Only problem, kentuck, is that your analysis is logical. That sensibility left the Republican Party a long time ago.

..and help to get to the truth about the Russian interference and who assisted them in their efforts? It is not an investigation that is possible to end without resolution.

The GOPrs are too cowardly and corrupt to clean their own house, so it's going to take a man with integrity like Mueller to do it for them.

Of course, they're going to kick and scream every inch of the way.

He will have to destroy the present republican party to save it.

I believe there are many, but they're not in decision-making positions. The ones who control the purse strings and the ones who twist arms for votes - it's too late for any of them.

I come from a midwestern family that was proudly Republican up to the Nixon years. Myself, I've never voted for a Republican and I don't believe I ever will. But I can remember the days when the GOP stood for patriotism and honor. Eisenhower was the last good GOP president.

Kentuck is right, Bob Mueller can save the party if they will let him. But maybe they don't deserve to be saved if they can't even see this obvious solution.

The present republican party would hate his guts and spleen.



Just like the evangelical religious right would hate the real Jesus if he was walking the earth now because...

Republican Jesus....

Only they can do that, and it may be too late. Their current, villainous tax theft is already an enormous betrayal of their duty to the electorate and evidence of who they now serve. It seems increasingly possible that they could do the unthinkable, react to evidence of massive corruption in the White House, and even treason, by pretending to disbelieve and refusing to act--if they think they can get away with it.

They didn't intend Trump to be elected and didn't foresee their coming to that point, but they are currently working hard to create a climate in which they can refuse to act by persuading enough Americans to either believe the investigation is completely bogus or be critically confused by doubt.

is there anything in their past and current behavior to suggests that, instead of choosing to blast through a constitutional crisis and become a renegade government severed from accountability to the people, this crisis they're careening toward could somehow instead cause a rebirth of commitment to democracy?

In video-games and story-telling, there's a problem called "power creep": Over time, things get more and more and more extreme.



Who can possibly step into the footsteps of Trump? Who, what kind of republican candidate, can follow him?

How can any republican candidate claim that he's the better choice than the democratic candidate WITHOUT first disavowing what Trump did?
- If he doesn't, the Democrats will attack him for being associated with Trump.
- If he does, he loses republican voters.

They can salvage what is left of their Party or they can re-build it from scratch.

There is no easy answer for them.

Are they willing to take our country down with their Party?

1. Republican voters care only about 2 things:
- Sticking it to the Liberals.
- Getting the best deal for them personally and the rest of the planet can go to hell.


2.
If they can stick it to the Liberals by voting for Trump, they do it.
If they can stick it to the Liberals by forgetting Trump and pretending that he never existed, they do it.


3.
Disavowing Trump will magically absolve the Republican Party of everything bad they did and how dare you keep ripping Trump:
"He's no longer President! Get over it! Sheesh! Now let me tell you about Uranium One..."


4.
"Trump was not a real Republican. He was actually a Democrat, you know."

They are very afraid of losing their seats to another Republican.

I would agree that they would not lose any votes by disavowing Trump but they appear to be all caught up in some type of cult or herd mentality that they cannot seem to escape?

Keep your fingers crossed that this continues, although it doesn't seem to be sinking in with the Repug congressmembers as yet.

in so called safe seats carefully gerrymandered for them. Karma for not allowing a level playing field as required by democracy.

Who the hell will they put up the next time?

Putin and Trumpy's coup is a very unusual political event that the GOP will not want to sustain once Trumpy is gone. Once he's gone, the GOP will have to make a big effort to persuade their 40% that Trumpy was a fluke, a mistake, and that they, too, were victimized by him. That's their pathway out. They can't sustain an openly fascist, racist, pro-Putin set of priorities and expect to win. These tendencies are decidedly and eternally damaging to the huge bulk of the US electorate. Fascism is never something that merits the approval by a voting public in a Constitutional representative democracy, in any country, in all of history. Once fascism sweeps over the structure of government, it must maintain power by force. And the problem with the GOP is that, as a party, they are openly sympathetic to the economics of fascism.

