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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The politics of disaster are following the COVID-19 playbook, but worse [1]

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Date: 2023-02-27  

x Wow — and yet, after the revelations in that Dominion filing abt how Fox News operates internally, not exactly surprising -> https://t.co/RweZ5SF3Hg — Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) February 27, 2023

David Corn/The Mother Jones newsletter:

The GOP Plays the Race Card with a Train Wreck This is deft demagoguery, conflating legitimate concerns about economic power with racist paranoia. It goes beyond the usual crass GOP playbook of waving the racism card, instead fusing toxic culture wars to bread-and-butter issues. I don’t know if this sly maneuver—assailing wokeness as the weapon of the 1 percenters—was responsible for Vance’s Senate victory. But it sure didn’t hurt. And in the days since the horrific train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Republicans and right-wingers have been beating this drum. Fox News host and conspiracy theory-pusher Tucker Carlson made this clear eleven days after the accident. “East Palestine is overwhelmingly white, and it’s politically conservative,” he said on his show. “That shouldn’t be relevant but as you’re about to hear, it very much is.” He went on to explain: “If this had happened to the rich or the ‘favored poor,’ it would be the lead of every news channel in the world. But it happened to the poor town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten, and in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable.” His message: the good folks of East Palestine were being screwed because they were white.

x Alarmed, but not surprised! https://t.co/SBehimmDqJ — Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) February 25, 2023

Yaroslav Trofimov/The Wall Street Journal:

Ukraine Is the West’s War Now

The initial reluctance of the U.S. and its allies to help Kyiv fight Russia has turned into a massive program of military assistance, which carries risks of its own A year later, the war in Ukraine has become, to a large extent, the West’s own. True, no American or NATO soldiers are fighting and dying on Ukrainian soil. But the U.S., its European allies and Canada have now sent some $120 billion in weapons and other aid to Ukraine, with new, more advanced military supplies on the way. If this monumental effort fails to thwart President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, the setback would not only undermine American credibility on the world stage but also raise difficult questions about the future of the Western alliance. “In many ways, we’re all-in, and we’re all-in because the realization has dawned in Europe that showing weakness to President Putin, showing no response to his atrocities, only invites him to go further and further,” said Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch politician and member of parliament. “We have also realized that it is not only the safety and security of Ukraine that is at stake but also our own.”

Tom Nichols/The Atlantic:

The War in Ukraine Is the End of a World A shroud is settling over the dreams many of us had at the end of the 20th century. I grieve for the innocent people of Ukraine, for the dead and for the survivors, for the mutilated men and women, for the orphans and the kidnapped children. I grieve for the elderly who have had to live through the brutality of the Nazis and the Soviets and, now, the Russians. I grieve for a nation whose history will be forever changed by Putin’s crimes against humanity. And yes, I grieve, too, for the Russians. I care not one bit for Putin or his criminal accomplices, who might never face justice in this world but who I am certain will one day stand before an inescapable and far more terrifying seat of judgment. But I grieve for the young men who have been used as “cannon meat,” for children whose fathers have been dragooned into the service of a dictator, for the people who once again are afraid to speak and who once again are being incarcerated as political prisoners. Finally, I grieve for the end of a world I knew for most of my adult life. I have lived through two eras, one an age of undeclared war between two ideological foes that threatened instant destruction, the next a time of increasing freedom and global integration. This second world was full of chaos, but it was also grounded in hope. The Soviet collapse did not mean the end of war or of dictatorships, but after 1991, time seemed to be on the side of peace and democracy, if only we could summon the will and find the leadership to build on our heroic triumphs over Nazism and Communism.

x Okay, my kid thought Carlson calling me a "parasite" who's never achieved anything was so funny and over the top that she seriously asked me if it was a deep fake or a parody.

But make no mistake: The rest of the segment is weapons-grade pro-Kremlin fentanyl. Hideous propaganda. pic.twitter.com/P2FBqX4Usv — Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 25, 2023

Paul Egan/Detroit Free Press:

Michigan Republican Party reliant on just 2 donor families, records show Troy attorney Linda Orlans says she was drawn to the Michigan Republican Party because she believes in hard work, entrepreneurship and a tax climate supportive of small business. Between 2007 and 2013, Orlans gave the state party eight checks totaling $80,000, records show. But she has given nothing since. "I just think they lost their soul," said Orlans, who said the party has shifted to the "extreme right," is not focused on solving problems and increasingly espouses an anti-woman philosophy. "The more I saw, the more I was disenchanted with the direction of the party." Orlans is not alone. A Free Press analysis of state campaign finance records found the Michigan Republican Party has seen such a drop-off in its donor base that 58% of the money it raised from individual donors since 2018 came from just two sources: Ron Weiser and the DeVos family.

CNN:

Seven months after he left office, Britain is still reeling from Boris Johnson Despite being forced from office in disgrace and presiding over a massive decline in support for both himself and his party, Johnson is still attempting to influence government policy. His supporters say his interventions are the Conservatives’ last hopes at saving the party from decimation at the next election. His critics think he is not only undermining current PM Rishi Sunak, but, by reminding voters – with many of whom he is unpopular – of his existence, he is damaging his party’s electoral prospects. A quick recap: Johnson was forced to resign after multiple ethics scandals made his position untenable. Those scandals included the notorious “Partygate” where Johnson became the first sitting PM to be found guilty of breaking the law by holding illegal gatherings during the pandemic lockdown. The final straw came for Johnson after it allegations emerged that his deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher, had been sexually harassing party members while drunk. Johnson hired Pincher despite being aware of rumors about his conduct. Johnson has spent much of the past week leaving Westminster guessing as to whether or not he is going to publicly come out against Sunak as he attempts to negotiate an agreement with the European Union to fix part of the 2019 Brexit deal. It is worth noting that Johnson himself negotiated and signed that deal, calling it “oven ready” during his election campaign that same year.

x .@EconUS/@YouGovAmerica Poll



In the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, who do you sympathize with more?



Registered Voters

🇺🇦 75%

🇷🇺 5%

Neither 15%



Dem

🇺🇦 80%

🇷🇺 4%

Neither 9%



GOP

🇺🇦 67%

🇷🇺 8%

Neither 19%



Ind

🇺🇦 61%

🇷🇺 7%

Neither 20%



Feb 20-21, 2023https://t.co/Vw46zVOiKk pic.twitter.com/S3CHni8Fv3 — Aron Goldman (@ArgoJournal) February 22, 2023

The Washington Post:

‘Dilbert’ dropped by The Post, other papers, after cartoonist’s racist rant Newspapers across the United States have pulled Scott Adams’s long-running “Dilbert” comic strip after the cartoonist called Black Americans a “hate group” and said White people should “get the hell away from” them. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the USA Today network of hundreds of newspapers were among publications that announced they would stop publishing “Dilbert” after Adams’s racist rant on YouTube on Wednesday. Asked on Saturday how many newspapers still carried the strip — a workplace satire he created in 1989 — Adams told The Post: “By Monday, around zero.” The once widely celebrated cartoonist, who has been entertaining extreme-right ideologies and conspiracy theories for several years, was upset Wednesday by a Rasmussen poll that found a thin majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be White” — a phrase sometimes associated with racist memes… “If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people … that’s a hate group,” Adams said on his live-streaming YouTube show. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people … because there is no fixing this.” Adams, 65, also blamed Black people for not “focusing on education” during the show and said, “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens.” Outrage followed.

That’s as official a telling as you’ll find.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/27/2154917/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-The-politics-of-disaster-are-following-the-COVID-playbook-but-worse

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