I wouldn't put too much stock in Rona Romney's fundraising pitch. The RNC has been bankrupted by Trump--literally bankrupted. Trump's campaign wildly overspent in the dumbest of markets (tens of millions of dollars buying ads to run in Washington, DC just so Trump could see them, for example). And so now the RNC has to scramble to just keep the lights on and the doors open.
And there's also the fact that she's adhering to the Great Conservative Dictum: Always Be Grifting. Since Trump's most fanatical followers are 100% on board with "THE ELECTION WUZ STOLEN!!!!!", it's only natural to exploit that for fundraising purposes. Take all their money and use it for other things like paying down campaign debt or paying Trump's legal bills. And maybe making sure that Rona's paycheck clears every two weeks.
A lot of people have pointed out that while Giuliani and other lawyers have been screaming about fraud on twitter and in media appearances, they don’t allege fraud in court – because if they deliberately lie to a judge they can get disciplined and possibly disbarred. But what I find even more ridiculous is how they are pretending for the rubes they can introduce new super-secret “proof” of fraud once they get in front of SCOTUS.
This is getting more and more dangerous, not because Trump will succeed but because Trump will ultimately fail. The absolute best that can be hoped for at this point is that after January 20th the MAGAts will seamlessly turn their hopes to 2024, sort of the way the QAnon shit morphs into something new each time a predicted date for all to be revealed passes by uneventfully. The worst-case scenario is bloodshed.
In Trump's "interview" last night, he kept insisting that he has mountains of proof. Absolute shit-heaps of evidence. "But the courts won't let us introduce that evidence. It's very unfair, very biased."
So in order to believe the election was stolen, you have to believe that:
Every election official, regardless of Party, was in on the conspiracy,
Every judge in Pennsylvania--including Trump's hand-picked judges--is in on the conspiracy,
Every state official in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona is part of the conspiracy.
To normal people, this sounds nuts. But to conservatives? Absolutely believable. To them, the only surprise is that the conspiracy does not involve mind-control rays beamed down from secret alien technology satellites controlled by George Soros.
I think that intelligent conservative/Republicans (there's a difference, but n.m.) know better, but pretend to buy into the lunacy because it's all they have to retain the base. As for the base, they get out of bed every morning *assuming* the world is against them. So if that includes all those election officials, judges, and state officials...well, what else is new? They're not paranoid/self-pitying because of the evidence. They find the "evidence" to support the feeling.
Rona Romney McDaniels the Chair of the RNC, who is a bit of a nutcase herself was down in GA to rally the MAGAts to vote for the Goon senators in the runoffs but the MAGAts only wanted to talk about the stolen election. Hard to say what will happen on Jan.5 but it is conceivable that the MAGAts may decide to stay home in frustration or seek QAnon for advice.
I want to point out, again, that the people pointing this out are not reporters. The press is not the enemy of the people, but they seem to regard themselves as an opposition shadow party to the dems.
AFAIK, the Trump Clown Show has no standing to bring a case before SCOTUS. For that you need at least two appellate courts disagreeing with each other, which obviously hasn't happened or some injury that, for some reason, can't be addressed by lower courts. Neither has happened. SCOTUS ruined its reputation enough in 2000. They're not going to do it again, despite having three justices involved in the 2000 steal on the court now (Roberts, Bart the Boofer and Amy Covid Barrett).
Trump speaks to his ignorant followers out of his own ignorance, or worse, he speaks directly to the ignorance of his base despite knowing better: "We're not allowed to put in our proof. They say you don't have standing... You mean as president of the United States, I don't have standing? What kind of court system is this?" Like most things Trump says, this is opinionated Fox viewer logic -- it doesn't have to be true, or even plausible, it just has to fill the need du jour, in this case, victimhood.
The fact the suits have been brought to represent electors and not Trump, because Trump would have even less standing than the elector, seems to have skipped right over Trump's poorly coiffed head
•What the modern GOP has offered has been hate and lies and fear. That's because all they have to offer -- an extractive economy for their special interests, a complete disregard for the nation's people, etc., etc., etc.
•Speaking of the GOP, my favorite tool of theirs is the perversion of language. While no system is perfect, to err is human, etc., etc., etc., funky tabulation of ballots is an intrinsic part of the system. Personally, I'm'a going to my grave convinced that Wisconsin in 2016 was rigged. That is, Donnie didn't legitimately win the state, Scott Walker did it for him. Anyway. When the GOP claims the Dems are cheating, I take it as an admission that they're the true cheaters.
