Civil War Within The GOP

GOP’s McConnell blasts ‘loony lies’ by Ga. Rep. Greene

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wears a "Trump Won" face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office on opening day of the 117th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021. (Erin Scott/Pool via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced newly elected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday, calling the far-right Georgia Republican’s embrace of conspiracy theories and “loony lies” a “cancer for the Republican Party.”

“Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality,” said McConnell, R-Ky., referring to a handful of conspiracy theories that Greene has publicized in the past. “This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”

McConnell’s explicit condemnation adds to pressure on House Republicans to take action against Greene even as she is claiming renewed support from former President Donald Trump. It comes as House Democrats moved Monday to strip Greene of her committee assignments if Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., refuses to do so himself. -snip

It was said back before Nov when Greene was running that she and her kind were becoming the new face of the GOP and while McConnell is smart to denounce her, he really should have been doing it months ago, instead of staying silent out of fear over what Trump and Trumpers who applauded Greene would say/think. Other Republican politicians like Jim Jordan (OH) openly welcomed and complimented her as well.

Some of Greene's beliefs and comments taken from her social media:

[list]
[*]Wearing a mask is "Democrat tyrannical control"
[*]Thinks no one has it harder in American than "White males"
[*]Rep Omar and Tlaib are part of a "Islamic invasion" of government
[*]Thinks Trump was cheated out of his 2020 win
[*]Expressed support in executing some Democrat leaders
[*]Believes in the Clinton kill List/Bodybags, John F. Kennedy Jr. is a victim
[*]Believes there's a video which shows Hillary Clinton murdering a child in Satanic sacrifice
[*]Obama is a secret Muslim and wanted to bring Sharia Law the US
[*]Believes 'Pizzagate' is real
[*]The Democrat party is really the Satanic pedophile blood sacrifice party
[*]Believes in the "White Genocide" conspiracy theory
[*]Has ties with the 'Three Percenters' and the 'Oath Keepers'
[*]The 2018 California fires were caused by Jews using "space solar generators"
[*]2017 Las Vegas shooting was a false flag
[*]2018 Parkland school shooting was a false flag
[*]2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag
[*]Believes that an airplane didn't crash into the Pentagon on 9/11, that was staged
[*]Has praised "Q" and the Qanon movement
[/list]

edit: I think the 'Jewish Space Lasers' might be my favorite nutty belief of hers. Odd how we've had some members here express some of the views on that list.

I think this was inevitable post Trump. There was going to be a lot of "soul searching" among some of the GOP while others were going to try to continue riding Trump's coat tails for as long as it would be politically beneficial for them and it would inevitably cause conflict.

Shows that Trump still has a great deal of influence, which is unique for a losing candidate but his loss was also unique in that despite losing he got a great deal of votes.

Originally posted by BackFire
I think this was inevitable post Trump. There was going to be a lot of "soul searching" among some of the GOP while others were going to try to continue riding Trump's coat tails for as long as it would be politically beneficial for them and it would inevitably cause conflict.

Shows that Trump still has a great deal of influence, which is unique for a losing candidate but his loss was also unique in that despite losing he got a great deal of votes.

The GOP for awhile, and more out in the open during Obama, had started to retain power by appealing to the lowest common denominator of their party.

Hooking into the socially conservative religion of the average member of their party then feeding it and bringing it to a boil.

The problem is Trump came in and became the face of that movement. Once that happened and it wasn't the handpicked choice of the Republicans then all you're left with is them fighting to regain control of their party/the newer Republican that is trying to feed off of it.

The biggest hurdle for the non-Trumper GOP member is they've spent years saying similar things to Trump so if they turn away from that propaganda it's going to look bad on them. The Trumpers will hate them and the more moderate base has already kind of turned from them.

See when you deplete education standards so low in order to keep people too dumb to realise you're a robbing, snake oil peddler...Well this is what happens.

I'm praying every single day that Trump decides to run third party.

The old guard (plus those sucked away from Trump by 2024) of the GOP will not want him as their candidate in 2024, even if he could win, which is not likely, he'd only be a one term POTUS and you want someone capable of pulling two terms. Trump trying will tear the GOP up even more.

If he runs 3rd party, the "Patriot Party", he'll siphon just enough votes away to make it nigh impossible for whomever is the GOP candidate to win.

edit: We could have another Tea Party-like rift within the GOP with the Patriot Party.

Originally posted by truejedi
I'm praying every single day that Trump decides to run third party.

Problem is without the threat of a proper challenge the Dems will have literally zero reason to become more progressive. Because they will win by default every time anyway.

Originally posted by truejedi
I'm praying every single day that Trump decides to run third party.

There was a recent poll showing that if he did he'd get more votes than the GOP candidate would. It would fracture the GOP and guarantee a dem win, and the GOP would come in third.

Don't know, really depends who the GOP candidate is in 2024 and where the country is. Trump's going to keep losing people as time goes by, his cult-core will stay with him of course.

He'll definitely take away enough votes to guarantee a Dem win though.

The was said here with Nigel Farage with both UKIP and the Brexit Party. The theory was his parties would take votes from the Tory Party and guarantee a Labour Party win. The Tories used exactly that rhetoric to their base. "Vote UKIP, get Labour" and in the end UKIP and the Brexit Party ended up with very little votes and never won a single MP.

