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Archonex posted:So sounds like I was right to wonder if it was sociopathy then. Seems like he just has no remorse for his actions and intends to keep going until he's stopped, either by someone with more power than him or his own actions sabotaging himself past the point of no return. It was defamation and slander, so civil lawsuit stuff, rather than go-to-jail levels of illegal. He paid some actors to read a script describing sexual assault accusations, and then anonymously released a video presenting the Dem candidate as the subject of those accusations. When he got caught and sued, the local party wanted to condemn him and publicly call on him to resign. He responded that he wouldn't resign, and that if they issued such a public statement he would go nuclear on them. They went ahead and issued that statement anyway, and two days later Capps was on TV claiming that the head of the local GOP personally instructed him to make the video. Except that earlier the same day, Capps had a secret meeting with his co-conspirators where they decided who to blame for the video, cooked up cover stories that would fit the evidence in case a reporter tried to dig into it, and so on. Real class acts. quote:A secret recording released Friday shows that three Republican officials sought to frame the county’s Republican chairman for a falsified ad they put together smearing then-mayoral candidate Brandon Whipple. One compared their mission to that of the man who shot Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. “Us Republicans, we all agree,” Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said. “The murder of George Tiller was bad. But am I sad that he’s dead? No. I’m just glad I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.” Tiller was assassinated in 2009 by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder during a Sunday morning service while Tiller was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 04:00 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 11:53 |
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Trumpists obviously aren't, but what matters is what the rest of the republican party does. Everyone else in the primary benefits when Trump falls out. Nobody benefits from pushing him out (and in fact bears a heavy cost for doing it). Surprising noone: Republicans solve the tragedy of the commons by just letting the most obnoxious neighbor burn the field to ashes. Shitposting from a Christmas Eve airport, the least depressing way to post!
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 04:15 |
I'll believe it when I see it. And I'll have to see it more than once.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 04:41 |
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FlamingLiberal posted:I’ll believe the GOP is abandoning Trump only when it happens They'll abandon trump when they can figure out who they can rally around. They don't exactly have a super deep bench at the moment and nobody there really screams super star. They had so many people wash out in the 2016 primary and now have the stink of failure on them. Maybe Desantis could pull off a plurality in a primary against Trump, but it doesn't exactly feel inevitable. Kemp? Murkowski makes a centrist bid? The Glumslinger fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Dec 25, 2022 |
# ? Dec 25, 2022 04:48 |
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I'm wondering if this is DeSantis' doing yet again https://twitter.com/NoahGrayCNN/status/1606833110519275523?s=20&t=B2f6OphwuS9U0eWrpbS19w https://twitter.com/NoahGrayCNN/status/1606850219341414401?s=20&t=B2f6OphwuS9U0eWrpbS19w Really glad that we're busing migrants up to freezing northern states to make a dumb political statement
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 05:08 |
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Looks like the knives are coming out for Trump, or at least bob costa seems to believe so. On a personal anecdote note, I've heard republicans I talk to say that they want Trump prosecuted if only to keep him from spoiling 2024, which is definitely a 180. The problem with our, approaching decade long, library of articles about how the knives are out for Trump and how's he going to survive when the party hates him is that all of them are meaningless. He's never been popular with the politicians and established powers of the the party. From the start he basically forced his way into leadership by winning against all the favored and unfavored sons. From the start the party apparatus very clearly bent the knee with all the passion and fervor of the Necromongers bowing to Riddick because "You keep what you kill". Of course they don't want the guy they hate and who they see as making their cushy lives in the halls of power more difficult to win again. Let me know when the articles about Trump rallies looking like Hillary events drop. Edge & Christian posted:The article linked gives a rundown: How anyone looks at this man and thinks "Brick Man", instead of "Wall Guy" I don't know. I remember his brief virality, and nobody was talking about Brick Man they were all taking about the guy who dressed like The Wall to get on stage. Archonex posted:As a side thing to this, I know people say that Desantis is too much of a vicious thug to succeed in a national election but I do wonder if they aren't making the same mistake as they made with Trump. The hard R voters don't give a flying gently caress if a person is personable. The ones that are ride or die for Trump have a lot of crossover with the ones that will pull the lever for anyone that says they'll hurt whichever group they hate at the time. And you know that Desantis is going to go on the whole "We have to DeSantis' problem is that he has little if any charisma, is a coward, and has no ability to think on his feet. The hateful people who are champing at the bit for all of DeSantis' cruelties will jump behind almost any candidate. Despite all of the things that should disqualify Trump from every succeeding in getting even a single vote, the dude is a consummate entertainer who is the embodiment of the fusion of Carnival Barker and Reality TV. The result is that there is a significant number of votes that follow only Trump in the primary, and that gives him a very favorable position that other candidates don't have in most primary scenarios. If you're looking for a thug bully there's going to be no shortage of choices no matter the size of the field in 2024. So far DeSantis isn't bringing any more to the party/media designated front runner table than the last Florida Governor to be there.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 05:13 |
