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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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she's her own brand up there, ran last time around because she lost in the republican primary iirc.  wouldn't be shocked if she goes D just to get some bridges to nowhere built.  can't let manchin have all the fun.

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6 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

If she dropped the R label and went "I" or "D", I'd be impressed.

Because right now, she's a Republican with a furrowed brow.

 

3 minutes ago, elfenix said:

she's her own brand up there, ran I last time around because she lost in the republican primary iirc.  wouldn't be shocked if she goes D just to get some bridges to nowhere built.  can't let manchin have all the fun.

Alaska actually changed their voting laws.  They will run a jungle primary and the top 4 advance to the general, which will utilize ranked choice voting.

She could run as an independent and she'd win.  Easily.  Every Democrat would put her #2 on their ballot. 

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On 1/6/2021 at 5:10 PM, atomheartbevo said:

I love that Trump's kids, as well as Trump, are vowing to primary and defeat anybody not loyal to him.

I fucking love this.  Would be awesome if we got a new and competent party out of the ashes, that I'd be willing to vote Republican  again (or Whig or whatever if you're armybrat), but I don't see that happening.  Too many individuals/chefs in the kitchen, who are far too greedy and who only want something to boost their stature, that aren't willing to build something that will last beyond an election cycle or two.

i have no idea what the democrats would need to do to get me to seriously consider voting for a republican for any major office ever again.  lie their way into a land war in asia, crash the economy, cheerlead a pandemic, and then have the shittiest attempt at a coup ever would be a start. 

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1 hour ago, Bullneck said:

Two thoughts:

1. Texas Tech "Goooooooo . . . Raiders" guy is probably a Qnon/Trumper.

2. DC needs a new airport.

DC has a new airport.  well, jet age at least. and i think dulles has been getting rebuilt over the last few years. 

national's problem is that it was rebuilt just before 9/11 so the space needed for more security isn't there. 

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2 hours ago, Bullneck said:

Just think: in the next couple of years all these douchebags are going to feel the repercussions of their actions, one by one. It's going to be fucking glorious.  I might die of schadenfreude overdose.

I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not.  If you're being sincere, I'd like to understand your reasoning for believing that any one of these Trump enablers are going to pay any price at all.  Most of the Republican senators are in states that would elect Adolf Hitler (the time-traveling still-alive version, or the dead-for-65-ish years version, doesn't matter) if he had an 'R' beside his name.  Most of the Representatives are in gerrymandered districts and face no viable opponent.  Trump and Moscow Mitch stacked the Supreme Court beyond the ability to repair it in my lifetime (sans packing the court).  They stacked Federal Courts to the point where even the Ninth Circuit (now featuring 10 Trump appointees) can't be considered a reliable slam-dunk for the Dems anymore.  A large percentage of police officers (no, I can't quantify that-- feel free to call me out if you think I'm talking out of my ass) are somewhere on the right-wing spectrum, with a disturbing minority being outright White Nationalists and the like.

I want to believe that the guilty will get their come-uppance, but I'm just not seeing it.  The entire justice system is broken (in many ways).

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/08/trump-policies-corporate-america/

 

Quote

The bargain with the business world worked like this: They mostly tolerated President Trump’s sometimes outrageous behavior in exchange for business-friendly corporate tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks, deals they celebrated over Oval Office handshakes.

But that arrangement started to sour in the last year with the Trump administration’s missteps on the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests before swiftly deteriorating in recent days with a mob assault on the Capitol prodded on by the president. That led the National Association of Manufacturers — comprised of exactly the kind of companies he considered key to his “Make America Great Again” mission — to call for Trump’s immediate removal from office for actions by the pro-Trump mob described as “sedition.”

 

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The message was not the typical corporate condemnation. It was something the trade group of 14,000 companies — which usually avoids politics — never before imagined issuing.

“It was a clear and present danger to our democracy,” said Jay Timmons, the group’s president. “And we couldn’t stand for that. That transcended everything.”

 

 

 

Quote

Business groups big and small largely stuck by Trump as he broke one norm after another over the past four years, including insulting immigrants, appearing to empathize with white supremacists in Charlottesville and clearing a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington for a photo op. They stuck by him still after he threatened the Ukrainian prime minister in a bid to help his election chances, after his impeachment, after he intentionally downplayed the effects of the novel coronavirus and last week after he was recorded pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to overturn the election results.

