The corporate Democratic Party is living in a Currier& Ives dreamworld. Come January 2023 Democrats could wake up in an autocratic country.
The Republican Party does not resemble the Republican Party pre-2008.
The Republican Party is a violent "Proud Boy" extremist mob.
"The Proud Boys spent nearly half a decade engaged in often violent protests across the country over issues such as the removal of Confederate statues and the unsubstantiated spread of Shariah law. After the Capitol attack, however, as Proud Boys were being investigated by law enforcement and charged with federal crimes, they lowered their profile. The group dissolved its national leadership and encouraged chapters to get involved in local issues, with the goal of amassing support in advance of this year’s midterm elections.
“The plan of attack if you want to make change is to get involved at the local level,” Jeremy Bertino, a prominent member of the North Carolina Proud Boys, told The New York Times last year in the midst of the shift.
What they intend to do with their power is unclear. Still, following a trend pushed by far-right figures like Stephen K. Bannon, Proud Boys started showing up at school board meetings to protest coronavirus mask mandates and the teaching of antiracist curriculum.
In California’s Central Valley, members of the group have intimidated protesters who did not want a church to buy an L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly theater in Fresno. A Proud Boy declared his candidacy for the Oregon Legislature. A former Proud Boy in Kansas lost a race for a Topeka City Council seat.
The Proud Boys’ encroachments into the Miami-Dade Republican Party are, by far, the group’s largest political success."
MORE AT:
The New York Times
How the Proud Boys Gripped the Miami-Dade Republican Party
It was once Jeb Bush’s base of power. But an influx of far-right activists and the radicalization of other members brought turmoil.
By Patricia Mazzei and Alan Feuer
June 2, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
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"The violence witnessed at last week’s insurrection inside the United States Capitol is not a surprise to anyone who has been following the ReOpen Movement and the conspiracy theories Republicans have been spreading about the election. On the day before the failed coup attempt in DC, Pennsylvania Republicans held their event in Harrisburg.
Speakers at the rally included: incoming Treasurer Stacy Garrity, Senators Doug Mastriano and Cris Dush, and House Representatives Dawn Keefer, Frank Ryan, Mike Jones, Russ Diamond, and Stephanie Borowicz. Republican legislators, including Daryl Metcalfe, David Zimmerman, and Barb Gleim, were also in attendance.
These insurrection enablers have been at the forefront of spreading misinformation in Pennsylvania. They have spread conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus, posed with fringe militia groups and hate groups, and have outright lied about the integrity of Pennsylvania’s election to undermine our democracy.
Senator Doug Mastriano has been the most outspoken. For months, the senator played a prominent role in organizing and speaking at different ReOpen rallies using various platforms to undermine Governor Wolf’s mitigation efforts, spreading falsehoods about the effectiveness of mask-wearing mandates and launching transphobic attacks against Department of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine. The ReOpen Facebook groups were often a place where white nationalists, anti-vaxxers, and others co-mingled. The senator has also been spotted frequently with militia groups and white nationalists and repeatedly used rhetoric from QAnon.
In the days following the election, Senator Mastriano and other legislators such as Congressman Dan Meuser and Mike Regan spoke at some of the initial “Stop the Steal” events in Harrisburg organized by right-wing extremist Scott Presler and attended by militia groups and fascist organizations such as the Proud Boys and “America First.” A few weeks later, Senator Mastriano invited Rudy Giuliani and other Trump campaign officials to spread conspiracy theories at a Senate Majority Policy Committee meeting at the Gettysburg Wyndham Hotel where Senator Mastriano and others contracted the coronavirus."
MORE AT:
PENNSYLVANIA
SPOTLIGHT
WE ALL KNOW WHO DID THIS: DOUG MASTRIANO
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Between 1946 and 2020, an estimated 148 self-coup attempts have taken place: 110 in autocracies and 38 in democracies.[3]
"Navarro recently published a memoir, and is now pushing out interviews to reporters, bragging of a scheme he dreamed up with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to overturn the results of the 2020 election. They even had a cringey name for it: the Green Bay Sweep.
The plot sought to keep Trump in office by exerting maximum pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the Electoral College votes from pivotal swing states, by drawing out the proceedings on national television for as long as 24 hours. “It was a perfect plan,” Navarro told the Daily Beast. “We had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”
Navarro’s anti-democratic plot was intended to keep Trump in office without violence, he’s fast to insist. In fact, Navarro blames the bloody insurrection at the Capitol for what he calls the “inglorious” result of Congress certifying the (100 percent legitimate) election of Joe Biden, foiling the autogolpe that could have continued Trump’s reign of “populist economic nationalism…
So what was the Green Bay Sweep? The plot, Navarro writes, was named after a famous football play designed by storied 1960’s NFL coach Vince Lombardi, in which a Packers running back would pound into the end zone behind a “phalanx of blockers.”
For the 2021 Green Bay Sweep, Navarro writes, Bannon played the role of Lombardi. The plan was to have members of the House and Senate raise challenges to the counts of Electoral College votes from six pivotal battleground states.
“The political and legal beauty of the strategy,” Navarro writes, is that the challenges would force up to two hours of debate per state, in each chamber of Congress. “That would add up to as much as 24 hours of nationally televised hearings,” Navarro writes. The hearings would enable Republicans to “short-circuit the crushing censorship of the anti-Trump media,” Navarro hoped, and broadcast their Big Lie that Democrats had stolen the election “directly to the American people.”
The goal was not to get the election overturned on Jan. 6. Instead, they aimed to create such a spectacle that Pence would be forced to exercise his authority as president of the Senate to “put the certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks” while Congress and the state legislatures pursued the “fraud” allegations. The dark particulars for how Trump would remain in office after that are not spelled out, and Navarro did not immediately answer an email seeking clarification. But he writes that the Green Bay Sweep was the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”
The problem with the plot was that its success hinged on “Quarterback Mike” — and Pence wasn’t solidly on board. Navarro writes that he tried, with Trump’s backing, to brief Pence on his claims of election irregularities, but that Pence was kept off-limits by his chief of staff, Marc Short. (Navarro seethes that Short was part of the Koch brothers wing of the GOP, having previously worked for a nonprofit backed by the Kochs. When Short came to work for the vice president, Navarro writes, “it was like the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe. As an Iron Koch Curtain fell over the vice president, the only way you could speak to VPOTUS was to go through Short.”)
Regardless, Jan. 6 began auspiciously — to Navarro’s view of things. He told the Daily Beast that Trump was “on board with the strategy,” which he writes also had the backing of “more than 100” members of Congress. Navarro elaborated that the plan started off “perfectly” as Congress opened the proceedings to count Electoral College votes. Rep. Paul Gosar objected to results from his home state of Arizona, seconded by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — an action that received standing applause from GOP colleagues in the chamber."
MORE AT:
RollingStone
Trump Adviser Worried He’s Not Getting Enough Credit for Trying to Ruin American Democracy
Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro details the “Green Bay Sweep” he organized with “over 100 congressmen” to keep Trump in office
Tim Dickinson December 28, 2021 2:42PM ET
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