On yesterday’s Rachael Maddow show, Maddow reported that the AZ FRP continued to question the legitimacy of the election. AZ Republicans leveled crackpot allegations about election fraud that made no sense whatever. For example, the AZ FRP questioned that a server in the Maricopa county recorder’s office was found to link to the internet and that somehow could have been a source of election fraud.
Maricopa county officials spent the day rebutting astonishing FRP ignorance, lies and crackpottery that exploded after the audit results were released. In the case of the server, county officials explained that the server was to the county recorder’s office website server and it functioned to link the website to the internet. That server had nothing to do with the election.
It was clear that the attack on the 2020 election that the AZ FRP unleashed immediately after the audit results were released was planned in advance. It had to be more than a mere spontaneous outburst of frustrated disappointment. The FRP knew the audit would confirm the 2020 election result, but that it was critical to continue and intensify the attacks on the election.
This is far worse than merely irresponsible, it is a blatant
fascist Republican attack on democracy, elections and truth
Within hours of Fascist Donald’s demand to have the election in TX audited, the state legislature called for and started a forensic audit. The fascist won the TX election, but the audit has nothing to do with the statewide vote. The audit is confined to the four main Democratic counties in TX. In the minds of the entire FRP nationwide, it is undeniable and blatant that only Democrats commit election fraud and the FRP damn well will put a stop to it one way or another. This is a national FRP strategy. This attack is not over yet. We are now in the middle of an all-out, radical right war against democracy, elections and truth.
Fascist Donald demands an election audit in Texas and
the TX FRP legislature immediately complies
Maddow also interviewed Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. Schmidt made it clear that he believed that the FRP is now highly radicalized and openly attacking democracy and elections, putting us in in a crisis, the magnitude of which he states is is hard to overstate. His thinking is that
(1) on the one hand the FRP is fomenting chaos and confusion, e.g., by open attacks on elections and its public threats to default on the federal debt by refusing to raise the debt limit, but
(2) on the other hand FRP rhetoric is selling law and order to the public to get support and votes.
See the YouTube video at the top.
Maddow believes that, absent a failure of his health or some other major incident, it is certain that Fascist Donald will be the FRP’s candidate for president in 2024.
Finally, there is this urgent warning from a hard core conservative, Robert Kagan, writing an opinion piece two days ago for the Washington Post entitled, Our constitutional crisis is already here:
The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt:
First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.
Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.
Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.
The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Partisans on both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inflict harm than they were in 2020. Would governors call out the National Guard? Would President Biden nationalize the Guard and place it under his control, invoke the Insurrection Act, and send troops into Pennsylvania or Texas or Wisconsin to quell violent protests? Deploying federal power in the states would be decried as tyranny. Biden would find himself where other presidents have been — where Andrew Jackson was during the nullification crisis, or where Abraham Lincoln was after the South seceded — navigating without rules or precedents, making his own judgments about what constitutional powers he does and doesn’t have.
Today’s arguments over the filibuster will seem quaint in three years if the American political system enters a crisis for which the Constitution offers no remedy.
Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian. They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always begins with underestimation. The political and intellectual establishments in both parties have been underestimating Trump since he emerged on the scene in 2015. They underestimated the extent of his popularity and the strength of his hold on his followers; they underestimated his ability to take control of the Republican Party; and then they underestimated how far he was willing to go to retain power. The fact that he failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way — if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states. As it was, Trump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year. All that prevented it was a handful of state officials with notable courage and integrity, and the reluctance of two attorneys general and a vice president to obey orders they deemed inappropriate.
These were not the checks and balances the Framers had in mind when they designed the Constitution, of course, but Trump has exposed the inadequacy of those protections. The Founders did not foresee the Trump phenomenon, in part because they did not foresee national parties. They anticipated the threat of a demagogue, but not of a national cult of personality. They assumed that the new republic’s vast expanse and the historic divisions among the 13 fiercely independent states would pose insuperable barriers to national movements based on party or personality. “Petty” demagogues might sway their own states, where they were known and had influence, but not the whole nation with its diverse populations and divergent interests.
Such checks and balances as the Framers put in place, therefore, depended on the separation of the three branches of government, each of which, they believed, would zealously guard its own power and prerogatives. The Framers did not establish safeguards against the possibility that national-party solidarity would transcend state boundaries because they did not imagine such a thing was possible. Nor did they foresee that members of Congress, and perhaps members of the judicial branch, too, would refuse to check the power of a president from their own party.The Trump movement might not have begun as an insurrection, but it became one after its leader claimed he had been cheated out of reelection. For Trump supporters, the events of Jan. 6 were not an embarrassing debacle but a patriotic effort to save the nation, by violent action if necessary. As one 56-year-old Michigan woman explained: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”
The banal normalcy of the great majority of Trump’s supporters, including those who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, has befuddled many observers. Although private militia groups and white supremacists played a part in the attack, 90 percent of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups. The majority were middle-class and middle-aged; 40 percent were business owners or white-collar workers. They came mostly from purple, not red, counties.
The events of Jan. 6, on the other hand, proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past. While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life.
It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such episodes. Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country” and that they have to give it back. He has targeted for defeat those Republicans who voted for his impeachment — or criticized him for his role in the riot. Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols. “You and your family will be killed very slowly,” the wife of Georgia’s top election official was texted earlier this year. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again. Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump insists “there is no way they win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.” (emphases added)
Questions:
1. Is there an urgent crisis unfolding right now in American politics, or is this mostly just politics as usual, maybe with some hair on fire freaks and/or some unusually overheated rhetoric from a few crackpots and radicals that are harmless fringe nutters outside the circles of relevance, influence and/or power?
2. Absent a failure of his health or some other major incident, is it likely that Fascist Donald definitely is going to be the FRP nominee for president in 2024, as Maddow and Kagan assert?
3. Does the evidence accumulated so far that the FRP (i) is anti-democratic and authoritarian or fascist, and (ii) is openly attacking democracy, elections and truth, and if so, does that (a) amount to a reliable proof thereof, and if so, (b) engaging with denials of that proof amounts to false balancing or bothsidesism?[1]
Footnote:
1. False balancing, also called bothsidesism, exists when the evidence is sufficient to show that arguments against the proven side are not even worth engaging with because it elevates false information, lies, deceit, crackpottery or motivated reasoning, and/or etc. to the same level as actual facts, true truths and sound reasoning.
Wikipedia describes it like this: False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause of misinformation.
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