The once-comfortable alliance between Trump and Corporate America has shown unprecedented strain since Wednesday’s attack, forcing a reexamination of everything that businesses had won over the last four years from a White House now thrown into chaos.

 

Spoiler

Following the attack on the Capitol, advisers crucial to the president’s economic policies tried to distance themselves from the Trump-induced mayhem. Some resigned, such as former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was serving as envoy to Northern Ireland, explaining to CNBC that, “we signed up for lower taxes and less regulation.” Companies considered cutting off the money spigot to the politicians seen as fomenting the worst of it. Firms that did business with the Trump family were reexamining the cost of being associated with a historic insurrection.

Yet some officials sought to maintain a neat separation between Trump’s economic policies and what had occurred at the Capitol.

“It isn’t going to affect tax rates. How about monetary policy? Allow me to stay pure to my turf,” Art Laffer, a supply side economist who is close with White House economic officials and speaks to the president, said in a brief interview.

But there remained plenty of criticism for the business world’s willingness to go along with Trump for so long.

“Their attitude was: ‘Let’s take the big tax cuts and hold our noses for the obvious xenophobia and authoritarianism.’ It was a classic Faustian bargain,’ ” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), a member of the House Ways & Means Committee. “They should have known from the beginning.”

The economy provided Trump with cover after he previously ran into trouble, such as for his “very fine people on both sides” comment following the Charlottesville clashes and his administration’s defense of the images of “kids in cages” along the Southern U.S. border.

Many companies abandoned the various policy councils set up by the White House as a result. Others issued statements. But little was different.

Events in the past year seemed to change those corporate calculations for some groups, including by the National Association of Manufacturers.

The trade group had worked closely with the Trump administration on tax reform and regulatory issues. When Timmons visited the White House in March 2017, he told Trump that manufacturers increasingly felt the country was on the right track.

“And that’s because of the focus on taxes, regulations, infrastructure investment,” Timmons said, according to a meeting transcript. “We appreciate your commitment to investment in job creation and manufacturing. And we’re going to deliver.”

But everything changed when Vice President Pence delivered a speech last February at the manufacturing group’s board meeting, where he seemed to downplay the threat posed by the novel coronavirus, according to three senior leaders.

That was followed by the nation’s problems with personal protective equipment and ventilators. Manufacturers struggled to figure out how to help, stymied by a chaotic federal response. The trade group launched its own “wear a mask” ad campaign while Trump and other Republicans continued to cast doubt on masks. The group condemned the killing of George Floyd over the summer. And after the election, it called on Trump’s administration to provide help to President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team.

But the scenes from Wednesday were the breaking point. Senior leaders quickly drafted a statement — while police were still trying to clear the Capitol — calling on Trump to be removed from office and pointing a finger at any politician involved in doubting the election results.

“The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy,” said the statement from Timmons.

The manufacturers were not unanimous in supporting Timmons’ stance.

Chuck Wetherington, a member of the executive committee and president of BTE Technologies in Hanover, Md., said the group and Trump had increasing differences over trade, immigration and racism. He said he was proud of Timmons’s courage in making the statement.

“What we saw Wednesday was democracy under attack,” he said.

But another member of the executive committee, Steve Straub, president of a Dayton, Ohio, metal fabrication supplier, said in an email he didn’t support the statement. “There are other board members who feel the same way,” he said. He continued displaying a photo of him alongside Trump on his company website.

Other companies and business groups issued various statements, among them the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as the heads of financial giants Citi and JPMorgan Chase. The Business Roundtable, a group representing the nation’s most powerful chief executives, said in a statement to The Washington Post that because of the falsehoods from politicians about the election outcome “many of our companies are evaluating their contributions.”

None of the groups went as far as the manufacturing group.

The stance was starker than the ones taken by several of the corporations on the manufacturing group’s executive committee. Some failed to mention Trump’s name. Others offered general calls for unity.

In an email to employees, Caterpillar’s chief executive, Jim Umpleby, said: “We watched in disbelief as protestors broke through security barricades” and strongly condemned “the resulting chaos, destruction and loss of life” but did not mention the president’s role in the events.

Ted Doheny, president of packaging firm Sealed Air, said in an emailed statement to The Post that he condemned the violence and “I stand with others in the business community who are calling for unity and a smooth transition of power.”

