• Aidinthel@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Maybe if they had expelled him over the child sex trafficking thing he wouldn’t have been able to do this.

  • Nobody@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “You know how you make America great again?” Graham asked in 2015. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” Then, on the same day Trump essentially clinched the GOP nomination, the senator predicted, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…and we will deserve it.”

    Source

    And he was right. Trump has completely destroyed the Republican Party. The house that Reagan and his 11th commandment built is now a structure fire.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Trump has completely destroyed the Republican Party.

      Not only has he destroyed the Republican Party, he has inflicted significant damage to the very fabric of the United States. He has sown discourse discord, conflict, and division that could take decades to undo. How sad.

      • deft@ttrpg.network
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        1 year ago

        Controversial opinion I don’t think he did honestly. I think his damage was short term. He busted open a lot of bullshit and made it clear why we shouldn’t be this way, and I think seeing voters in the last two elections has made that clear. We’ll see if the momentum continues but Americans made it clear tbh, we ain’t into it.

    • bemenaker@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fox News destroyed the republican party. Trump is a result, not the cause.

      • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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        1 year ago

        More than one thing can be true at once. Their own gerrymandering played a huge role as well by creating hundreds of districts that are so safe that the real election is the primary, not the general, so the way you win is by always tacking to the right and being more and more performatively batshit crazy.

    • creamed_eels@toast.ooo
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      1 year ago

      The very same Lindsay Graham perpetually fighting to be first in line to lick Trump’s boot like the simpering, unctuous worm he is?

    • orbitz@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The Republican party: please see us as the victims even if we’ve directly cultivated this outcome. How would we know it may cause us problems and not the Democrats? Seriously this isn’t our fault, the government is only on hold due to Democrats not voting for a speaker. Send donations so we can get more Republicans to argue with next term.

      • meco03211@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Honestly it really is the democrats fault. How could they not have done more to stop us from hurting ourselves? Vote for us again to make things all better.

  • makyo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Sorry Kev, but no, the problem is not the crazy right, it’s endemic. You spend the last several decades assembling the most craven, ignornant, zealous voter base and now you’re acting all surprised that the loonies are running the asylum. Even your most moderate members know they can’t be seen working with Democrats or they face retribution from Trump and The Base.

    I’ve been saying this for a long time, the only thing that will ever get the GOP back on a small-d democratic path again is a long, long walk in the wilderness. They need a decades-long time out to think about all the harm they’ve done to this country under the guise of ‘patriotism’ and ‘christianity’.

    • UnspecificGravity@lemmings.world
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      1 year ago

      Yep, the problem is that the “mainstream” GOP is so off the rails that they don’t even recognize extremists for what they are and they are so deeply unpopular that they have to cheat and actually court people from every fringe to have a chance of winning.

    • pewter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve thought this for a while. An interviewer asked him if he knew he would get Democratic votes for that 45 day funding bill. If he hadn’t, I bet Gaetz wouldn’t have triggered a recall.

      • thereisalamp@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        The circumstances of that bill are weird af too.

        They gave democrats no time to read it, and barely any time to get to the hill for the vote on the first place. Arguably, the only reason they voted for it at all is because of the congressman who pulled the fire alarm, giving dems time to read and see it was a reasonable bill.

        But, if the dems hadn’t had time to read the bill, they likely would’ve voted against it on the premise of not voting on something they don’t understand hasn’t read, and someone they inherently don’t trust presented under shadycircumstances. Then McCarthy would’ve had a shutdown like Gaetz wanted, but, one he could’ve blamed on the dems, for not voting for this very reasonable extension bill.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    who could have predicted that radicalising the party to the far right and fully immersing it’s members in a bubble of right wing twitter, blogs, and media would lead to this

  • halferect@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I would say it was all republicans for the last 50 years that’s got us to this very bad place.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Only going back to the 70s? Shit, I’d place it at the feet of the OG McCarthy from the 50s

  • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    McCarthy is selling himself short here. He deserves at least a little credit for this clusterfuck as well. All of these cowards deserve credit. After January 6 they all had the chance to stand up and do the right thing and wrest control of the GOP from Trump and the crazies, but no, they were all too scared.

    While I hate her politics, I have nothing but respect for Liz Cheney.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      I hate that we have to give props to Cheney for not doing a fascism. Talk about low fucking bars. And assuming the country doesn’t fall apart and we somehow survive the infestation of christo fascist scum, we’re still gonna have begin the arduous process of clawing the Overton window back from the position where pieces of shit like her look somewhat normal.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Louder, for the centrists in the back.

      This was incredibly predictable. The second the GOP didn’t smash the “break glass to deprogram fascists” button after the insurrection, this was always their likely path. These people are in open rebellion against democracy and we should really start treating them more like traitors.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been saying even before J6 that we should be treating them and their programming like a Fifth Column, meaning their Tokyo Rose channels - Faux, hate radio, ONAN, etc…

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Can you point to one of these - how you say? - “attempts to exclude oneself from the party”?

      • haventbeenlistening@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You are misquoting the comment above yours. The title of this post is an example of a member trying to exclude himself from the rottenness of the party.

        • Nougat@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Thank you for granting me the opportunity to be pedantic. You are incorrect.

          The entire party is literally rotten, the attempts to exclude oneself from it are laughable.

          I would strongly argue that the comma in the above sentence should be a semicolon; I will treat it as one.

          The subject is “party,” a noun. “The entire” describes the subject. The verb is “is,” and the predicate is “literally rotten.” The predicate here is a descriptor of the subject.