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Gyges posted:How anyone looks at this man and thinks "Brick Man", instead of "Wall Guy" I don't know. I remember his brief virality, and nobody was talking about Brick Man they were all taking about the guy who dressed like The Wall to get on stage.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 05:18 |
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FlamingLiberal posted:I'm wondering if this is DeSantis' doing yet again At some point this becomes attempted murder right or at least manslaughter? Abducting people and leaving them in dangerous conditions?
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 05:37 |
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socialsecurity posted:At some point this becomes attempted murder right or at least manslaughter? Abducting people and leaving them in dangerous conditions? The bitter cynic in me suspects that there's somehow enough wiggle room and "Well TECHNICALLY..." that he'd either wiggle out of it on a technicality, or it'd be a Kyle Rittenhouse situation where the prosecution keeps stepping on rakes because they're more interested in trying to make some big statement than in presenting the evidence and making a compelling case.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 05:52 |
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FlamingLiberal posted:I'm wondering if this is DeSantis' doing yet again I'm sure Jesus would approve of treating the needy this way.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 06:23 |
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Gyges posted:DeSantis' problem is that he has little if any charisma, is a coward, and has no ability to think on his feet. The hateful people who are champing at the bit for all of DeSantis' cruelties will jump behind almost any candidate. Despite all of the things that should disqualify Trump from every succeeding in getting even a single vote, the dude is a consummate entertainer who is the embodiment of the fusion of Carnival Barker and Reality TV. The result is that there is a significant number of votes that follow only Trump in the primary, and that gives him a very favorable position that other candidates don't have in most primary scenarios. It's also important to remember that Trump won in part because he was, in legislative history, a blank slate, while simultaneously being a household name already. He was a long-time celebrity of trashy reputation, but he had never served in office, and his promises were all over the place, vague, and it was easy to read him as being anything you wanted him to be. Does he have a health care plan? He says he does. Is the wall talk just red meat for the Republican primary before he mellows out in office? Hell, why not? He was an outsider the party spent the whole primary trying to bury, so can't just assume he'll be another Republican. He spent his campaign throwing things at the wall and repeating whatever got the loudest applause, and you could find news stories saying everything about him. And you sure couldn't show any voting record or signed legislation proving otherwise, since he had none. Either way, he won a lot of votes from people who thought he was a moderate, compared to that known arch-liberal Clinton. Were those people idiots? Well yeah. But that doesn't apply to someone who's party establishment. DeSantis isn't Trump. He's just Jeb or Walker, in a post-Trump Republican party. Could he win? As much as anyone. But he absolutely won't win in the same way Trump 2016 did.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 06:37 |
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socialsecurity posted:At some point this becomes attempted murder right or at least manslaughter? Abducting people and leaving them in dangerous conditions? Probably just negligence or something. They are going willingly, albeit under false pretenses, and it's highly unlikely that the transporters are actually intending to kill them. Depends on exactly what promises were made to them about the destination, I suppose.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 07:16 |
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Main Paineframe posted:Probably just negligence or something. They are going willingly, albeit under false pretenses, and it's highly unlikely that the transporters are actually intending to kill them. Depends on exactly what promises were made to them about the destination, I suppose. At this point I'm not even sure if someone actually dying while in transit on one of these human trafficking PR stunts would even deter DeSantis from continuing them, let alone see him even fined for it much less prosecuted.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 08:19 |
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nine-gear crow posted:At this point I'm not even sure if someone actually dying while in transit on one of these human trafficking PR stunts would even deter DeSantis from continuing them, let alone see him even fined for it much less prosecuted. Why do you think that wouldn't encourage him?
