Quo Vadis GOP?

[alfred russel]

To paraphrase George S. Patton, only a pimp in a Louisiana whore-house carries a gold-colored M4.

Seems Patton was wrong. She clearly isn't a pimp; though I concede she might work in a whore-house.

[grumbler]

Seems Patton was wrong. She clearly isn't a pimp; though I concede she might work in a whore-house.

Those pointy elbows mean that, if she's working in a whore house, she's pimping, not being pimped.

[Eddie Teach]

Dude, she's definitely attractive enough to be pimped.

[grumbler]

Dude, she's definitely attractive enough to be pimped.

I guess I thought that the "pointy elbows" schtick was more widely known on Languish than it actually is.

[frunk]

Is this "gun chick" kind of persona en vogue amongst conservatives in the US nowadays?

Very much so. Has been for a few years.

It's been around for at least 30 years.  Take a listen to Negativland's Guns EP, which took audio from a VHS tape of Bikini models advertising/shooting guns.

[ulmont]

Is this "gun chick" kind of persona en vogue amongst conservatives in the US nowadays?

Very much so. Has been for a few years.

You meant "for a few decades."

[Habbaku]

I think I wrote what I meant.

It seems clear to me that the trend started much earlier, but doesn't seem to have come into full force until around the time of Palin. Now it's much more prevalent. Your interpretation of "en vogue" may vary.

[Syt]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jan-6-riot-capitol-police-house-republicans/2021/06/16/3ba60b7c-cee4-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html

GOP congressman refuses to shake hands with D.C. police officer who protected the Capitol on Jan. 6, officer says

Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.), who voted against awarding police officers the Congressional Gold Medal for their bravery in protecting the U.S. Capitol against violent, pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, refused to shake hands Wednesday with a D.C. police officer who responded to the violence, according to the officer.

Officer Michael Fanone was beaten unconscious after he voluntarily rushed to the Capitol in January to help defend it from those who breached the building. He suffered a concussion and a mild heart attack. In the months since, Fanone has been one of the leading voices pushing back against Republicans who have sought to play down the severity of what happened that day.

Joined by U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, Fanone returned to the Capitol on Wednesday, the day after 21 House Republicans voted against the Gold Medal resolution, in an effort to meet them and tell his story.

He said that he recognized Clyde at an elevator and that he and Dunn hopped in with the congressman.

"I simply extended my hand and said, 'How are you doing today, Congressman.' I knew immediately he recognized me by the way he reacted. He completely froze. He just stared at me," Fanone said in an interview.

Fanone said Clyde did not motion to shake his hand in return.

"I said, 'I'm sorry, you're not going to shake my hand?' " Fanone said he told Clyde.

He said Clyde answered, "I don't know who you are."

Fanone said he responded: "I'm sorry, sir, my name is Michael Fanone. I'm a D.C. police officer and I fought to defend the Capitol on Jan. 6." Fanone said he described being stunned repeatedly in the back of the neck and beaten unconscious, stripped of his badge and radio.

"His response was nothing," Fanone said. "He turned away from me, pulled out his cellphone and started thumbing through the apps." Fanone said Clyde turned on the camera app but did not point the phone in his direction. Fanone said he believes Clyde was trying to record audio of the encounter.

"After that, I just simply stood there," Fanone said.

He said Clyde bolted when the doors opened.

Fanone shared his encounter with Clyde with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who both tweeted about it.

"#BREAKING Officer Fanone just ran into @Rep_Clyde at Capitol (he's the "Jan 6 was a typical tour" guy). Fanone introduced himself as "someone who fought to defend the Capitol" and put out his hand. Clyde refused to shake it. To honor Trump, @HouseGOP will dishonor the police," Swalwell tweeted.

"I just called Officer Fanone and confirmed this story," Kinzinger tweeted. "This is really incredible. Also relayed an interaction he had with another members Chief of Staff that was really incredibly bad and disrespectful."

Clyde's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. An aide who answered the phone Thursday said Clyde's press secretary, Claire Hurley, was in a meeting and then, when pressed, said she would not take the call.

21 House Republicans vote against awarding Congressional Gold Medal to all police officers who responded on Jan. 6

Clyde, in addition to voting against the Gold Medal honor, said at a hearing last month on the Jan. 6 attack that the images from the day look like a "normal tourist visit."

