What happens to the Republican Party now? (2 Viewers)

[MT15]

This election nonsense by Trump may end up splitting up the Republican Party. I just don’t see how the one third (?) who are principled conservatives can stay in the same party with Trump sycophants who are willing to sign onto the TX Supreme Court case.

We also saw the alt right types chanting “destroy the GOP” in Washington today because they didn’t keep Trump in power. I think the Q types will also hold the same ill will toward the traditional Republican Party. In fact its quite possible that all the voters who are really in a Trump personality cult will also blame the GOP for his loss. It’s only a matter of time IMO before Trump himself gets around to blaming the GOP.

There is some discussion of this on Twitter. What do you all think?

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

DeSatan being the brave culture warrior that he is and doing every thing he can to indoctrinate Florida school children into Republican's "Fear" ideology.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/10/florida-victims-of-communism-day/

Hilarious on so many levels. Bonus points for his pandering to Cuban-Americans.

 

[Saintamaniac]

If I lived in Florida, that would be an official holiday for my kids or I'd schedule any doctor's or dentist appointment on that day. My kids would come to know it as DDM day. Doctor visit, Dentist visit and Movie day.

 

[SFIDC3]

Another solution for a problem that doesn't actually exist....

 

[zztop]

can't say gay but can say commie

 

[MT15]

This is the fault of the press, IMO. For whatever reason they do not cover right wing extremism the same way they cover the left. This is why we have people who actually think US cities went up in flames last summer, while the insurrectionists get treated as people who just let a peaceful protest get out of hand. This is why the women peacefully protesting in front is houses get treated like criminals and get police called for leaving a chalk message.

 

[MT15]

Irony is dead, dead, dead:

 

[Optimus Prime]

Irony is dead, dead, dead:

I don’t know whether to like, laugh or sad this

 

[MT15]

I didn’t think they could find a worse candidate than Oz, but the Rs of PA have done it, by gosh:

 

[DaveXA]

I didn’t think they could find a worse candidate than Oz, but the Rs of PA have done it, by gosh:

She's trying to out bitgot the bigots? Damn.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Well, this seems normal
===============

Garrett Soldano released a pretty strange campaign ad last fall. The only words spoken in it came from a voice aggressively asking, “WHO?” and a chorus twice chanting “WE THE PEOPLE!” in response. The rest of the ad was 45 seconds of footage of Soldano firing various weapons at a gun range, set to a heavy, looping guitar riff.

Soldano is not running for sheriff, or even for a seat in the state House. He’s a Republican running to become the next governor of Michigan.

Soldano’s ad may have been absurd, but it wasn’t atypical. Republican candidates are turning to guns, guns, guns in a very big way ahead of the midterms, serving their potential constituents with a torrent of campaign ads, Instagram posts, and even Christmas cards of themselves toting and firing deadly weapons.

Conservatives using guns in campaign ads is nothing new, of course, but the way in which they’re being used in the wake of Trump’s term in office — and particularly in the wake the violent attack on the Capitol that ended it — portends a dark future for the party, and if it regains control of Washington, D.C., for the nation.

Ron Filipkowski, a researcher who tracks right-wing activity online and has highlighted several examples of Republicans going gun crazy in their campaign ads, says the use of guns in ads has “absolutely” ratcheted up this primary cycle compared to 2020 and 2018.

“I started noticing it and was like, ‘What’s going on?'” he says. “I think it’s almost like the [Lauren] Boebert-, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene-ization of the whole America First movement that’s driving the Republican Party now. It’s those candidates who are the ones that are doing it. I feel like the establishment candidates kind of feel like they have to do it too, now.”

Boebert built her successful 2020 campaign largely around guns, and last year released an ad promising to carry a Glock on Capitol Hill. Greene in an ad for her 2020 campaign cocked an assault rifle as she warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her district, and last fall blew up a Prius with a 50-caliber rifle.

Establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who last year released a video of himself at a shooting range in khakis, are struggling to keep up, but the point is that they feel like they need to try. This is what the party is now.............

But there’s something more insidious behind the sudden rash of pro-gun ads than protecting the Second Amendment. It’s a visual reminder that the party believes Jan. 6 was a good thing, that the attack on the Capitol was a valiant effort, and that Republicans deserve candidates who is willing to implicitly or explicitly condone the use of violence to reclaim a bygone version of the United States they’ve seen slip through their fingers under Democratic leadership — to make America great again.

“It’s an extremist movement,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “The GOP base, at least a wide swath of it, has been radicalized. There are very few things you can do to demonstrate you’re more extreme and intense on tribal issues than to insinuate, tacitly or overtly, violence, that you are willing to fight for the cause. That’s what it is. It’s not a Second Amendment issue. It’s saying, ‘I’m this intense. I’m this extreme. I’m willing to go to these measures to fight for our tribe.’ That’s what it’s all about.”..........

“The Second Amendment has always been a defensive posture,” Madrid continues. “It’s always been don’t take my guns. What we are moving into now is something foundationally different. It’s now advocating that gun ownership and bearing arms is a virtue. It’s not a right. It’s almost an obligation. … There’s a desire to see a society that is centralized on this type of weaponry. There’s a lot of paranoia involved here, but it’s also demonstrative of a society that a lot of these members feel is out of their control. They feel quote unquote America is gone. It’s behind them. It’s already been taken, and the only way to defend themselves from whatever that boogeyman is, is to have a stockpile of gold bullion, canned goods, and a ton of weaponry.”

