Trump Commands The GOP To Kill Itself. Ha. Ha. Fucking. Ha.
Republicans are now in an impossible position and I feel SO BAD for them!
The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Senate Republicans toying with the idea of ending the filibuster so they could get out of the disaster they’ve trapped themselves in.
Senate GOP leadership has been rejecting the idea for extremely good reasons I explained in the article and will get into again later. But here’s me writing the most obvious prediction ever:
That means eventually, Trump will almost certainly order Senate Republicans to end the filibuster and end the shutdown. Then Thune and his party of craven cowards will either have to obey their god emperor and destroy their party, or save themselves and risk his wrath.
And here we are, with Trump doing exactly that - ordering the Senate GOP to end the filibuster (sorry for subjecting you to Trump screeching):
What’s happening here? I thought Republicans were loving the shutdown and wallowing in the misery they were causing? I thought this was their big chance to destroy the federal government and really stick it to the Demtards?
Well…yes and no.
Republicans are arsonists. They set fires with the explicit understanding that Democrats will put them out. This is why they set fire to anything and everything, including their own base and things they, the GOP, actually care about. They know that Democrats will step in and keep the fire from burning out of control. And then Republicans can point to the damage and blame…Democrats.
Very stupid people see this as kabuki theater. The uniparty! Both sides are working together! It’s all a scam to fool the public.
These people do not understand the core concepts of who and what the Republican and Democratic Parties are. At their essence, Republicans are people who do not care if Americans live or die. And in the last 15-20 years, they’ve become a straight-up death cult, strongly leaning in the “preferably dead” direction.
Democrats, on the other hand, whatever you say about them, you cannot argue that they have spent decades trying to keep Americans alive. Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security. SNAP. The ACA. Funding for cancer treatment and vaccines. Pretty much every piece of the social safety net comes from us and is despised by the right.
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So…Republicans shut the government down, refusing to restore healthcare to tens of millions of Americans. They set another fire and assumed Democrats would put it out because that’s what Democrats do.
Playbook: ”White House officials had been running an informal pool at the start of the shutdown over how long the whole thing would last. The longest anyone predicted was 10 days.”
But Democrats are refusing to put out the GOP’s fire and Republicans don’t really know what to do about it. The only thing they can think of is doubling down again and again to make things worse.
They illegally cut SNAP to 42 million households, which include over 20 million children. A judge ordered the federal government to not deliberately starve its own citizens, but even with the order, there will be a break in services that will last weeks.
Understand that: Republicans, the party of “pro-life” and “pRoTeCt ThE cHiLdReN!!!” took active steps to impose hunger on children in an attempt to gain a political advantage.
But it’s worse than that. They illegally ordered grocery stores not to help out SNAP recipients on their own:
Several grocery chains and food delivery apps have announced in recent days that they would provide substantial discounts to those whose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits have been delayed. More than 1 in 8 Americans rely on the program, and 39% of them are children.
But on Sunday, Catherine Rampell, a reporter at the Washington Post published an email from the USDA that was sent to grocery stores around the country, telling them they were prohibited from offering special discounts to those at greater risk of food insecurity due to the cuts.
Republicans truly are the worst fucking people to ever exist in America.
The goal here is to ramp up the cruelty and suffering to force the Democrats to break, but it’s not working. Democrats are still refusing to smother the Republicans’ out-of-control fire. The public is increasingly mad at the GOP after originally blaming both sides, with slightly more blame landing on the right.
Accordingly, Trump and his regime are getting “frustrated” with the shutdown. It was supposed to be quick and easy. Democrats were supposed to cave and put out the fire. Another fast win for the “unstoppable” dictator, not a long, protracted fight. Trump doesn’t like long, protracted fights. They’re boring and confusing, and he’d rather play with his toys.
So now the Mad King is demanding Senate Republicans scrap the filibuster so they can end the shutdown.
If you read my previous articles about why Republicans have not and will not risk eliminating the filibuster, you know why this is freezing the marrow in their bones. If not, allow me to considerably brighten your day.
The thing you need to understand here, and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo agrees with me, is that the filibuster is the only thing keeping the Republican Party from oblivion. It MUST exist for Republicans to obstruct progress or Democrats can erase them from the face of the earth in a single election cycle.
Sounds crazy, right? But it’s not. I keep saying this, but all Democrats have to do is pass a Voting Rights Act that eliminates gerrymandering and voter suppression, and that is the end of the GOP. Like that. Poof.
The 6 corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court can attempt to strike it down, but without the filibuster, Democrats can add 5 seats, and that’s the end of that. What are Republicans going to do? Accuse Democrats of being fascists? For…expanding voting rights? That might land harder if they hadn’t just spent the last decade being openly fascist and loudly praising Hitler.
This means Republicans are in an impossible position.
Get rid of the filibuster and watch their future evaporate.
Refuse Trump and suffer his considerable wrath as the shutdown grinds on and Republicans pay a steep price in the midterms.
I know conventional wisdom is that the public will not remember the shutdown by next November. Possibly. But people will remember their children going without enough food. That happened to me for one week when I was five, and I still remember it vividly. That was almost half a century ago, and I still carry those scars. I feel as if the parents of the 20 million children Republicans are hurting are going to remember a year from now.
And that’s aside from the other millions of people who are going to lose their healthcare even if Republicans relent and restore some or most of the money they stole from the ACA and Medicaid.
These are people’s lives Republicans are directly harming in very tangible and lasting ways. They’re going to remember.
The longer this goes on, the worse it will be for the people of the country AND the Republican Party AND the regime. That means Trump will increase the pressure on the Senate Republicans to end the filibuster.
Then it just becomes a question of ending the short-term pain or enduring it to avoid the long-term death of the party.
Personally, I very much want Senate Republicans to cave to Trump’s stupidity. Yes, millions will lose their healthcare. Yes, Republicans will do terrible things for the next three years. But they will not hold onto power, and without the filibuster to hold the vast majority of the electorate back, their entire corrupt project dies.
We should only be so lucky that Republicans are so spineless1 and Trump continues to be so unbelievably dumb.2
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The Blue Wave has begun, and the fascist fucks are scared. There is 1 day until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.
Not a bad bet.
All but guaranteed.
What gives the USDA the authority to tell local grocers how to price their merchandise?
"You fucked up, you trusted us." - Animal House