•Two pieces that scare the shit out of me, neither of which I can or would argue with:
•A factoid maybe: That move to sketchy e-voting has been, I believe, tend to be pushed by the GOP.
•One of the things I ponder more and more: How come elections are so close so often?
•As I'm sure I've ranted, we're not a democracy and not even a republic in any meaningful. American Democracy = Soma. I'd say we're close enough to being a fascist state (of we're not actually one) that the characterization is an operative one. (Actual democracy requires a healthy opposition party, which we haven't had since the 90s at least.)
One of the suits in Pennsylvania involves the law enacted early this year to allow mail-in voting. Republicans are suing to have the law declared unconstitutional.
The law was written by Republicans, sponsored by Republicans, and passed by Republican majorities.
hah! must respectfully disagree with the sub-hed here, unless you're referring to our camp as the American People. you most definitely can not be too much as an asshole for the 47.2%. otherwise I sign on completely to this newsletter!
Can't say I actually agree with you this time. I think Mencken was right: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public. Therefore, you can't be too much of an asshole for the American People.
Look at the down ticket races and the losses in the House. Trump is too tacky and icky for those who are our rulers, but his policies are just OK by them. Combine that with the fact that advertising works, and we have two right wing political parties, and here you are.
As far as 2000 and 2004 I'd argue that the Democrats needed to do more than they did, they didn't need to go the full Trump route, but they needed to try to nail the Republican shenanigans right then. But they chose not to, for comity I guess, to show they were the bigger people. Where did that get them, or for that matter us?
73,923,495 agree you can't be too much of an asshole for the American People. And when Ford pardoned Nixon, he started the country on a slippery slope that's seen criminal behaviour from Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and now Drumpfy (probably) go unpunished.
I don't think it was "comity"; I think they were playing the odds. They think it was a success, you and I think it was insufficient; history will tell. (I'm not sure how much we can blame national messaging for downballot losses, and I'm sure you've seen MSM analysts who agree with you that national messaging was a drag on the downballot, except they think that message was "defund the police.") I will mention that I voted to nominate Sanders and, had he been nominated, we would have had a chance to test your proposition; but I am less confident than you, it seems, that it would have resulted in a wider victory or indeed any victory at all.
Yes, I’ve heard those same Very Serious Analysts convinced that the message of “abolish the police” is what cost Dems the down ballot races. Darn you meddling kids! You and your message that nobody ran on! Your slogan that developed organically, from protests that people criticize The Kids Today for not doing right (not like WE did it back in the ‘60s!). I guess the only solution is to outlaw civil rights demonstrations and endlessly browbeat part of our own base for not running their slogans past focus groups first.
P.S. I am offering my services as a high-priced Dem consultant. Please send me all your moneys.
I wrote something intelligent and witty and insightful and my computer crashed. So I'm just going to note that messaging doesn't matter until you can get the press to give you a fair hearing, and the way they've treated forty years of blatant, in your face, voter suppression and disenfranchisement as just clever politics suggests they're never going to. It's now baked into the system, along with projection, and I'm not convinced it will ever change.
I think that it is entirely possible that the press and Dem establishment would have gone all in on Sanders just like what happened to Corbyn. I've thought of that quite a bit over the last couple of weeks and I don't have an answer to that. On the other hand, we can continue to do what we've done for about 40 years and get the same results, or try something else. What was happening with Trump is that they were accomplishing all their long term goals short term. The end result is no different just quicker.
What do you call it when you've got the ranking Democrat giving a big metaphorically slobbery wet kiss to Lindsey Graham days before what was thought to be a close election? That may not be comity, but it isn't playing the odds either.
I read an article a week or so ago, that tried to blame the loss in Florida on "socialism", well in the Headline and the first part of the article. Later in the article, they interviewed some people who said that their data showed the main reason was really that the Dems didn't do any in person campaign meetups and that the Rs did. My take from this is that there are some centrists will try to smear leftists, even if they have to make stuff up. Of course that is no surprise to anyone that has been paying attention, since 1988.
Republican assholes are never going away. After Germany’s disastrous embrace of Nazis, they made Nazis illegal. And they still have Nazis! We have to reverse the changes Republicans have made at state and federal levels that give them minority control. That depends on taking the Senate. It’s a long shot but if McConnell maintains control of the Senate, the Nazis will continue to drive the country toward the oligarchic religio-fascism they’ve been dreaming of since Nixon ripped away the pleasant Eisenhower facade and showed the true face of 20th century Republicanism: bigotry welded to amorality in the pursuit of power.