Fanone did not meet any other representatives, and he said staff members were all cordial and polite, though he did confirm a run-in with James Braid, chief of staff for Rep. Matthew M. Rosendale (R-Mont.).

Rosendale was also among the 21 Republicans who voted against the Gold Medal.

Fanone said Braid "was super confrontational" and demanded his badge number, even after he said he provided his email address and telephone number. Fanone is on leave and is not on duty. Dunn had just gotten off duty and was wearing his uniform.

Fanone said the chief of staff "really got aggressive with Harry."

Fanone said he told Braid, "I'm simply here to schedule a meeting with the congressman to discuss my experience on Jan. 6."

Rosendale's spokesman, Harry Fones, confirmed that Fanone stopped by the office and met with Braid but said it wasn't an adversarial exchange.

"Two men came into our office, unannounced, one dressed in plainclothes and one in uniform including a firearm. Our chief politely asked if they were on duty and for their names as well as badge number, since we had individuals that had now entered our office, unannounced with a firearm and dressed as an officer," Fones said.

Fones said they wouldn't give their badge numbers, but Fanone, who was in plainclothes, gave his name and email address. Fones said Braid told them that they could meet with the congressman soon.

"Our office intends to follow up on that promise if they reach out," Fones said.

'Normal tourist visit': Republicans recast deadly Jan. 6 attack by pro-Trump mob

Kinzinger, who has been among the most outspoken in his party against efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results and in speaking against those who have refused to back an independent commission to investigate the insurrection, said it's a terrible blow to law enforcement officers who risked their lives that day not to feel supported by some of the men and women they protected.

"Every now and again I think we have to be at the bottom of how low we can get," Kinzinger said. "You don't have to admit you should have voted for [the Gold Medal] by shaking a guy's hand. The presence of these heroes can make some people uncomfortable."

[Sheilbh]

Interesting piece on the NYT. It's particularly striking because I think I said before but the bit of the American system that held up best in Trump's challenge to norms wasn't the courts or the formal checks and balances, but America's deep decentralised democracy - which it seems many Republicans across the country are looking to challenge/exercise more political control over how elections are run.

It also feels like Republicans are moving to a position that only they can be trusted to run elections and elections are only legitimate if they win. That's problematic:

How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections
In Georgia, Republicans are removing Democrats of color from local boards. In Arkansas, they have stripped election control from county authorities. And they are expanding their election power in many other states.
By Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein
June 19, 2021Updated 10:06 a.m. ET

LaGRANGE, Ga. — Lonnie Hollis has been a member of the Troup County election board in West Georgia since 2013. A Democrat and one of two Black women on the board, she has advocated Sunday voting, helped voters on Election Days and pushed for a new precinct location at a Black church in a nearby town.

But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local election law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, election board members were selected by both political parties, county commissioners and the three biggest municipalities in Troup County. Now, the G.O.P.-controlled county commission has the sole authority to restructure the board and appoint all the new members.

"I speak out and I know the laws," Ms. Hollis said in an interview. "The bottom line is they don't like people that have some type of intelligence and know what they're doing, because they know they can't influence them."

Ms. Hollis is not alone. Across Georgia, members of at least 10 county election boards have been removed, had their position eliminated or are likely to be kicked off through local ordinances or new laws passed by the state legislature. At least five are people of color and most are Democrats — though some are Republicans — and they will most likely all be replaced by Republicans.

Ms. Hollis and local officials like her have been some of the earliest casualties as Republican-led legislatures mount an expansive takeover of election administration in a raft of new voting bills this year.

G.O.P. lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, asserted more control over state election boards, made it easier to overturn election results, and pursued several partisan audits and inspections of 2020 results.

Republican state lawmakers have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials, according to the States United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization that aims to protect democratic norms. Of those, 24 have been enacted into law across 14 states.

G.O.P. lawmakers in Georgia say the new measures are meant to improve the performance of local boards, and reduce the influence of the political parties. But the laws allow Republicans to remove local officials they don't like, and because several of them have been Black Democrats, voting rights groups fear that these are further attempts to disenfranchise voters of color.

The maneuvers risk eroding some of the core checks that stood as a bulwark against former President Donald J. Trump as he sought to subvert the 2020 election results. Had these bills been in place during the aftermath of the election, Democrats say, they would have significantly added to the turmoil Mr. Trump and his allies wrought by trying to overturn the outcome. They worry that proponents of Mr. Trump's conspiracy theories will soon have much greater control over the levers of the American elections system.

