. And they have been corrupted by the "ends justifies the means" to make themselves feel ok with this.

BumRushDaShow

(129,662 posts)

5. Add to this the thing that allowed much of this to go forward

Reply to lapfog_1 (Reply #1)

Fri Jan 17, 2020, 06:55 AM

Jan 2020

Citizen's United vs FEC

Many forget what really prompted this as it's usually discussed as a "campaign finance" thing but here is what prompted it (from that link) -

Facts of the case

Citizens United sought an injunction against the Federal Election Commission in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the application of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) to its film Hillary: The Movie. The Movie expressed opinions about whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would make a good president.

In an attempt to regulate "big money" campaign contributions, the BCRA applies a variety of restrictions to "electioneering communications." Section 203 of the BCRA prevents corporations or labor unions from funding such communication from their general treasuries. Sections 201 and 311 require the disclosure of donors to such communication and a disclaimer when the communication is not authorized by the candidate it intends to support.

Citizens United argued that: 1) Section 203 violates the First Amendment on its face and when applied to The Movie and its related advertisements, and that 2) Sections 201 and 203 are also unconstitutional as applied to the circumstances.

The United States District Court denied the injunction. Section 203 on its face was not unconstitutional because the Supreme Court in McConnell v. FEC had already reached that determination. The District Court also held that The Movie was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, as it attempted to inform voters that Senator Clinton was unfit for office, and thus Section 203 was not unconstitutionally applied. Lastly, it held that Sections 201 and 203 were not unconstitutional as applied to the The Movie or its advertisements. The court reasoned that the McConnell decision recognized that disclosure of donors "might be unconstitutional if it imposed an unconstitutional burden on the freedom to associate in support of a particular cause," but those circumstances did not exist in Citizen United's claim.

I.e., that little company made what was essentially a long-form campaign ad trashing Hillary Clinton and in doing so, managed a 2-fer - the smearing of Clinton and the heralding of an era of massive amounts of dark money into the U.S. elections (e.g., Russian money funneled through the NRA), allowing corporations to claim to be "people" and have the same "rights" as people. And when that happened afterwards, no one seemed bent on revising McCain-Feingold to work around this disastrous decision (although efforts had been floated/made to actually do this by Constitutional Amendment to exclude corporations as "people" ).

NCLefty

(3,678 posts)

2. The fact that Russia, with zero intentions of allowing free flow of guns, was sucking up to the NRA

Reply to UCmeNdc (Original post)

Fri Jan 17, 2020, 05:43 AM

Jan 2020

tells you they had No Good Plans for America. We need to start holding them to account for screwing with us this much. Every day that we do not is more damage on us.