Also I think the Nazis they have are really more "again" than "still", having taken 70 years to find an issue (refugees) they could creep out under; and I believe they tend to come from the former East, where the existence of Nazis was basically denied till 1989 and after.
"a big part of the reason people vote for Democrats in the first place is because they don’t do shit like Republicans do — and that Biden beat Trump mainly because Americans were sick of Trump’s nonsense and wanted to be represented by a non-asshole"
It might not be true, but it's a faith worth living in, and the kind of thing faith can really bring about.
I remember one day on Air America, whoever was at the mic worked up a hellva rant against some Republican con job. He cited figures, got fiery, it was everything you get from angry rightwing radio, and I was impressed. So it went to a break, and when the guy came back, he was sheepish: "I owe you an apology. It was brought to my attention that the figures I cited are not accurate." Then he went on to explain that the Republican bill or whatever it was actually was slightly more justified, and meaningfully less destructive, than he had said. And I sat in my car laughing and proud because yeah, yeah -- I don't *want* to be angry for nothing. I want real information to make good decisions. That's my team, I thought; you earnest boneheads, your instinct to *really try* is why you're my team.
In my ever so humble opinion I think Americans love assholes because most of them are assholes themselves. But that's an unscientific opinion probably based upon my own experiences dealing with my fellow Americans. But a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world that sends folks like this guy -
As long as Red State legs gerrymander themselves to stay in power indefinitely, the Goon Party will remain at least a regional force for the indefinite future. I know of only one state, Virginia, that has flipped from being as Red as can be to being reliably Blue and with their new non-partisan electoral district commission will probably not look back. CO is definitely heading that way too but they may still wobble. Same with NV. The other swing states that flipped this year all have Goon legislatures that aren't going blue anytime soon and so will be vulnerable to the never-ending Goon electoral ratfucking.
These days, on Twitter, when some smart guy (e.g. Todd Starnes) asks, "Do you really mean to say that 80 million people love Biden that much?" it triggers a massive tsunami of replies, all of which say, "No, you idiot. It means that 80 million people hate Trump because he's so hateful." So THAT'S fun.
I don't think the GOP will change, snap out of it, improve, etc. At this point, if you dance with the one which brung ya, they're stuck dancing with the MAGAts, which means they'll need every dirty trick, lie, scam, and "shenanigan" in the book to please their date. Whether this will destroy the party, I don't know. I don't know what that means, actually. Although I can see a situation in which the looniest far-right contingent splits off from the not-that-insane half, as seems to be the inevitable mitosis of radical politics. Which one gets to call itself The Republican Party will be interesting to see.
This was right on the money. As you point out, the main difference between past elections and now could almost be summed up by the Times headline in 2004, "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried". Gore, Kerry, and Democratic leaders never uttered words like "rigged" or "fraud" or even suggested anything that would undermine the fragile trust in elections. If nothing else, it was considered bad form. Now, it's all top-down lunacy and years of it: from Trump, his band of radical nutjobs in the administration and Congress, and a feckless GOP establishment that is just as complicit for the power and money. To me, that's the main difference between then and now: Trump is the talk-radio president, in his style, beliefs, tsunami of lies, everything. His pandering lust for ratings is what our mainstream media has mistaken for populism. His base was primed by decades of the stuff, and now, like Pavlov's dogs, it's pure reflex.
I remember thinking that lots of people with whom I normally agree were suffering from too high an opinion of their fellow-citizens when they thought in 2004 that Bush won by fraud. No, they saw him and what he did, and those are the kinds of things they like.
'Iʼd say "Their taste is in their mouths." except Iʼve seen what they eat.'
I wouldn't put too much stock in Rona Romney's fundraising pitch. The RNC has been bankrupted by Trump--literally bankrupted. Trump's campaign wildly overspent in the dumbest of markets (tens of millions of dollars buying ads to run in Washington, DC just so Trump could see them, for example). And so now the RNC has to scramble to just keep the lights on and the doors open.
And there's also the fact that she's adhering to the Great Conservative Dictum: Always Be Grifting. Since Trump's most fanatical followers are 100% on board with "THE ELECTION WUZ STOLEN!!!!!", it's only natural to exploit that for fundraising purposes. Take all their money and use it for other things like paying down campaign debt or paying Trump's legal bills. And maybe making sure that Rona's paycheck clears every two weeks.