Another large company on the manufacturing group’s executive committee, Emerson Electric, did not respond to a request for comment. According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website, the St. Louis-based company gave individual and PAC contributions totaling $51,900 to the campaign of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of the lawmakers who voted to object to certifying the election results.

Emerson’s CEO, David Farr, gave Trump Victory — a committee raising money for Trump’s reelection and the Republican Party — $100,000 in 2020, according to Federal Election Commission data. Spokesman David Baldridge said in an email that Farr was not available for an interview and the company declined to comment.

The flood of corporate statements was the result of companies suddenly finding themselves in the strange position of needing to defend democracy.

"They spoke out because overturning an election is not simply a threat to our political system,” said Ronnie Chatterji, a business professor at Duke University and former economic adviser to President Obama. “The rule of law that ensures peaceful transitions of power also makes business possible.”

A major outstanding question is whether executives or political action committees affiliated with companies will reduce their donations to GOP candidates who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and incite violence.

Some companies have asked about the pressure to stop political contributions to congressional members who voted against certifying the election, said Nick DeSarno, director of digital and policy communications for the trade group of policy officials at large corporations and advocacy groups.

“Companies are actively considering if these lawmakers will be supported by their PAC in the future,” DeSarno said.

Bruce Haynes, chairman of Sard Verbinnen & Co.’s public affairs group, said his firm has been contacted by clients trying to determine whether they should make a statement amid this week’s turmoil, and if so, what should be said.

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Haynes said. “It’s not in the playbook.”

Haynes said it is too early to know, but he expected companies to have to look harder at their political donations and relationships.

“I’d say that scrutiny is about to rise significantly,” he said.

One major union group that supported Republican lawmakers on matters such as project labor agreements had also decided to cut ties with Republicans who voted against the vote certification, according to one labor official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private matter.

More than half of the 33 chief executives gathered on a virtual call this week said they would reconsider investments in states where elected officials are impeding an orderly presidential transition, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of the Yale School of Management’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who organized the call.

Sonnenfeld, who argued CEOs have opposed the Trump administration at times throughout his term, including on environmental regulatory rollbacks and immigration issues, said he believed companies would be limiting contributions to lawmakers who denied election results in the future. But others were skeptical about a major shift in lobbying and campaign contributions.

While companies may face pressure to change, Chatterji said, “I do not think it will happen.”

The costs of the Capitol insurrection have been felt inside the White House. Tyler Goodspeed, acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, submitted his resignation a day after the storming of the Capitol. His departure means there are no remaining members of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Several senior White House officials called outside advisers Wednesday weighing whether they should also depart the administration amid a broader exodus of senior White House officials, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of private conversations.

But even those who have not cut ties to the White House’s economics team are worried.

“It’s a disaster. It’s been a disaster. My main concern as a policy guy is that this tarnishes his economic achievements, that’s my main concern right now,” said Stephen Moore, a longtime White House economic adviser and conservative.

It’s also unclear if fallout from the Capitol melee will have a major effect on Trump and his business when he leaves office.

Shopify, the company that runs online stores for the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign, pulled down both sites Thursday. It issued a statement saying the company “does not tolerate actions that incite violence.” Trump earned $930,869 in income from his company’s site in 2019, according to his most recent government disclosure. Shopify’s decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

JLL, the real estate services firm that the Trump Organization hired in a failed attempt to sell his D.C. hotel lease, told The Post on Friday that it will no longer be helping Trump with the sale.

“Our previous listing agreement with the Trump Organization to sell its hotel in Washington D.C. has expired and we are no longer doing business with them,” said spokesman Jesse Tron in a statement.

Lawyers are abandoning Trump, too, for the challenge to the election results and what they view as his role in the riot. The most recent came from Philadelphia attorney Jerome M. Marcus, who filed a motion in federal court Thursday withdrawing from the case. “The client has used the lawyer’s services to perpetrate a crime,” the motion states.

But any impact on companies could be fleeting.

On Wednesday, a pro-Trump mob still occupied the Capitol building. The emergency had not waned. A peaceful transfer of power remained in doubt.

Yet U.S. stock markets were still up for the day.

 

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11 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Rs will mostly backtrack and pretend they never supported him and it will work.

That’s not how I see it playing out. What they will do is call for “healing” and then minimize what happened in retrospect. Republicans understand now that MAGA is their constituency. They disown Trump and they lose primaries. Just look at Graham and others. Trump nearly got them killed on Wednesday and they’re already saying it’s time to move on and we can’t be divisive and blah blah blah. Total cowards, but also they’re just acting out of self-preservation and they absolutely know that “leadership” isn’t going to dissipate the mob. You either bow to Trump or you’re an immediate enemy.