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 08:21 |
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Gyges posted:The problem with our, approaching decade long, library of articles about how the knives are out for Trump and how's he going to survive when the party hates him is that all of them are meaningless. He's never been popular with the politicians and established powers of the the party. From the start he basically forced his way into leadership by winning against all the favored and unfavored sons. trump gets like .2% of the press and clicks and views that he got at any point between 2015 and 2020. the thing is that the republicans don't actually need to knife him, he's already politically DOA and 3 elections in a row have shown that Trumpism is not a winning strategy. In particular they've shown conclusively that Trump's personal brand of insane anti-democratic bullshit is electoral cancer. the reason why I pay attention to 'knives out for trump' is because 1) it's almost certainly a necessary step for republicans to move past him to start winning national elections again and 2) figuring out how to jettison trump while not driving away 100% of trump supporters is the defining task for the republican party right now and 3) that's basically an impossible task, but also most Rs are aware by this point that it has to happen if trump wasn't completely dead politically there'd be even a single trump supporter trying to scheme to get him elected again. instead every plan to get trump back into power involves basically some form of elaborate coup because even his supporters know he's cooked
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 08:50 |
FlamingLiberal posted:I'm wondering if this is DeSantis' doing yet again It's apparently Abbott: https://twitter.com/NoahGrayCNN/status/1606866037126975490 CNN got the scoop on this (sounds like they heard first from a source in local law enforcement). Looks like only local news, WJLA has any separate coverage. Law enforcement seemed to have some advance notice of the second and third buses, at least once the first one arrived. There's no coverage on any of the conservative platforms that would usually carry this, so I think it was particularly unplnned (and of course the optics for Republicans aren't very good, even among their base, with this particular timing). edit: in case that tweet isn't clear, the DC government is paying to bus the migrants from Harris's residence to a local church, and based on other accounts it's all in cooperation with local activist groups who usually act as the safety net for this sort of activity.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 10:51 |
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Tayter Swift posted:To be fair (ugh) I dunno what the hell a candidate should be doing right now, over a year before the nearest primary. I don’t think anyone else has declared yet. Seriously, once he targets a couple primary opponents to beatup on he'll be back in the mix. He's still leading the republican primary polls and his support numbers have stayed constant. I wouldn't count him out just yet
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 14:23 |
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The thing that gets me is that, for all the handwringing from the Sununus of the world, when asked directly if they’d vote for Trump if he was nominated, they all say yes. They can’t exactly try to cut the cord while still saying they’re happy to vote for the guy.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 14:31 |
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BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:Seriously, once he targets a couple primary opponents to beatup on he'll be back in the mix. He's still leading the republican primary polls and his support numbers have stayed constant. I wouldn't count him out just yet Yeah, a huge part of Trump's appeal has been on beating up on other Republican party figureheads that everyone hates. Once he has momentum and a few skulls under his belt, poo poo changes. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 14:32 |
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the future of the republican party is whoever has enough charisma to co-opt the largest plurality of their voting base. it's Trump until he loses the primary, regardless of what polls or articles say. Astroturfing DeSantis might work, pundits are hedging their bets, but everything is hypothetical until something actually happens.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 14:49 |
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Timmy Age 6 posted:The thing that gets me is that, for all the handwringing from the Sununus of the world, when asked directly if they’d vote for Trump if he was nominated, they all say yes. They can’t exactly try to cut the cord while still saying they’re happy to vote for the guy. it's VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO, just for the other team.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 15:04 |