"The RNC has been bankrupted by Trump--literally bankrupted."
Can I see a source for this? I'd love to read it.
Me too. I don't disbelieve you, because he's even managed to skullfuck the NRA, but I really want to read something that speaks to my schadenfreude.
A lot of people have pointed out that while Giuliani and other lawyers have been screaming about fraud on twitter and in media appearances, they don’t allege fraud in court – because if they deliberately lie to a judge they can get disciplined and possibly disbarred. But what I find even more ridiculous is how they are pretending for the rubes they can introduce new super-secret “proof” of fraud once they get in front of SCOTUS.
This is getting more and more dangerous, not because Trump will succeed but because Trump will ultimately fail. The absolute best that can be hoped for at this point is that after January 20th the MAGAts will seamlessly turn their hopes to 2024, sort of the way the QAnon shit morphs into something new each time a predicted date for all to be revealed passes by uneventfully. The worst-case scenario is bloodshed.
"(S)ort of the way the QAnon shit morphs into something new each time a predicted date for all to be revealed passes by uneventfully."
Hm. Conservative Rapture.
If only.
In Trump's "interview" last night, he kept insisting that he has mountains of proof. Absolute shit-heaps of evidence. "But the courts won't let us introduce that evidence. It's very unfair, very biased."
So in order to believe the election was stolen, you have to believe that:
Every election official, regardless of Party, was in on the conspiracy,
Every judge in Pennsylvania--including Trump's hand-picked judges--is in on the conspiracy,
Every state official in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona is part of the conspiracy.
To normal people, this sounds nuts. But to conservatives? Absolutely believable. To them, the only surprise is that the conspiracy does not involve mind-control rays beamed down from secret alien technology satellites controlled by George Soros.
I think that intelligent conservative/Republicans (there's a difference, but n.m.) know better, but pretend to buy into the lunacy because it's all they have to retain the base. As for the base, they get out of bed every morning *assuming* the world is against them. So if that includes all those election officials, judges, and state officials...well, what else is new? They're not paranoid/self-pitying because of the evidence. They find the "evidence" to support the feeling.
Rona Romney McDaniels the Chair of the RNC, who is a bit of a nutcase herself was down in GA to rally the MAGAts to vote for the Goon senators in the runoffs but the MAGAts only wanted to talk about the stolen election. Hard to say what will happen on Jan.5 but it is conceivable that the MAGAts may decide to stay home in frustration or seek QAnon for advice.
I'm still waiting for my Soros check.
I want to point out, again, that the people pointing this out are not reporters. The press is not the enemy of the people, but they seem to regard themselves as an opposition shadow party to the dems.
AFAIK, the Trump Clown Show has no standing to bring a case before SCOTUS. For that you need at least two appellate courts disagreeing with each other, which obviously hasn't happened or some injury that, for some reason, can't be addressed by lower courts. Neither has happened. SCOTUS ruined its reputation enough in 2000. They're not going to do it again, despite having three justices involved in the 2000 steal on the court now (Roberts, Bart the Boofer and Amy Covid Barrett).
Trump speaks to his ignorant followers out of his own ignorance, or worse, he speaks directly to the ignorance of his base despite knowing better: "We're not allowed to put in our proof. They say you don't have standing... You mean as president of the United States, I don't have standing? What kind of court system is this?" Like most things Trump says, this is opinionated Fox viewer logic -- it doesn't have to be true, or even plausible, it just has to fill the need du jour, in this case, victimhood.
The fact the suits have been brought to represent electors and not Trump, because Trump would have even less standing than the elector, seems to have skipped right over Trump's poorly coiffed head
Couple of bullet points:
•What the modern GOP has offered has been hate and lies and fear. That's because all they have to offer -- an extractive economy for their special interests, a complete disregard for the nation's people, etc., etc., etc.
•Speaking of the GOP, my favorite tool of theirs is the perversion of language. While no system is perfect, to err is human, etc., etc., etc., funky tabulation of ballots is an intrinsic part of the system. Personally, I'm'a going to my grave convinced that Wisconsin in 2016 was rigged. That is, Donnie didn't legitimately win the state, Scott Walker did it for him. Anyway. When the GOP claims the Dems are cheating, I take it as an admission that they're the true cheaters.
•Two pieces that scare the shit out of me, neither of which I can or would argue with:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/opinion/biden-supreme-court.html?searchResultPosition=1
and
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/
•A factoid maybe: That move to sketchy e-voting has been, I believe, tend to be pushed by the GOP.