          In the second part, we need to determine what “it” refers to. “It” is a pronoun. Pronouns are shorthand for nouns. There are two nouns in the entire comment: “party” and “oneself.” Context tells us that “it” cannot be a reference to “oneself,” because it is absurd to “attempt to exclude oneself from oneself,” and even if that was the meaning, it would be a complete non-sequitur from the first part of the comment.

          That leaves one other noun for “it” to refer to: “party.”

          Furthermore, “it” cannot be referring to “rotten,” because “rotten” is an adjective. “Rottenness” is a noun, but that’s not the word here. If @iforgotmyinstance had intended to refer to the “rotten[ness],” they would have said something like: “The rottenness of the party is overwhelming; the attempts to exclude oneself from it are laughable.”

          Now let me get into your comment.

          You are misquoting the comment above yours. The title of this post is an example of a member trying to exclude himself from the rottenness of the party.

          In the first sentence, you refer to the “comment above [mine].” As explained above, I am not “misquoting” or misunderstanding it.

          In the second sentence, you refer to “the title of this post,” in a way that suggests that the post title and @iforgotmyinstance’s comment are necessarily referring to the same specific subject: (“party” or “rotten[ness]”). They are not, and are not obliged to. They do refer to the same general subject: the rottenness of the Republican party. It is reasonable to refer to the “party” in a comment about it’s “rotten[ness].”

          The post title reads:

          McCarthy Says ‘We’re In a Very Bad Place Right Now’ Thanks to ‘Crazy Members Led By Gaetz’

          The title (of the post and the article) is quoting Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was briefly Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. One interpretation of that quote is that McCarthy is “trying to exclude himself from the rottenness of the party.” I would argue that the simple statement is an extremely weak attempt, but I would otherwise agree.

          • phar
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            1 year ago

            That was a whole lot of text to say nothing. At the end you didn’t even have a counterpoint, you just said it was a weak attempt. Do you really have this much time on your hands to not make a point?

  • ale@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oh, so not because of Democrats? I thought it was because of Democrats.

    • Beetschnapps@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No it’s because of the very core of the GOP… which by their logic means it’s the Democrats’ fault…

    • bitsplease
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      1 year ago

      Oh I’m sure around the quoted bits in the title he threw in plenty of references to how this is still mostly the democrats fault lol

    • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, just the government. If no new spending bill passes it will be pretty not great.

      The two party system is the natural result of FPTP voting. We desperately need to switch to STAR or approval.

      • twelvefloatinghands@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I like ranked ballots more. Just a bunch of easy binary decisions of which candidate I like more. With the other ones, I feel like I’m betraying my favourite if I rank or approve of anyone else equally.

        • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ranked is definitely superior to our current system. But it still has its flaws, which is why I didn’t mention it.

          The biggest flaw is with counting. Ranked isn’t a purely additive process like STAR or approval, so you only ever get the results once they’re complete rather than as you count. And that goes a long way towards trust in the system and auditing.

          Ranked is also basically just FPTP, but with several layers. So the same flaws in FPTP are present within Ranked, just a bit muted.

          But like I said, even ranked is better than the shit show we currently have.

          • twelvefloatinghands@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Not sure I follow the “FPTP with layers” argument. After each layer, the votes go to the next choice rather than being wasted. Vote splitting gone. That’s the bad part of FPTP taken care of. There’s still one winner, but proportional voting is orthogonal to ballot type

            And you only get final results when all counting is complete, but ballot counts could definitely be published as they come in (N ballots with order ABCD, M ballots with order DBA, etc)

            • PizzaMan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Not sure I follow the “FPTP with layers” argument. After each layer, the votes go to the next choice rather than being wasted.

              Round one is a check for a +50% majority. If there is no majority, then it eliminates the lowest voted candidate and moves on.

              /\

              |

              This first half is identical in function to FPTP voting. So ranked choice is basically FPTP but repeated a couple times with eliminations. Like I said, it is still definitely better than FPTP, but it has the possibility of vote splitting, albeit to a much smaller degree. A strategic voter wouldn’t vote for their first pick first, but would instead vote for the closest candidate to them that has a high chance of winning. And that’s the hole we are currently stuck in as is.

              but ballot counts could definitely be published as they come in (N ballots with order ABCD, M ballots with order DBA, etc)

              If there are 5 candidates in a given race, something that is rather common, then there would be 120 different orders. That’s not data that is easily digestible or auditable. And that number gets exponentially worse the more candidates there are, and ideally we should have a good number of candidates to choose from to make sure we get the best one.

    • QHC@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, the two party ‘system’ is a natural byproduct of how our current election process works. If we saw the rise of a third party, it would eventually supplant one of the existing major parties, just like we’ve seen in the past.

    • Mamertine@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No,

      If there is a legit schism in the Republican party a new party will be created. Either the new party or the current Republican party will die.

      It’s unlikely that 3 parties can exist with the campaign financing and ballot access laws that were designed to hamstring all minor parties.

      Neither of the post schism parties would ever compete with the Democrats on elected numbers. A schism would be a huge gift to the Democrats.

      • GlendatheGayWitch@lib.lgbt
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        1 year ago

        The question is whether the new conservative party would push even further right wing as a whole. The Republicans had a schism in the late 2000s when the Tea Party was formed. When that movement was absorbed back into the Republican party, their ideology was pushed further to the right.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Dripping wet man who stinks of gasoline, with matches spilling from his pockets, demands we find out who started the fire that’s ruining everything!