Buying off fascist voters
What Josh Hawley is teaching us.
https://stoehr.substack.com/p/buying-off-fascist-voters

Josh Hawley is the junior US senator from Missouri. He made news this morning, saying he’d help the president in his attempt to stay in power by objecting to the certification of electors on Jan. 6. That means the US Senate will debate the merits of the allegations, which are nil, before voting to approve the Electoral College vote.

Hawley is expected to be one of the leading GOP candidates in the 2024 election. The conventional wisdom says he’s doing this to get as much attention as he can from Donald Trump’s loyalest supporters. While I’m usually skeptical of the conventional wisdom, I think it’s right this time. Hawley isn’t going to the wall for Trump. In the end, he’ll vote to approve Joe Biden’s victory. This is sound and fury, but also nothing.

What’s interesting, I think, is Hawley’s opposition to Mitch McConnell—or at least the appearance of opposition. The Senate majority leader does not want to go through this song and dance, but inst7ead get on with the business of sabotaging the new president’s administration. McConnell knows Hawley’s gambit will fail, and fears failing to stop what the president is calling a stolen election might harm Kelly Loeffler’s and David Perdue’s reelection prospects, which will determine which party controls the Senate.

Hawley opposes, or at least appears to oppose, McConnell is another way. The top congressional Republican does not support giving each American $2,000 per month in covid-related economic relief, because Americans who are suffering are more likely to blame the guy in charge, which is to say Joe Biden, than they are the Republican Party. McConnell did the same thing to Barack Obama. When the former president asked the Republicans for help rebuilding America in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial panic, McConnell said his first priority was making sure Obama was a one-term president.

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A 20-Year-Old GOP Strategy Drew the Road Map for Trump’s Attempted Coup
Why George W. Bush succeeded where Trump failed
https://gen.medium.com/a-20-year-old-gop-strategy-drew-the-road-map-for-trumps-attempted-coup-2e38260e5ff7

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Writing in The Atlantic, Zeynep Tufecki captured the sentiments of many when she argued that Trump is “establishing a playbook for stealing elections by mobilizing executive, judicial, and legislative power to support the attempt.” A smarter politician will have greater success, or so the argument goes.

But, in reality, that playbook is well-established and has already been executed.

It was 20 years ago this week that the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bush v. Gore, effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush for an election he quite likely did not win.

The 2000 election was the most contested and narrowly decided presidential vote in more than 120 years. Bush lost the popular vote by half a million votes to his opponent, Vice President Al Gore, and his margin of victory in the decisive state of Florida was a mere 537 votes.

It's almost certain that more people in Florida intended to vote for Gore, and had all the state’s votes been counted, Democrats would have kept control of the White House. But due to an aggressive, take-no-prisoners approach by Republicans, as well as the unprecedented intervention of the United States Supreme Court, the doomsaying predictions of 2020 came true two decades ago.

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Arguably, the primary reason why secretaries of state like Brad Raffensperger in Georgia did not act like Katherine Harris and federal judges did not invoke Bush v. Gore in helping Trump’s legal effort is that the election simply wasn’t close enough to steal.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/30/republicans-freedom-force-squad-burgess-owens?

A group of incoming Republican congresspeople intends to counter the “radical agenda” of the Democratic party, with the self-professed goal of becoming the Republican party’s alternative to “the Squad” – a group of progressive congresswomen of color including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.

Calling themselves the Freedom Force, the Republicans say they will combat the “evil” of socialism and Marxism.

“We love our nation. This group will be talking against and giving a contrast to the hard left. We have the Freedom Force versus Squad; we have a group of people who believe in our country, believe in God, family, respect for women and authority, and another group who hates everything I just mentioned,” the Utah congressman-elect Burgess Owens told the Fox News host Laura Ingraham, speaking as a representative of the Freedom Force.

Owens said the group would aim to protect small business owners and the middle class. “Business ownership is the foundation of our freedom,” he said on Fox & Friends Weekend. “It’s where our middle class comes from.” He added that the middle class got its power from small businesses, while the left got its power “from misery.

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As a final warning to Democrats, he added: “You’re collateral damage if you run a business and you want to go to church and you want to put your kids in school; you’re collateral damage – that’s the way the evil Marxists and socialists roll.”

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