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Herstory Begins Now posted:trump gets like .2% of the press and clicks and views that he got at any point between 2015 and 2020. the thing is that the republicans don't actually need to knife him, he's already politically DOA and 3 elections in a row have shown that Trumpism is not a winning strategy. In particular they've shown conclusively that Trump's personal brand of insane anti-democratic bullshit is electoral cancer. Being general election poison doesn't matter until the general election. Unlike Democrats in the primary, Republicans don't give a gently caress about electability in the primary. So there are no schemes really needed for the front runner to get elected again before the primary ends. Donny is still their guy until something actually happens.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 15:36 |
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They absolutely do care about electability though that obviously isn't universally the primary concern. Anyways practically it's fine if they don't get their poo poo together because it just means more time that they aren't viable in national elections
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 15:56 |
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Also helps that from what we've seen Republican primaries are genuinely more democratic than Democratic ones, the party doesn't generally put its thumb on the scale because there's nothing about Trump's campaigning or ambitions they actually disagree with in the slightest.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 16:11 |
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"Electability" is such a subjective phrase anyways, because what makes someone "electable?" For a lot of Dems, electable meant "Allegedly able to get republicans to vote alongside the dems on things." For other dems, it was all about who had the most mature grandpa aesthetic to counter the Very Rude Bad Orange Man and who could promise them a return to the status quo so they could go back to brunch without having to pretend to care about things anymore. Republicans, at least the average voter, sees electability as "who will do the best job of owning the libs" and "who will do the best job of telling me that all of my problems are actually the fault of some black lady buying a box hot pockets with food stamps"
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 16:18 |
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Herstory Begins Now posted:They absolutely do care about electability though that obviously isn't universally the primary concern. Anyways practically it's fine if they don't get their poo poo together because it just means more time that they aren't viable in national elections the republican legislatures in several states, including swing states, have set up legal/quasi-legal (untested in court) ways to put their guys in place after state-wide and district contests without having to actually win elections, in addition to gerrymandering. Legalized (at least as far as state laws are concerned) alternative slates of electors for the presidential election chosen by republican state legislature in swing states may be their solution to electability issues of presidential candidates going forward. I don't know if that stuff will hold up, that may depend on congress and the courts but the outlook isn't great imo.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 17:30 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Also helps that from what we've seen Republican primaries are genuinely more democratic than Democratic ones, the party doesn't generally put its thumb on the scale because there's nothing about Trump's campaigning or ambitions they actually disagree with in the slightest. As a reminder, the Republican leaders were absolutely trying to prevent Trump from getting nominated in the 2016 primaries: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party.html The difference between him and people such as Sanders, for example, was that Trump had enough support among voters to overcome these efforts. Sanders did not.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 21:02 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Also helps that from what we've seen Republican primaries are genuinely more democratic than Democratic ones, the party doesn't generally put its thumb on the scale because there's nothing about Trump's campaigning or ambitions they actually disagree with in the slightest. After the 2017 reforms, Democratic superdelegates can no longer vote in the first round, so assuming a candidate is chosen by then (which the primary system is set up to strongly encourage), the Republican and Democratic parties are equal in how democratic the process is - barring the issue of caucuses vs. primaries.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 21:55 |
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BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:Seriously, once he targets a couple primary opponents to beatup on he'll be back in the mix. He's still leading the republican primary polls and his support numbers have stayed constant. I wouldn't count him out just yet Kinda this. If we get to another 10 clown car primary like 2016, Trump still probably has something like 30% of the base on lockdown and the rest spread out the remaining 70%. His supporters are oddly loyal and have been accurately described as a cult to an extent that I've honestly never seen anything quite like it. In a big primary field, I think he can win. If the GOP only has 3 or 4 primary candidates though, it might go differently and I think that would work against him. I also think a lot of people here underestimate what DeSantis can do and well liked he is in the party. He's insanely popular on talk radio, FOX News and certainly here in Florida. IMO, Republican voters would have no problem whatsoever turning out for him if he gets the nomination and Biden isn't a strong opponent either, slogging along with very low approval ratings. Even democrats don't like him. My perception of DeSantis may be clouded by living here in Florida in the belly of the beast but folks really seem wild about him.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 22:09 |