All of that assumes that we actually see a transfer of power to Biden this month, which is a huge fucking question mark at this point.

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51 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Rs will mostly backtrack and pretend they never supported him and it will work.

It's on all of us to make sure it doesn't. No more pussyfooting around in political conversations with family and friends we disagree with. The Republicans are traitors and every time anyone so much as mumbles anything to the contrary they need to be yelled at.

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26 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

The fuck is that.

The Texas GOP, having been suckered into being led around by a NYC businessman and a Canadian transplant, letting a Florida transplant born in Georgia rally them as party leader  

Cucks. Apparently there’s no native Texan Republicans they can follow. 

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Regarding the flyer:

How are they going to square the monument in DC that was just destroyed by several Texans with the number 6 on their list I wonder?

The Executive over reach that is being conducted by the current executive in the White House, they ok with that?

Why are they concerned about children and gender modification? Isn't that over reach?

What are the specifics with taxpayer funded lobbying? So corporate lobbying is okay but sending five bucks to ol Briscoe is a no-no?

 

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

Rs will mostly backtrack and pretend they never supported him and it will work.

Yup, they are already changing the narrative and going on the offensive, irs working.

they are staring to blame Biden for not unifying the country and using bad language against them (like he made this shit). Cruz was Doing that, Fox News right behind him. The other fuck blaming publisher, Dick sucker from SC, going after Twitter. All that shit is working.

Dems don’t have clear target or same talking points. They need to stick to same points to get across to the idiots  

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23 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Regarding the flyer:

How are they going to square the monument in DC that was just destroyed by several Texans with the number 6 on their list I wonder?

The Executive over reach that is being conducted by the current executive in the White House, they ok with that?

Why are they concerned about children and gender modification? Isn't that over reach?

What are the specifics with taxpayer funded lobbying? So corporate lobbying is okay but sending five bucks to ol Briscoe is a no-no?

 

Shut up libtard. YOU DONT TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!

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17 minutes ago, Gengs1 said:

Yup, they are already changing the narrative and going on the offensive, irs working.

they are staring to blame Biden for not unifying the country and using bad language against them (like he made this shit). Cruz was Doing that, Fox News right behind him. The other fuck blaming publisher, Dick sucker from SC, going after Twitter. All that shit is working.

Dems don’t have clear target or same talking points. They need to stick to same points to get across to the idiots  

This really isn’t that hard. I don’t understand why they suck so bad at it. The fucking blueprint is right in front of them. 

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2 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

I think we are splitting hairs.  The point is they will never admit culpability.

It’s not splitting hairs at all. The difference between the GOP disavowing Trump and excusing him is immense.

In the former case, we might have a chance to piece a normal America back together. Conservative leaders condemning Trump would cause the remaining establishment and conservative religious Republicans to oppose him and his populist ilk. Leaders could actually, you know, lead some constituents away from the brink. 

But they’ll go with the latter option and avoid pissing off the delusional mob, because Republican politicians would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.

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7 minutes ago, mdmost said:

You've got to root them out. People like Gym. He attempted to subvert the will of 81 million Americans. But hey, come on, let's have unity and healing. Oh we can have unity after the reckoning occurs, Gym. 

 

It’s all so tongue in cheek. These fuckers know what they’re doing. It’s like Ric Flair pleading for mercy when the face has him cornered and is about to pummel him. Which was always followed by Flair taking a cheap shot while the face struggled with his conscience.

Same shit here. The GOP invokes principles like civility, nobility, and morality only to weaken the defenses of people who actually care about those things. 

Fuck you, Gym; you sniveling worm. You had your chance to unify and heal the country. You decided to pour gas on the flames of nationalist revolt instead.

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2 hours ago, mdmost said:

You've got to root them out. People like Gym. He attempted to subvert the will of 81 million Americans. But hey, come on, let's have unity and healing. Oh we can have unity after the reckoning occurs, Gym. 

 

SCREAM IT IF YOU HAVE TO, WE'RE NOT DONE BY A LONG SHOT.

 

Cross posting from another thread so it's repeated:

and even more relevant--look at the words. WORDS MATTER.

 

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  • Hugo Stiglitz changed the title to The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


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