...how about President Bannon? Or President Donald Trump, Jr? Or President Mike Pence? Or President Sam Brownback? You think it's impossible? With a "base" that's somewhere Over The Rainbow, and a media that would normalize Heinrich Himmler if he ran for President, anything is possible...

This guy isn't burning bridges with the dumbest and least reasonable sector of the American population. He broke down the fucking wall with them. No rational argument has any influence on such people and now they're only barely even aligned with the Republicans themselves.

Every aspiring autocrat inside the US and out has already noticed that there are something like 75 million American racists who have no goddamned idea what fascism even is, and who turn out to vote more often than anyone else. They are a weapon which can be turned against the United States whenever anyone, foreign or domestic, wishes.

It's like putting a gallon of gasoline and a lighter at every table during 5th grade lunch. You don't know who's going to start it, or where in the cafeteria it's going to start; but you know for sure that very soon the entire school will be in flames.

Last edited Fri Dec 15, 2017, 03:46 AM - Edit history (1)

they not only can, they WILL

oh so happy! to see it go away. if it was ever a party of good people that day has long since passed. I always read that Mueller is a lifelong republican, but how do we know he still is? being right there in the seat of power as the party does their level best to weaken democracy, promote and wage endless war, put guns in the hands of every person in the country for no good reason but greed, on and on.

i'm naive i know - i thought the party would fade to oblivion after gwbush. could not have been more wrong, but now, maybe, just maybe, it's time.

i look to mueller to save the country. fuck the party

to an anvil.

They control all three branches of the federal government and the majority of statehouses, the reports of the demise of the party are slightly exaggerated.

Peace

it's where they are going.

Look at NJ, VA, and Alabama. There is a pattern here.

Then we could indeed be stuck in the middle of the Big Muddy.

Yep.

For that to change, voters have to change.

We have managed just fine for many years without the Whigs. We Democrats could form several opposition parties and have some very spirited elections!

They have seen repeatedly how he repays loyalty. So I can only guess it's about the MONEY. They know Trump will push any bill they want, no matter what it is, as long as it doesn't hurt Trump himself.

They're fighting for MONEY. So they will be ruthless and dogged in their pursuit. They will not give up. This is exhausting, watching these evil efforts day in and day out, by Trump, by the House Republicans, by the heads of agencies.

I don't know. I just don't know. It's possible there will be a revolution in the country, if Trump isn't removed from office. I think there's a tinder box waiting.

They're about to suffer the consequences of their incompetence over the next few cycles, but that's just going to make them double down on what they're doing wrong, the same as the Tea Party of the last decade. They've completely jumped the shark and real self-assessment isn't on the agenda.

What we're not going to get anytime soon is what we need: Blow the GOP up and start from scratch with a sane Center-Right party built on actual principles of economic and political theories. I can stand to disagree with them, but they've got to have them first.

I'm definitely going to posit it to my Republican friends. It certainly helped Republicans when they finally "got" Watergate.

The reality is that Republican ideology is so corrosive at this point, that I think it is irredeemable. What are the core concepts of Republicanism?

It used to be a smaller Federal government and State or local control of policy. This meant that the government stayed out of the way of businesses, but it also meant that the government stayed out of people's bedrooms and public life.

Republicans were for lower taxes and lower spending fairly across the board.

They were for rules and regulations that promoted fair competition.


I say WERE because the Republican party has abandoned all of those principles. They stand for none of that and their policies are blatantly geared toward maintaining a corrupt system where the most powerful people maintain all advantages over everyone else.

Republicans want "States Rights" when it comes to any discriminatory policies toward LGBT people, but want the Federal government to go after Cannabis.

They want a Federal "personhood" amendment, but they are trying to stymie state efforts to maintain Net Neutrality.

Republicanism is a scam at this point, and while there may be some fairly honorable people who still call themselves Republican, their party, I don't think, can be saved.

I want them utterly vanquished and humiliated. I want their noise machine silenced. I want them to have less than 1/3 of the Senate and House. I want them out of power in every State Government.

America would be just fine without a Sociopath Party.