"It's a thinly veiled attempt to wrest control from officials who oversaw one of the most secure elections in our history and put it in the hands of bad actors," said Jena Griswold, the chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and the current Colorado secretary of state. "The risk is the destruction of democracy."

Officials like Ms. Hollis are responsible for decisions like selecting drop box and precinct locations, sending out voter notices, establishing early voting hours and certifying elections. But the new laws are targeting high-level state officials as well, in particular secretaries of state — both Republican and Democratic — who stood up to Mr. Trump and his allies last year.

Republicans in Arizona have introduced a bill that would largely strip Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, of her authority over election lawsuits, and then expire when she leaves office. And they have introduced another bill that would give the Legislature more power over setting the guidelines for election administration, a major task currently carried out by the secretary of state.

Under Georgia's new voting law, Republicans significantly weakened the secretary of state's office after Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is the current secretary, rebuffed Mr. Trump's demands to "find" votes. They removed the secretary of state as the chair of the state election board and relieved the office of its voting authority on the board.

Kansas Republicans in May overrode a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, to enact laws stripping the governor of the power to modify election laws and prohibiting the secretary of state, a Republican who repeatedly vouched for the security of voting by mail, from settling election-related lawsuits without the Legislature's consent.

And more Republicans who cling to Mr. Trump's election lies are running for secretary of state, putting a critical office within reach of conspiracy theorists. In Georgia, Representative Jody Hice, a Republican who voted against certifying President Biden's victory, is running against Mr. Raffensperger. Republican candidates with similar views are running for secretary of state in Nevada, Arizona and Michigan.

"In virtually every state, every election administrator is going to feel like they're under the magnifying glass," said Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser to the States United Democracy Center.

More immediately, it is local election officials at the county and municipal level who are being either removed or stripped of their power.

In Arkansas, Republicans were stung last year when Jim Sorvillo, a three-term state representative from Little Rock, lost re-election by 24 votes to Ashley Hudson, a Democrat and local lawyer. Elections officials in Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, were later found to have accidentally tabulated 327 absentee ballots during the vote-counting process, 27 of which came from the district.

Mr. Sorvillo filed multiple lawsuits aiming to stop Ms. Hudson from being seated, and all were rejected. The Republican caucus considered refusing to seat Ms. Hudson, then ultimately voted to accept her.

But last month, Arkansas Republicans wrote new legislation that allows a state board of election commissioners — composed of six Republicans and one Democrat — to investigate and "institute corrective action" on a wide variety of issues at every stage of the voting process, from registration to the casting and counting of ballots to the certification of elections. The law applies to all counties, but it is widely believed to be aimed at Pulaski, one of the few in the state that favor Democrats.

The author of the legislation, State Representative Mark Lowery, a Republican from a suburb of Little Rock, said it was necessary to remove election power from the local authorities, who in Pulaski County are Democrats, because otherwise Republicans could not get a fair shake.

"Without this legislation, the only entity you could have referred impropriety to is the prosecuting attorney, who is a Democrat, and possibly not had anything done," Mr. Lowery said in an interview. "This gives another level of investigative authority to a board that is commissioned by the state to oversee elections."

Asked about last year's election, Mr. Lowery said, "I do believe Donald Trump was elected president."

A separate new Arkansas law allows a state board to "take over and conduct elections" in a county if a committee of the legislature determines that there are questions about the "appearance of an equal, free and impartial election."

In Georgia, the legislature passed a unique law for some counties. For Troup County, State Representative Randy Nix, a Republican, said he had introduced the bill that restructured the county election board — and will remove Ms. Hollis — only after it was requested by county commissioners. He said he was not worried that the commission, a partisan body with four Republicans and one Democrat, could exert influence over elections.

"The commissioners are all elected officials and will face the voters to answer for their actions," Mr. Nix said in an email.

Eric Mosley, the county manager for Troup County, which Mr. Trump carried by 22 points, said that the decision to ask Mr. Nix for the bill was meant to make the board more bipartisan. It was unanimously supported by the commission.

"We felt that removing both the Republican and Democratic representation and just truly choose members of the community that invest hard to serve those community members was the true intent of the board," Mr. Mosley said. "Our goal is to create both political and racial diversity on the board."

In Morgan County, east of Atlanta, Helen Butler has been one of the state's most prominent Democratic voices on voting rights and election administration. A member of the county board of elections in a rural, Republican county, she also runs the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, a group dedicated to protecting the voting rights of Black Americans and increasing their civic engagement.

But Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month, after Mr. Kemp signed a local bill that ended the ability of political parties to appoint members.

"I think it's all a part of the ploy for the takeover of local boards of elections that the state legislature has put in place," Ms. Butler said. "It is them saying that they have the right to say whether an election official is doing it right, when in fact they don't work in the day to day and don't understand the process themselves."

It's not just Democrats who are being removed. In DeKalb County, the state's fourth-largest, Republicans chose not to renominate Baoky Vu to the election board after more than 12 years in the position. Mr. Vu, a Republican, had joined with Democrats in a letter opposing an election-related bill that eventually failed to pass.

To replace Mr. Vu, Republicans nominated Paul Maner, a well-known local conservative with a history of false statements, including an insinuation that the son of a Georgia congresswoman was killed in "a drug deal gone bad."

Back in LaGrange, Ms. Hollis is trying to do as much as she can in the time she has left on the board. The extra precinct in nearby Hogansville, where the population is roughly 50 percent Black, is a top priority. While its population is only about 3,000, the town is bifurcated by a rail line, and Ms. Hollis said that sometimes it can take an exceedingly long time for a line of freight cars to clear, which is problematic on Election Days.

"We've been working on this for over a year," Ms. Hollis said, saying Republicans had thrown up procedural hurdles to block the process. But she was undeterred.

"I'm not going to sit there and wait for you to tell me what it is that I should do for the voters there," she said. "I'm going to do the right thing."

Nick Corasaniti covers national politics. He was one of the lead reporters covering Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016 and has been writing about presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns for The Times since 2011. @NYTnickc • Facebook

Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

[Oexmelin]

It also feels like Republicans are moving to a position that only they can be trusted to run elections and elections are only legitimate if they win. That's problematic:

Ya think? 

They aren't "moving" there. They've been there for a while. It began with the shock of Obama's election. That shock has been transformed into suspicion that he only could have won through some sort of manipulation. Fox has been hammering variations of this message: how could the country you know and love, have elected Obama/Democrats? Something must be fishy. The information/social bubble only contributes to this narrative: when everyone you know votes the same, and shares the same memes, it's easier to think the conspiracy narrative has merit.

Quite frankly, I think Syt's Facebook thread is a good historical resource to see how that transformation took place.

[Syt]

So, obviously some (a lot?) of this is going to be challenged in court, right? Which the Republicans have worked hard to fill with friendly judges? (though Trump picked judges did rule against him during his election nonsense, so there's that)

And this partisan hijacking of the electoral process in states has to lead to some sort of backlash eventually, right?

[DGuller]

I spent the day yesterday playing poker in Atlantic City, and inadvertently getting an up close and personal look at the mindset of Trumpists.  I was surrounded by three middle-aged white guys at my table who seemed to be middle class, and being a bald approaching-middle-age guy myself, they probably assumed I was one of them, or didn't care if I wasn't.  I was planning on taking a stand and letting them know that I was the disdained lefty, and then stay there and take the abuse, but the golden opportunity never came up.  I did push back on the joke about the black people and the sandbox, at which point one of them mumbled "a lefty" under their breath.  At least I took most of my day's profit off of them, so that's something.

After yesterday, I came away convinced that a real coup of some kind is brewing in this country, and people like Manchin as well as the progressives overly preoccupied with imposing new woke facts on society are enabling them.  They aren't nearly as bad as the frankly despicable dregs of society I was sitting with yesterday, but they're the only ones who can modulate their actions to try to avert a catastrophe.  I really don't think they get how precarious the situation is.  Given the right opportunity, the right wing will take power, and not care to justify it with anything more than a nonsense uttered with a Putin smirk; "yeah, we both know this is nonsense, but what are you going to do about it?  "

[Oexmelin]

I get that wokeism has become the bee in your bonnet, but I think the people you'd associate with the tendency are actually acutely aware of the danger and have been banging that drum for a while. Your blame is misplaced.

[DGuller]

I get that wokeism has become the bee in your bonnet, but I think the people you'd associate with the tendency are actually acutely aware of the danger and have been banging that drum for a while. Your blame is misplaced.

If they are acutely aware of the danger, then it's even more inexcusable.  When faced with a great danger, one should become more pragmatic rather than more dogmatic.

[The Brain]

I've never been more phlegmatic in my life.