Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

"Tuesday’s primary in Wyoming delivered Liz Cheney a resounding defeat. She is one of the few Republicans in Congress willing to resist Donald Trump’s e******n **es, and Republican v**ers punished her for it.

First, let me say, I have no intention of contributing to the hagiography of Liz Cheney. She is a rock-ribbed Republican who supported Trump’s legislative positions 93 percent of the time. It is on the i**********n and e******n **es where she diverged.

In a way, she is the Elvis of politics: She took something — in this case a position — that others had held all along and made it cross over. She mainstreamed a political principle that many liberals had held all along.

Excuse me if I temper my enthusiasm for a person who presents herself as a great champion of democracy but v**es against the John R. Lewis V****g Rights Advancement Act.
Situational morality is better than none, I suppose, but I see it for what it is, and I am minimally moved.

However, her loss does crystallize something for us that many had already known: that the bar to clear in the modern Republican Party isn’t being sufficiently conservative but rather being sufficiently obedient to Donald Trump and his quest to deny and destroy democracy.

We must stop thinking it hyperbolic to say that the Republican Party itself is now a threat to our democracy. I understand the queasiness about labeling many of our fellow Americans in that way. I understand that it sounds extreme and overreaching.

But how else are we to describe what we are seeing?

Of the 10 Republicans in the House who v**ed to impeach Donald Trump for his role in fomenting the i**********n, four didn’t seek re-e******n and four lost their primaries. Only two have advanced to the general e******n, and those two were running in states that allow v**ers to v**e in any primary, regardless of their party affiliation

Polls have consistently shown that only a small fraction of Republicans believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected. He was, of course. (That fact apparently can’t be repeated often enough.)
And in fact, according to a Washington Post analysis published this week, in battleground states, nearly two-thirds of the Republican nominees for the state and federal offices with sway over e******ns believe the last e******n was s****n.

This is only getting worse. Last month, a CNN poll found that Republicans are now less likely to believe that democracy is under attack than they were earlier in the year, before the J*** 6 c*******e began unveiling its explosive revelations. Thirty-three percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the party should be very accepting of candidates who say the e******n was s****n; 39 percent more said the party should be somewhat accepting of those candidates.

Furthermore, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published in January found that the percentage of Republicans who say that violence against the government can sometimes be justified had climbed to 40 percent, compared with just 23 percent of Democrats. It should also be noted that 40 percent of white people said that violence could be justified compared with just 18 percent of Black people.

We have to stop saying that all these people are duped and led astray, that they are somehow under the spell of Trump and programmed by Fox News.

Propaganda and disinformation are real and insidious, but I believe that to a large degree, Republicans’ radicalization is willful.

Republicans have searched for multiple e******n cycles for the right vehicle and packaging for their white nationalism, religious nationalism, nativism, craven capitalism and sexism.

There was a time when they believed that it would need to be packaged in politeness — compassionate conservatism — and the party would eventually recommend a more moderate approach intended to branch out and broaden its appeal — in its autopsy after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss.
But Trump offered them an alternative, and they took it: Instead of running away from their bigotries, intolerances and oppression, they would run headlong into them. They would unapologetically embrace them.

This, to many Republicans, felt good. They no longer needed to hide. They could live their t***hs, no matter how reprehensible. They could come out of the closet, wrapped in their cruelty.

But the only way to make this strategy work and viable, since neither party dominates American life, was to back a strategy of minority rule and to disavow democracy.

A Pew Research Center poll found that between 2018 and 2021, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents gradually came to support more v****g restrictions.

In a December NPR/Ipsos poll, a majority of Democrats, independents and Republicans all thought that American democracy, and America itself, was in crisis, but no group believed it more than Republicans.

But this is a scenario in which different people look at the same issue from different directions and interpret it differently.

Republicans are the threat to our democracy because their own preferred form of democracy — one that excludes and suppresses, giving Republicans a fighting chance of maintaining control — is in danger.

For modern Republicans, democracy only works — and is only worth it — when and if they win"

Charles M. Blow

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Cheney is still a staunch conservative.

"However, her loss does crystallize something for us that many had already known: that the bar to clear in the modern Republican Party isn’t being sufficiently conservative but rather being sufficiently obedient to Donald Trump and his quest to deny and destroy democracy."

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

what a pantylood of daily BOO HOO from 9volt....will it never end??

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

Agreed-

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

JRiepe Loc: Southern Illinois

The Liberal CEO's of the social media sites who shut down the speech of Conservatives, Liberal news organizations shutting down the H****r B***n story labeling it Russian disinformation for fear of swaying a p**********l e******n and Biden setting up a disinformation board to label any t***hs they want shut down as disinformation doesn't sound democratic to me. It wasn't the Republicans who wanted to defund the police and empty the prisons or who cheered on the B*M violent r**ts. Letting millions of immigrants, most young males, come into our country is not problematic? We all have differences of opinion and my opinion is the Democrats are America's problem. It's the Democrats who are okay with b********l m**es competing in women's sports and sharing the same locker rooms and who are okay with teaching our children age inappropriate material. Maybe you feel it's okay to label parents who speak up at school board meetings as d******c t*******ts. When the Democrats want their ideology drilled into the head of every child in America from preschool through college that to me sounds like they want total control. Sorry, but I see the Democrats as the REAL danger.

DennyT Loc: Central Missouri woods

Wrong wrong wrong

The threat is the far right and far left .
Two sides of the same coin.
Both are ignorant

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Pure BS, Cheney was obsessed with Trump and a stranger to her district and its problems. Don't take my word for it that was a comment made by many of her constituents. Cheney who whose primary residence remains in Virginia, that is also the state she resided in when she ran to become a Senator from Wyoming, has lost touch with the v**ers of Wyoming and their concerns. Cheney chose to represent herself and her own national ambitions and not the people of Wyoming and their concerns.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Any who disagree are part of the problems we face.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Yes, a clear prescription for the healing of America, we should all just fall in line and support the establishment from both parties, after all, they have brought us to the place where we have arrived.

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

I think it would be great to neuter the pomposity of DC, by making many of the congressional proceedings virtual. Keep all these politicians in their home districts where their constituents can keep them informed of what's important. It also makes the jobs of lobbyists much harder.

The company I work for used to be run much better when the corporate offices were located on the site of one of our largest manufacturing facilities. The company officers had to walk through the same gate as the operators and they would naturally absorb the pulse of how things were running. Now they have a shiny office 20 miles for the nearest plant and many of the accountants and middle management have never set foot in the places that actually make the product.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Yeah, it's much more effective to run at the mouth with repeated bs partisan rhetoric.

David Martin Loc: Cary, NC

Same can easily be said of Democrats.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Cheney did not break with the conservative values of her constituents in Wyoming—-she broke with Trump when he incited an i**********n to o*******w the government, and plotted internally to stop certification. 92% of the time!

Because the v**ers in Wyoming are too dense to understand, or don’t care, about what Trump tried to do, is not the fault off Liz. Her oath was to the Constitution,
There is no turning back.

skylane5sp Loc: Puyallup, WA

You should probably stay away from Wyoming you condescending piece of crap.