Initial thoughts after the election

One observer commented here: WELL...this is going much less badly than I anticipated! I didn't know what to anticipate, but feared a massacre with Repubs controlling the House and Senate. FiveThirtyEight was unsure of final outcomes as of 4:40 am, probably Eastern time.

Republican rage and vengeance lust on display

A WaPo opinion by Dana Milbank this morning is worth considering. Milbank writes about the venomous Republican Party reaction in Arizona:

The Fox News election-night coverage, playing on the jumbo TV screens here, carried unwanted news that the great “red wave” had not materialized across the country, at least not yet. And here in Arizona, where the GOP nominated MAGA-inspired election deniers for governor, senator, secretary of state and other positions, hopes for early victories on election night had vanished.

The organizers took the Fox News coverage off the big screens and played music instead. They played the Village People’s “YMCA” — twice. Shuttle buses full of partygoers began to filter out, and by 10 p.m. the crowd had thinned considerably. The celebration, if it came at all, would be delayed.

Instead, Arizona’s MAGA Republican leaders brought fury and fanaticism on election night.

They eschewed basic decency. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told the crowd, joking about the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull — just as GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake did a week earlier. The crowd laughed.

They stoked paranoia. “By attending this event you have increased your chance of an FBI raid by about 50 percent,” the emcee, Benny Johnson, said.

They hurled insults every which way. “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose.” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match.” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper.” Democrats are “lunatics.”

At a time that typically calls for magnanimity and reconciliation, they instead cried out for vengeance. When Anthony Fauci’s name was invoked, they chanted “Lock him up!” They vowed to be a “nightmare to Joe Biden” and to impeach his aides. “Sorry libs,” sneered the emcee. “Sucks to suck.”

They boasted about the radicalism they represented. “We have remade this party in our image,” said state party chair Kelli Ward, “of people who aren’t going to take any crap.”

“Who’s ready to elect a bunch of radical Republican conservatives?” asked another speaker. The crowd roared.

And they repeatedly invoked the latest MAGA conspiracy that Election Day glitches with voting tabulators in Maricopa, the behemoth Phoenix-area county, were a “criminal” attempt to commit “fraud” against Republicans.

Never mind that the glitches didn’t cause a single ballot not to be counted, nor a single voter to be denied the right to vote. And never mind that the county officials overseeing the election (lustily booed by the MAGA crowd) are Republicans.

It was an appropriately ugly end to this grotesque campaign, just one last attempt to generate disgust — not just toward Democrats but toward the democratic process. 

That exemplifies the filth, lies and slanders that self-righteous MAGA Republican elites firmly believe. They are not conservatives, democrats or truth tellers. They are enraged, vengeance-driven radical right Christofascist liars and thugs.

And, they are gigantic hypocrites claiming to be just regular folks like you and I. Milbank writes:

For the Arizona GOP’s “Election Night Watch Party,” Lake, GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters and other Republicans arranged a joint celebration at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch in this upscale suburb.

After a campaign against supposed Democratic “elites,” Republican elites celebrated in style. A procession of luxury cars — BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Tesla, even a Rolls-Royce — dotted the valet line in the conference resort’s manicured driveway, lined with palm trees. VIPs who paid $500 a head were whisked off to a private reception, and higher rollers who shelled out $1,000 for the “private experience package” to another.

Hoi polloi , for $20 a ticket, squeezed into the back of the ballroom near the media or watched on jumbo screens in two courtyards (“Paradise Park Lawn”) strung with bistro lights.

One can wonder how the hoi polloi felt about being relegated to the back of the room and out in the courtyard. Do they really believe they are among the Republican elites or that those elites care about them one iota? If they do, they are deceived.