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I'll believe the GOP is abandoning Trump when Trump is dead. They're all faithless opportunists who will say he's the worst human being to ever walk the earth until his popularity reaches 51% among GOP voters and then they'll fawn over him. Never forget what was said about Trump before the GOP primaries.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 22:12 |
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BiggerBoat posted:Kinda this. Yeah, Desantis and these hardcore right wingers and right wing christians types he panders to are loving monsters, full stop. There's just no way to put it other than that, as horrible as it is. And if the past few years have taught me anything it's that other bigoted monsters love to see that trans blood flow now that they can't persecute other minorities as easily. That alone will probably carry him a ways, with how the Republicans and their white supremacists/christian fascist types have been replaying their lines from their old book of lies from the days of black civil rights and gay civil rights against transgender people to justify using trans people as their new punching bag to get people out to the polls and make a buck. Understand also that this is the state where when they banned trans care members of the crowd pointed out that if their banning of trans care for minors and adults occurred it would straight up literally kill people. To be clear, the Republicans were told in no uncertain terms (After trying to pre-empt any real credible sources from testifying to avoid the shame of being called out on their bullshit.) that there would be blood on their hands (Literally, verbatim this. I can't stress this enough.). The response of the Republicans to this? Literally, it was a nonchalant and enthusiastic, "That's okay!". Then the idea of a registry for trans people like in the immediate pre holocaust days of Nazi Germany was floated in Texas and Florida Republicans were nodding along enthusiastically. So it's really hard to overstate just how loving nasty and unworthy of any dignity, presumptions of decency, or respect the right wing christian types and other openly hateful parts of the general R base at this point are. They're just the lowest, dirtiest, scum of the earth with an eye for hurting other people for their own gain. We're talking, if they were on fire you'd be doing the world a favor by not pissing on them and just letting them burn. And these same sorts of people are obviously not going to stop with just trans people. The same groups that push this poo poo so that it becomes the Republican platform think that women shouldn't vote, black people shouldn't have had a civil rights movement ("they were asking for too much" to quote one person I talked too), and LGBT people should be killed (This one gets said when they think you're on their side in private.). And don't get me started on their view on "illegal immigrants". Which tend to be legal, it's just they have darker than potato paste white skin so clearly they don't belong here in their eyes. TL;DR: People should be concerned about Desantis running, and it's concerning that they assume that he's going to blowout with the Republicans due to personality issues. Dude has more grassroots support amongst all the genocidal shitheads festering in the red areas of the country than you'd expect. Especially since they want the executive so they can do bans like the bans in Florida on a national level in contradiction of the public will. Worse still, he could put on a nice enough face to make people glad that he's not Trump, which would lure low info voters in. It's part of why he's making so many public appearances now. Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Dec 26, 2022 |
# ? Dec 25, 2022 22:29 |
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Mendrian posted:I'll believe the GOP is abandoning Trump when Trump is dead. They're all faithless opportunists who will say he's the worst human being to ever walk the earth until his popularity reaches 51% among GOP voters and then they'll fawn over him. Never forget what was said about Trump before the GOP primaries. An Increasingly Isolated Trump
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 22:38 |
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Looks like the knives are coming out for Trump, or at least bob costa seems to believe so. I feel like I have heard stories like this since he descended the elevator
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 23:08 |