•One of the things I ponder more and more: How come elections are so close so often?
•As I'm sure I've ranted, we're not a democracy and not even a republic in any meaningful. American Democracy = Soma. I'd say we're close enough to being a fascist state (of we're not actually one) that the characterization is an operative one. (Actual democracy requires a healthy opposition party, which we haven't had since the 90s at least.)
One of the suits in Pennsylvania involves the law enacted early this year to allow mail-in voting. Republicans are suing to have the law declared unconstitutional.
The law was written by Republicans, sponsored by Republicans, and passed by Republican majorities.
Same scenario in Wisconsin, complaining about election changes made entirely by Republicans.
Republicans: "This Democrat travesty must be removed from the books of the Commonwealth immediately!"
Or: "We passed this law in good faith, only to have the Democrats use it as a loophole. The mistake shall be corrected."
Probably both at the same time. Gotta tailor the message to serve the audience.
Like Obamacare!
hah! must respectfully disagree with the sub-hed here, unless you're referring to our camp as the American People. you most definitely can not be too much as an asshole for the 47.2%. otherwise I sign on completely to this newsletter!
Trump's vote numbers are more like 21-22% of the American people
Can't say I actually agree with you this time. I think Mencken was right: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public. Therefore, you can't be too much of an asshole for the American People.
Look at the down ticket races and the losses in the House. Trump is too tacky and icky for those who are our rulers, but his policies are just OK by them. Combine that with the fact that advertising works, and we have two right wing political parties, and here you are.
As far as 2000 and 2004 I'd argue that the Democrats needed to do more than they did, they didn't need to go the full Trump route, but they needed to try to nail the Republican shenanigans right then. But they chose not to, for comity I guess, to show they were the bigger people. Where did that get them, or for that matter us?
73,923,495 agree you can't be too much of an asshole for the American People. And when Ford pardoned Nixon, he started the country on a slippery slope that's seen criminal behaviour from Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and now Drumpfy (probably) go unpunished.
I don't think it was "comity"; I think they were playing the odds. They think it was a success, you and I think it was insufficient; history will tell. (I'm not sure how much we can blame national messaging for downballot losses, and I'm sure you've seen MSM analysts who agree with you that national messaging was a drag on the downballot, except they think that message was "defund the police.") I will mention that I voted to nominate Sanders and, had he been nominated, we would have had a chance to test your proposition; but I am less confident than you, it seems, that it would have resulted in a wider victory or indeed any victory at all.
Yes, I’ve heard those same Very Serious Analysts convinced that the message of “abolish the police” is what cost Dems the down ballot races. Darn you meddling kids! You and your message that nobody ran on! Your slogan that developed organically, from protests that people criticize The Kids Today for not doing right (not like WE did it back in the ‘60s!). I guess the only solution is to outlaw civil rights demonstrations and endlessly browbeat part of our own base for not running their slogans past focus groups first.
P.S. I am offering my services as a high-priced Dem consultant. Please send me all your moneys.
I wrote something intelligent and witty and insightful and my computer crashed. So I'm just going to note that messaging doesn't matter until you can get the press to give you a fair hearing, and the way they've treated forty years of blatant, in your face, voter suppression and disenfranchisement as just clever politics suggests they're never going to. It's now baked into the system, along with projection, and I'm not convinced it will ever change.
Yes. "I believe in states' rights" Reagan at the Neshoba County Fair ---> Shelby County vs. Holder ----> today
I think that it is entirely possible that the press and Dem establishment would have gone all in on Sanders just like what happened to Corbyn. I've thought of that quite a bit over the last couple of weeks and I don't have an answer to that. On the other hand, we can continue to do what we've done for about 40 years and get the same results, or try something else. What was happening with Trump is that they were accomplishing all their long term goals short term. The end result is no different just quicker.
What do you call it when you've got the ranking Democrat giving a big metaphorically slobbery wet kiss to Lindsey Graham days before what was thought to be a close election? That may not be comity, but it isn't playing the odds either.
I read an article a week or so ago, that tried to blame the loss in Florida on "socialism", well in the Headline and the first part of the article. Later in the article, they interviewed some people who said that their data showed the main reason was really that the Dems didn't do any in person campaign meetups and that the Rs did. My take from this is that there are some centrists will try to smear leftists, even if they have to make stuff up. Of course that is no surprise to anyone that has been paying attention, since 1988.