"Vote Trump, get socialism." Etc

Did/does Farage have a core base that follows him like he's a cult leader, believing everything he says?

"Vote Trump, get socialism", won't work on Trump's core, they'll call anyone saying that a "Recucklican", "deep state cuck" or similar, as they've done so already. They'll be Trumping it up four years from now and you don't need a huge number of votes siphoned away from the GOP candidate for a guaranteed loss, especially in a close election.

Though I do maintain that Trump's core will shrink with each passing year.

Yes. Check the sycophantic types on his Facebook page.

The irony is that there's now been 3 elections where huge numbers of people said they were going to vote for his party then didn't and then proclaimed they regretted not voting for him because the tories "betrayed" them then they did the same at the next election and again at the one after that.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7637239/Vote-Farage-Corbyn-Tories-miss-nearly-90-seats-Brexit-Party-splits-vote.html

https://uk.reuters.com/article/britain-election-farage-conservatives/voting-for-nigel-farage-will-not-get-brexit-done-conservative-party-idUSL9N26F02Q

https://www.itv.com/news/2019-11-19/brexit-party-peterborough-nigel-farage-denies-voting-brexit-party-split-leave-vote-lead-to-corbyn-government-general-election-2019

Here's the effect it can have.

Voting intentions had Brexit Party at 13%

Their actual vote share ended up 2%

Originally posted by jaden_2.0

Their actual vote share ended up 2%

Do you really think that's all Trump would be capable of pulling if he ran under his own new 'Patriot Party'?

Keilar calls out Ted Cruz backpedaling on election challenge

YouTube video

When Cruz runs in 2024, his Republican competition will be rolling out the tapes.

Originally posted by Darth Thor
Problem is without the threat of a proper challenge the Dems will have literally zero reason to become more progressive. Because they will win by default every time anyway.

To the contrary, it would free Democrats to pursue a more progressive agenda. If the Republican vote is split, Democrats no longer have to worry about appealing to this retrograde soft-conservatism to win elections.

The reason Republicans do everything they can to prevent Democrats from having policy wins like the ACA, is because they know that once people experience Democratic policies in action, they will like them. Their strategy is to fear-monger about Democrats in general, and Democratic policies in particular, so people will be too scared to support them.

Between January 6th and January 12th, about 4,600 Republicans changed their party status in Colorado, according to a CPR News analysis. There was no comparable effect with any other party. CPR News was able to contact dozens of them by tracking changes in the state's voter file.

The number of people changing parties spiked immediately after the Capitol breach. The same phenomenon is playing out nationwide. News outlets documented about 6,000 defections from the party in North Carolina; 10,000 in Pennsylvania; and 5,000 in Arizona.

Interviews and data analysis show how the tumultuous postelection period has created a new split within the Republican Party.

For some right-of-center voters, the violence at the Capitol was simply the final straw. They described an increasingly strained relationship with the GOP, with some citing the rise of Sarah Palin more than a decade ago as the first sign that the party was focusing on culture wars instead of fiscal conservatism.

Martin Lee Hussman, a well-connected resident of Alamosa in the southern part of the state, was previously a registered Libertarian but voted for Trump last November. As he watched the fallout of the riots, he decided that Democrats should hold power for the foreseeable future.

"Honestly, I think the Republican Party is dead. I don't think there's going to be a Republican Party in the next couple years," he said.

Other newly former Republicans had the opposite reaction: They cut ties with the party because they felt its leaders had abandoned Trump by blaming him for the riot and refusing to overturn the election.

In rural Weld County, 44-year-old Sara Ocker switched from Republican to unaffiliated and doesn't expect to vote again anytime soon, because she doesn't believe the elections are run fairly.

"We've all been living a lie and been told a lie," she said.

She hasn't spoken with her parents, who are Biden supporters, since the election. They see her as a QAnon conspiracy theorist, she said, but she thinks of herself as a skeptic who does her own research.

"The party's got to implode," she said.

The change has been especially pronounced in Colorado's politically competitive counties. In fact, nearly 800 of the switchers were in Douglas County, a Republican stronghold where the party has recently been losing strength—another dangerous signal for the GOP. While Douglas is only the seventh-most-populous county in the state, it had the largest number of voters who left the Republican Party.

"There's going to be a point where the party has to decide what kind of party it wants to be moving forward—and unfortunately for the party as a whole, that's going to mean no matter which fork in the road they choose, they're clearly going to lose what is part of the coalition or has been part of the coalition," strategist Winger said.

"The job after that is going to be to rebuild."

Originally posted by jaden_2.0
The was said here with Nigel Farage with both UKIP and the Brexit Party. The theory was his parties would take votes from the Tory Party and guarantee a Labour Party win. The Tories used exactly that rhetoric to their base. "Vote UKIP, get Labour" and in the end UKIP and the Brexit Party ended up with very little votes and never won a single MP.

"Vote Trump, get socialism." Etc

Not comparable in the least. Trump is by far the most popular Republican.

And say what you want about Farage, but no one can deny his mission was a Huge Success.

Originally posted by jaden_2.0
Here's the effect it can have.

Voting intentions had Brexit Party at 13%

Their actual vote share ended up 2%

That's a bit unfair though, Farage basically said the Tories will deliver and decided to only contest Labour and LibDem seats, which obviously helped the Tories out immensely.

I think the my pillow guy is gonna commit suicide