GOP Will Shit Itself

[beatbandito]

Wotc wouldn't do a set like that. They would have to pay an artist for the photos instead of using AI.

[Büge]

Shut the fuck up, do you want to get sued for leaking the new set?

They wouldn't sue you

They'd send the Pinkertons to your house

[Büge]

Rhode Island election officials found dead people's names on nomination papers submitted by conservative presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy

[KingRoyal]

A conservative? Committing voter fraud? But they're so vocal about how much they dislike voter fraud

Well, the good news is if this did disqualify him it wouldn't have any impact on him getting the nomination

[Mongrel]

Oh and the GOP said today no border deal ('deal') until "Trump is president or there is a Republican president."

Also, man, "hopeful" is absolutely the word to use when it comes to Vivek's presidential ambitions, lmao.

Though in a small sliver of decent news, polling today shows that Hayley's supporters overwhelmingly choose Biden as their second choice (43% Biden, 23% Trump, 8% RFK). I expect that not to stick quite so highly over time, but those are objectively terrible numbers for the GOP for any major Republican candidate to have.

[Thad]

Though in a small sliver of decent news, polling today shows that Hayley's supporters overwhelmingly choose Biden as their second choice (43% Biden, 23% Trump, 8% RFK). I expect that not to stick quite so highly over time

Haley is polling at 12%, so 43% of her supporters comes out to about 5% of Republican primary voters. I think that number is plausible.

[Mongrel]

Vivek's out.

Hopefully the next time we hear his name will be as the answer to a dorky bar trivia game in 2037.

[Mongrel]

As I understand it, there was literally no comment from anyone on the stream at any time about this, uh, incident.

[Büge]

what incident

[Mongrel]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ationship/

EDIT: For extra fun, read it like Werner Herzog is narrating it.

[Mongrel]

DeSantis dropped out.

It's been grimly funny listening to anyone stupid enough to still think of themselves as a "non-Trump Republican" insist that Trump on the ballot in November was anything other than a foregone conclusion.

[Friday]

DeSantis more like De-stroyed by Disney. Santis.

Enjoy your Thigh Food, loser.

[nosimpleway]

Haters said he couldn't do it. They were spot on, excellent call from the haters on that one.

[Mongrel]

From the day I first saw it, this image forever defined Sad Sack DeSantis in my head.

[Thad]

DeSantis dropped out.

It's been grimly funny listening to anyone stupid enough to still think of themselves as a "non-Trump Republican" insist that Trump on the ballot in November was anything other than a foregone conclusion.

If the also-rans had dropped out this quickly in 2016 and anti-Trump primary voters had consolidated behind a single alternative, he probably never would have gotten the nomination. (Though given that the likeliest alternative was Cruz, it's possible the anti-Trump voters may have still picked Trump over him.)

There aren't enough of them in 2024. The anti-Trump vote was a majority in the 2016 primaries; it isn't in these. Trump's the nominee unless he dies.

...I suppose we should have an Election 2024 thread at some point. I've been putting off starting one, in part because these primaries are the biggest foregone conclusion since the ones in 2000.

[Crick]

Is there any to thought to the Repubs being essentially donezo after he dies? Like, this would be the showcase of heirs and junk, and there doesn't seem to be any fascist tools that can pull of the stilted charisma. Is the party just forever dissolving into weirder and weirder attempts at emulation until a New Face comes forward?

[Mongrel]

Only tangentially GOP-related, but goddamn this image sure is something.

[Mongrel]

Trump told his entourage that if Meatball Ron wants in on Donny's gravy train, Ron's gonna have to "kiss my ass a TON!" between now and November.

It's certainly not justice for his manifold crimes, but I will take great pleasure in Ron's forthcoming pathetic grovelling.

[Yoji]

(poor Ian Malcolm impression)

Now you are Ted Cruz phone banking for Trump after he called your wife ugly and that your dad murdered JFK.

[Thad]

Is there any to thought to the Repubs being essentially donezo after he dies? Like, this would be the showcase of heirs and junk, and there doesn't seem to be any fascist tools that can pull of the stilted charisma. Is the party just forever dissolving into weirder and weirder attempts at emulation until a New Face comes forward?

Hard to say what happens next, but I've said before that their moves over the last decade or so are consistent with a movement that knows its days are numbered unless it can seize power by any means necessary.

They've managed to keep themselves relevant through a combination of captured courts, gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and a cult of personality. When Trump dies, one of those things is going to be gone, but they'll probably still have the other three.

There really is no obvious candidate who commands the kind of cult of personality Trump has. There are plenty of folks who are as bad as Trump (maybe even worse because they're competent and have self-control) but don't command the enthusiasm he does; as DeSantis has shown, that may be a good way to get elected in Florida but it won't win you a presidential primary.

There's a wing of the party that's trying to pretend things can go back to normal; Haley is the current mascot. I don't think that works in a post-Dobbs world. You could argue that when Trump dies that means a decrease in his enthusiastic support but also a decrease in his enthusiastic opposition, and I think that's probably true to some extent, but Trump's policies are going to live on after him and, by and large, they're what the GOP's policies have been for the past 40-50 years and it's not going to be easy to go back to the days of plausible deniability. (It's hard to deny you're the party of white supremacy when your "moderate" choice won't say the Civil War was about slavery.) More than ever they're in a rock and a hard place where if they say what they're really about, it will repulse the majority of voters, but if they try to back away from all the crazy shit, the consequences will range from "losing a primary" to "angry mob tries to murder you".

I don't think it's sustainable (provided they fail at the fascist takeover they're working hard on), but I don't know what comes next either. It's been about 60 years since the last time the major parties realigned and 160 since the last time a major party collapsed. Plus the billionaire dollars propping the party up, and the aforementioned courts, gerrymandering, and voter disenfranchisement. They may hang on for awhile yet.