Madrid, like Filipkowski, acknowledges that the use of guns in political ads is “growing,” and that by 2024 Republicans are going to be blowing stuff up. “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says. “There’s the 1776 rhetoric and there’s the patriot rhetoric, and there’s the American flag that’s always waved. It’s this absurd definition of what American is, and it’s getting more and more extreme in the Republican Party every election cycle.”.............

MSN

www.msn.com

Another article on this
=================

On 25 April, the former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, now running for US Senate, posted a videoon Twitter of him and Donald Trump Jr, firing semi-automatic rifles at a range.

“Striking fear in the hearts of liberals everywhere,” the former president’s son said.

In the accompanying post, Greitens wrote: “Striking fear into the hearts of liberals, RINOs, and the fake media.”

Greitens, a former Navy Seal, shared the video even though a woman whom he had an affair with accused him of tying her up and tearing her clothes off without her consent, and his ex-wife, Sheena, accused him of knocking her down and hitting one of their sons hard enough to knock one of his teeth loose, according to an affidavit filed as part of a child custody dispute.

She also alleged that he purchased a gun, refused to tell her where it was and threatened to kill himself unless she expressed public support for him.

Greitens’ gun-focused messaging is concerning, according to researchers who study links between communication and political violence, not only because more than a third of the mass shooters in recent years also had a history of committing domestic violence, according to a Bloomberg report.

But it’s also part of a significant increase among politicians – largely Republicans – in recent years in references to guns and threatening language in campaign ads, according to researchers.

That rhetoric contributes to polarization in our society and can translate to physical violence, they say.

Given the tense political climate, researchers expect rhetoric from rightwing political figures to continue to coarsen and lead to more violence before the pendulum swings back to a less charged time.

“Violence is in politics as a violation of the idea that people have an equal say in the political process of choosing their governments and of being able to express themselves freely,” said Nathan Kalmoe, professor of political communication at Louisiana State University and author of Radical American Partisanship. “Clearly this kind of messaging, where you’re calling out political opponents while you’re shooting at a gun range, is a kind of a violent threat.”

Since Donald Trump became president in 2016, the number of threats against members of Congress has soared, according to data provided by the Capitol police to news organizations. That year, there were 902 threats against the lawmakers. In 2021, there were 9,600……

Missouri Senate primary highlights rise of violent rhetoric on the right

In an era of polarization, candidates posing with guns and using extreme language about opponents threatens more violence

www.theguardian.com

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Greitens, a former Navy Seal, shared the video even though a woman whom he had an affair with accused him of tying her up and tearing her clothes off without her consent, and his ex-wife, Sheena, accused him of knocking her down and hitting one of their sons hard enough to knock one of his teeth loose, according to an affidavit filed as part of a child custody dispute.

She also alleged that he purchased a gun, refused to tell her where it was and threatened to kill himself unless she expressed public support for him.

She could have done us all a big favor and not expressed her support!

 

[Optimus Prime]

Guess this can go here. I've seen some conservative humor and it is awful

The conservative version of the Daily Show (mentioned in the article) was so bad I swear it was cancelled during a commercial break
================================================

Since the golden days of political satire in the early 2000s, left-leaning journalists and comedy critics have wondered — with a mix of smugness and genuine curiosity — why conservatives aren’t funny. Why, these critics ask, are the comedic bits at CPAC so terrible, and where is the conservative Jon Stewart and why hasn’t there been a right-of-center rejoinder to Saturday Night Live?

The various explanations for the right’s comedic deficiencies all circle the same basic thesis: that there is some sort of intrinsic contradiction between conservatism and comedy. As the academic Amber Day put it her book Satire and Dissent, “The nature of conservatism does not meet the conditions necessary for political satire to flourish. … [Conservatism] originates from a place that repudiates humor.”

But is that true?

For the past three years, Matt Sienkiewicz, an associate professor of communication and international studies at Boston College, and Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, have immersed themselves in the world of conservative comedy. The findings of their inquiry, which they detail in their new book, That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them, might come as a surprise to devotees of the Daily Show: Conservative humorists aren’t merely catching up to their liberal counterparts in terms of reach and popularity.

They’ve already caught them — and, in some cases, surpassed them, even as the liberal mainstream has continued to write conservative comedy off as a contradiction in terms......

Liberals Should Be Worried About the Conservative Comedy Scene

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

You don't hear much about conservative comics... not because they are being cancelled but because they are usually not funny. Tim Allen is the only one I can think of that is entertaining and had a successful career.

 

[MT15]

 

[DaveXA]

Not many people can do it, but this guy has managed to get a solid majority of Democrats and Republicans to support Ukraine. Not an easy feat.

 

[MT15]

DeSantis strikes again. I’m no lawyer, but this doesn’t seem very compatible with the Constitution. And I read that the SC upheld anti-abortion protestors’ right to picket the houses of clinic workers.

Either way, just another example why DeSantis is NOT a small government conservative. There seems to be hardly any issue he isn’t willing to insert the government into.

 

[MT15]

So, what is it about the tax exemption for churches? Is is true that they are supposed to refrain from telling people how to vote? I’ve heard that my whole life, maybe it’s a myth? Or is this just one more convention that conservatives are trashing in their panic?

 

[cuddlemonkey]

So, what is it about the tax exemption for churches? Is is true that they are supposed to refrain from telling people how to vote? I’ve heard that my whole life, maybe it’s a myth? Or is this just one more convention that conservatives are trashing in their panic?

They're supposed to refrain, yeah. The IRS just doesn't enforce it. Also, Greg Locke is a forking douchebag.