How Do Republicans Think?

I don't know any Republicans—I don't know how they think.

“When the rhetoric of an entire movement devolves into Manichaean demonization of their political foes; when demographic shifts are represented as apocalyptic; and when a party can appeal to nothing but the consolidation of white power, it is an inevitability that such rhetoric will leave bodies in its wake.”

“There has never been a lone wolf when it comes to racist terror in the United States; it suffuses every aspect of our politics and policy, and in latter years the mass howl of fear at change comes from a jaw that drips with blood.”

“As long as we fail to recognize the wellspring of racial animus that animates the right wing in this country, the corpses will continue to accrue.”

I want to spur a discussion about how Republicans actually think—I have no idea how they would respond to certain accusations about the GOP.

Make sure to read my below pieces:

• “Quick Thoughts on Rationality” (6 January 2022)

• “Can We Heal America?” (14 January 2022)

• “Is There HOPE for TRUTH?” (24 January 2022)

The 6 January 2022 piece is just me—I wrote that piece after trying to have a rational discussion with someone and failing miserably at it. I interview Norman J. Ornstein in the 14 January 2022 piece. And I interview Anthony DiMaggio in the 24 January 2022 piece.

I’m curious what Republicans think about these two things:

• (1) extreme racism

• (2) the coup attempt

I really don’t know what Republicans would say about these two topics.

And I think that GOP extremism—as this extremism gets worse and worse—will force more and more Republicans to ask themselves: “Am I comfortable with this? Does this cross a line that I’m not comfortable crossing?”

Ornstein comments as follows in the 24 January 2022 piece:

They don’t want to look in the mirror. 

Maybe more people dying from violence will jolt right-wingers into a different reality, but you obviously don’t want to believe that it’ll take more people dying from violence to get right-wingers to reassess what they believe and how they feel. 

Right now we need to mobilize enough outside forces to prevent the worst—which is a successful coup—from happening. 

And Ornstein also comments as follows in the piece:

Some people’s views might change in response to the January 6th committee’s public hearings. And in response to the evidence accumulating from that investigation about what happened on January 6th, about Trump’s role in what happened, and about the extent to which a larger conspiracy took place in November 2020 and in December 2020. 

Another bout of right-wing violence might cause some people to change their views, but we’ve become so tribal that I don’t think that anything will unite the country in the short run in the way that 9/11 united the country.

So who knows what horrible things will have to happen before Republicans will finally start to say: “I can’t support this anymore.”

Extreme Racism

See the following article:

• “The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican” (15 May 2022)

I took these notes:

• “Reading through the document, what struck me hardest, however, was how very close the killer’s ideas were to the American mainstream—the white-hot core of American politics.”

• “While Gendron’s choice to engage in mass slaughter puts him on the radical fringe of those who enforce their beliefs with bullets, and his overt antisemitism differs slightly from vaguer blame of ‘elites,’ ‘Democrats’ and ‘globalists,’ his fixation on white birthrates and demographic change are neither fringe nor particularly unusual.”

• “What unites murderers like Gendron, and the long list of white supremacist attackers he cited with admiration, with the mainstream of the Republican party is the dream of a white nation.”

• “as the era of the white majority nears its end, a revanchist, racist right has treated the facts of demography as an occasion for a sweeping, violent moral panic”

• “Donald Trump’s ascendance was a key marker of the force of white racial panic; from the moment he launched his candidacy, his overt racism set the party’s agenda, and from the very first, his rhetoric directly provoked racist violence.”

• “Far from ebbing as Trump has ceased to be the party’s sole center, however, the tide of white animus has become even more central to a new crop of Congresspeople and candidates.”

• “The Republican Party’s embrace of nativism has been more of a full-on dash than a slow slide, and it has been catalyzed by the vast constellation of right-wing media.”

• “Once you understand an obsession with racial composition and white fertility to be the driving engine of Republican politics, a number of seemingly disparate movements begin to fit together into an ugly whole.”