68?
well, 1972 for sure, and I guess if you consider Mayor Daley a centrist, 1968
Republican assholes are never going away. After Germany’s disastrous embrace of Nazis, they made Nazis illegal. And they still have Nazis! We have to reverse the changes Republicans have made at state and federal levels that give them minority control. That depends on taking the Senate. It’s a long shot but if McConnell maintains control of the Senate, the Nazis will continue to drive the country toward the oligarchic religio-fascism they’ve been dreaming of since Nixon ripped away the pleasant Eisenhower facade and showed the true face of 20th century Republicanism: bigotry welded to amorality in the pursuit of power.
I would only add that Germany has far fewer Nazis than we do.
Ouch. Hadn't really thought about that. We really are the worst, sometimes.
Also I think the Nazis they have are really more "again" than "still", having taken 70 years to find an issue (refugees) they could creep out under; and I believe they tend to come from the former East, where the existence of Nazis was basically denied till 1989 and after.
"a big part of the reason people vote for Democrats in the first place is because they don’t do shit like Republicans do — and that Biden beat Trump mainly because Americans were sick of Trump’s nonsense and wanted to be represented by a non-asshole"
It might not be true, but it's a faith worth living in, and the kind of thing faith can really bring about.
I remember one day on Air America, whoever was at the mic worked up a hellva rant against some Republican con job. He cited figures, got fiery, it was everything you get from angry rightwing radio, and I was impressed. So it went to a break, and when the guy came back, he was sheepish: "I owe you an apology. It was brought to my attention that the figures I cited are not accurate." Then he went on to explain that the Republican bill or whatever it was actually was slightly more justified, and meaningfully less destructive, than he had said. And I sat in my car laughing and proud because yeah, yeah -- I don't *want* to be angry for nothing. I want real information to make good decisions. That's my team, I thought; you earnest boneheads, your instinct to *really try* is why you're my team.
In my ever so humble opinion I think Americans love assholes because most of them are assholes themselves. But that's an unscientific opinion probably based upon my own experiences dealing with my fellow Americans. But a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world that sends folks like this guy -
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/28/us/richard-delisi-marijuana-prison/index.html
- to prison for life tells me that there are a lot of fucking assholes in this country and they're just fine with it.
As long as Red State legs gerrymander themselves to stay in power indefinitely, the Goon Party will remain at least a regional force for the indefinite future. I know of only one state, Virginia, that has flipped from being as Red as can be to being reliably Blue and with their new non-partisan electoral district commission will probably not look back. CO is definitely heading that way too but they may still wobble. Same with NV. The other swing states that flipped this year all have Goon legislatures that aren't going blue anytime soon and so will be vulnerable to the never-ending Goon electoral ratfucking.
These days, on Twitter, when some smart guy (e.g. Todd Starnes) asks, "Do you really mean to say that 80 million people love Biden that much?" it triggers a massive tsunami of replies, all of which say, "No, you idiot. It means that 80 million people hate Trump because he's so hateful." So THAT'S fun.
I don't think the GOP will change, snap out of it, improve, etc. At this point, if you dance with the one which brung ya, they're stuck dancing with the MAGAts, which means they'll need every dirty trick, lie, scam, and "shenanigan" in the book to please their date. Whether this will destroy the party, I don't know. I don't know what that means, actually. Although I can see a situation in which the looniest far-right contingent splits off from the not-that-insane half, as seems to be the inevitable mitosis of radical politics. Which one gets to call itself The Republican Party will be interesting to see.
This was right on the money. As you point out, the main difference between past elections and now could almost be summed up by the Times headline in 2004, "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried". Gore, Kerry, and Democratic leaders never uttered words like "rigged" or "fraud" or even suggested anything that would undermine the fragile trust in elections. If nothing else, it was considered bad form. Now, it's all top-down lunacy and years of it: from Trump, his band of radical nutjobs in the administration and Congress, and a feckless GOP establishment that is just as complicit for the power and money. To me, that's the main difference between then and now: Trump is the talk-radio president, in his style, beliefs, tsunami of lies, everything. His pandering lust for ratings is what our mainstream media has mistaken for populism. His base was primed by decades of the stuff, and now, like Pavlov's dogs, it's pure reflex.
I remember thinking that lots of people with whom I normally agree were suffering from too high an opinion of their fellow-citizens when they thought in 2004 that Bush won by fraud. No, they saw him and what he did, and those are the kinds of things they like.
'Iʼd say "Their taste is in their mouths." except Iʼve seen what they eat.'