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Koos Group posted:After the 2017 reforms, Democratic superdelegates can no longer vote in the first round, so assuming a candidate is chosen by then (which the primary system is set up to strongly encourage), the Republican and Democratic parties are equal in how democratic the process is - barring the issue of caucuses vs. primaries. Actually, this isn't entirely correct, because there's also an issue of winner-take-all delegates vs. proportional per state, so the party with more proportional states would be more democratic. I've heard this is the Democrats, but don't know for certain.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 23:16 |
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Koos Group posted:Actually, this isn't entirely correct, because there's also an issue of winner-take-all delegates vs. proportional per state, so the party with more proportional states would be more democratic. I've heard this is the Democrats, but don't know for certain. Winner-take-all was only a Republican primary thing last I knew. Democrats don't do that. That was a big part of cementing Trump's lead in 2016 as I recall. When he could shoulder the smaller candidates aside, they got nothing, making it harder to build momentum again. And seriously the Republican 2016 primary was more fiercely fought than Dem 2016 or 2020, and the establishment gunned hard at Trump. They just didn't have a good angle to go after him that both mattered to the voters and wouldn't hurt the party message (seeing as Trump just ran on a Republican platform with less nice phrasing.) And he was good at smacking down any of the others that seemed to have any chance of rising above the pack. And on top of that, they kept clinging past the point of no hope, dragging each other down. It was pretty clear that Bernie 2020 hoped for the same thing to happen for him, but didn't make any real effort to force or capitalize on it. Not that I know how one would do such a thing.
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# ? Dec 25, 2022 23:32 |
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Archonex posted:This is a charged question that is liable to set off people on this forum and perhaps even start a string of nothing matters doomerism from certain types, but fine, i'll bite: Hey thanks, this certainly helped frame things in ways I had overlooked, or not considered, and I appreciate the time it took to write all that up!
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# ? Dec 26, 2022 02:10 |
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More substations vandalized, this time in Washington State: https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1607156737143873536 Not sure if it's related to the Moore County shooting of a substation to disrupt a drag show but it doesn't feel great, especially with the power systems struggling in places to keep power already with this cold snap!
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# ? Dec 26, 2022 03:35 |
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Lol cool glad I need to really considering doing the project to hook my furnace upto my generator because this country is full of psychopaths
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# ? Dec 26, 2022 04:00 |
Archonex posted:As a side thing to this, I know people say that Desantis is too much of a vicious thug to succeed in a national election but I do wonder if they aren't making the same mistake as they made with Trump. The hard R voters don't give a flying gently caress if a person is personable. The ones that are ride or die for Trump have a lot of crossover with the ones that will pull the lever for anyone that says they'll hurt whichever group they hate at the time. And you know that Desantis is going to go on the whole "We have to I don't think Desantis' problem is that he's a thug, I think his problem is that he looks like a giant baby that's seconds away from crying and if there's people that don't instantly see that then Trump is going to hammer it into their heads.
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# ? Dec 26, 2022 05:27 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 11:53 |
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:I don't think Desantis' problem is that he's a thug, I think his problem is that he looks like a giant baby that's seconds away from crying and if there's people that don't instantly see that then Trump is going to hammer it into their heads. I mean, Rick Scott looks like Skeletor woke up one day and bought a discount human flesh suit at some sort of macabre dollar store to try and fit in with the conservatives and that guy has repeatedly gotten away with defrauding Florida taxpayers and later on the Republican party itself by blaming minorities and the poor so i'm not too certain his appearance is going to matter if he's saying the right shibboleths on which vulnerable people the Republicans want to hurt. Preferably Desantis should be tried for kidnapping and human trafficking, as the shithead has undeniably done that and the intent and implications behind it should keep him barred from political office for the rest of his life. Unfortunately given how easy it is to derail federal cases like that i'm not sure that's what will happen in time though, especially if the Republican party runs cover for him. Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Dec 26, 2022 |
# ? Dec 26, 2022 05:30 |