• the killer’s “fixations mirror those of the right wing more broadly, from violent transphobia to a loathing of immigration to a preoccupation with the possibility of civil war”

• “When the rhetoric of an entire movement devolves into Manichaean demonization of their political foes; when demographic shifts are represented as apocalyptic; and when a party can appeal to nothing but the consolidation of white power, it is an inevitability that such rhetoric will leave bodies in its wake.”

• “The Republican Party caters chiefly now to those who claim that to be born the wrong color is an act of genocide, and act with appropriate fervor.”

• “There has never been a lone wolf when it comes to racist terror in the United States; it suffuses every aspect of our politics and policy, and in latter years the mass howl of fear at change comes from a jaw that drips with blood.”

• “As long as we fail to recognize the wellspring of racial animus that animates the right wing in this country, the corpses will continue to accrue.”

Ornstein says the following in the 14 January 2022 piece:

The “Great Replacement” propaganda appeals to people’s worst racial instincts. This propaganda can be effective if you feel embattled and if you feel like you’re about to lose the one thing—your status as a member of the ethnic majority—that you had going for you.

It’s just hard to overcome propaganda like that. And this propaganda can lead to more extreme views and more extreme measures. 

And Ornstein also says this in the piece:

it’s difficult and risky to confront the reality that one of the GOP’s main strategies is to promote racial conflict and foment racial strife, but you can’t shrink away from that reality or else things will only get worse on the racial front and you’ll have a really bad time.

DiMaggio says the following in the 24 January 2022 piece:

I’ve written about the finding that more than half of Republicans pretty openly embrace tropes and beliefs that are white supremacist or white nationalist even as these Republicans refuse to call themselves white supremacists or white nationalists

And DiMaggio also says this in the piece:

So the danger is that demographics are inevitably shifting in America and that the American right—which increasingly embraces extremism—is willing to cross all sorts of lines in order to win this losing battle. And that situation is an absolute powder keg.

I really do wonder what Republicans would say about what the GOP is up to on the racial front.

The Coup Attempt

There was a coup attempt in the United States—once the details become public, we’ll have to see how Republicans feel about the details regarding what actually happened.

Jamie Raskin provided some shocking information about the coup attempt:

“This was not a coup directed at the president,” Raskin said. “It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress.”

The plan was coordinated “most tightly by Trump and his inner circle,” Raskin said, adding that the committee faced the most difficulty in this aspect of its probe. The panel has interviewed more than 800 witnesses, but he said, “The closer you get to Trump, the more they refuse to testify.”

Speaking about the threats to Pence on Jan. 6 and the chants by rioters to hang him, Raskin said the vice president’s Secret Service agents—including one who was carrying the nuclear football—ran down to an undisclosed place in the Capitol. Those agents, who Raskin said he suspects were reporting to Trump’s Secret Service agents, were trying to whisk Pence away from the Capitol.

Pence then “uttered what I think are the six most chilling words of this entire thing I’ve seen so far: ‘I’m not getting in that car,’” Raskin said.

“He knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do,” Raskin said.

There’s a notion that this coup attempt never could’ve worked. But this was a serious coup attempt:

The plan was to use then-Vice President Mike Pence to try to get President Joe Biden’s electoral vote tally below the 270 majority needed for victory, Raskin said, which under the 12th Amendment would shift the contest to a vote in the House. If that occurred, he said, Republicans would have the majority to seize the presidency because the votes would be cast by the state delegations, and the GOP controls more state delegations than the Democrats do.

“It’s anybody’s guess what could have happened—martial law, civil war. You know, the beginning of authoritarianism,” Raskin said, speculating on what might have unfolded if the plan was successful. “I want people to pay attention to what’s going on here, because that’s as close to fascism as I ever want my country to come to again.”

Some witnesses have refused to provide testimony, but it’s possible—when someone stonewalls—to get information from staff and others, so efforts to stonewall won’t necessarily hinder the investigation that much.

I wonder what Republicans will say when the details come out. Will Republicans—the Republicans who learn about the details of this coup attempt—rethink their support for the GOP?