(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Right-wing Twitter is so hilariously mad at Republicans [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-06-20 A Twitter user who uses the name “Catturd” is one of Elon Musk's favorite right-wing accounts. His public adoration has helped to boost Catturd to nearly two million followers on the otherwise dwindling social media platform. As with much of the conspiracy right, Catturd has been having a rough one lately, what with his hero Donald Trump facing multiple indictments (and Hunter Biden facing none), Republicans losing elections, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy failing to deliver on his pie-in-the-sky promises, and President Joe Biden racking up a big win in the debt ceiling hostage negotiations. Now Catturd is losing it over that Fox News interview where Bret Baier eviscerated Donald Trump. Ultimately, he summarizes his frustrations in this one handy tweet, giving us insight into the conspiracy right’s current state of mind: x Preview of the week for the Republican uniParty. 1) Rage tweet. 2) Write mean letters. 3) Cry on Hannity. 4) Bash Trump and his voters. 5) Make sure there's zero punishment and zero accountability for the people destroying our country from within. 6) Send billions more to… — Catturd ™ (@catturd2) June 20, 2023 Let’s dig into these more deeply. RELATED STORY: Fox News' Bret Baier eviscerates Donald Trump Right off the bat, his rant is hilarious. The Republican Party, and even Fox News themselves, have long been built on “messaging,” as opposed to any solid ideological core. So it’s no surprise that Catturd is ultimately defending Trump, the individual, and not his policies or ideology. Trump, like the modern Republican Party, has no policies, no ideological core. It wasn’t long ago that Republicans had mastered the art of branding. We spent years trying to come up with a pithy explanation of what Democrats stood for, while Republicans nailed theirs easily: “Family values, strong national security, and lower taxes.” Yet with Trump, Republicans pissed all that away. They wrapped themselves in a MAGA flag and rally around a man who explicitly makes a mockery of the whole notion of family values. When was the last time you even saw Trump and Melania photographed together? Hell, even his daughter, Ivanka, shared a post celebrating Jared on Father’s Day, with no mention of dear Dad. And then there is Trump’s embrace of Russia and North Korea as friends. So much for a strong national security. And sure, he got tax cuts for billionaires passed during his presidency, but he’s now attacking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for voting to cut Social Security and other social net entitlements, deviating yet again from conservative orthodoxy. It is truly bizarre seeing them so ideologically adrift, while we have our own messaging nailed down: Democrats are the party of freedom. Without an ideology to rally around, Trump has built a cult around him, the individual, at the expense of his party. Catturd starts his one-tweet rant attacking the “Republican uniParty”—the new conspiracy theory that says that there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties, that they are all part of the same Deep State plan to something something. In their worldview, Trump is the only thing standing in the way of the Deep State uniParty and therefore some sort of calamitous loss of freedoms, not to mention Ukraine’s victory over Russia. This is how these cultists separate their idol hero from his party, and justify his destructive internecine attacks. Preview of the week for the Republican uniParty. 1) Rage tweet. 2) Write mean letters. 3) Cry on Hannity. 4) Bash Trump and his voters. Remember, the Republican Party was built around messaging. It is inherently unable to govern, and it certainly can’t do so while holding just the House. So messaging is all it has and they are clearly adrift. Yet this new generation of conservative activists is unwilling to accept the realities of Washington, D.C., and our Constitution, and are agitating for more, more, more. This is what led to the Jan. 6 insurrection and their continued eliminationist violent rhetoric. They simply can’t accept that Republicans can only do so much without the White House or the Senate. … Both of which Republicans lost because of Donald Trump. And that speaks to point 4 on Catturd’s list. The Republican Party can’t rectify what is ailing so long as the root cause—Trump—continues to hold sway. Yet people like Catturd refuse to take an honest accounting of their situation. They must defend their cult leader at all costs, and anyone who lobs even the mildest criticism at Trump is “bashing Trump and his voters.” In his mind, there is no separation between the two, he is an extension of his hero idol. An attack on Trump is an attack on him, something the candidate himself said directly in the wake of the classified documents indictments. 5) Make sure there’s zero punishment and zero accountability for the people destroying our country from within. Oh man, these people are losing their minds over this morning’s Hunter Biden charges, because they believed their own conspiracies about laptops with dick pics and bizarre claims of Ukrainian and Chinese bribes, etc. etc. etc. The fact that some weak tea tax and a weapons charge is the most that a partisan Trump-appointed investigator could manage shows that sometimes the system does work (particularly for the wealthy, like Hunter Biden). Biden broke the law, great! He pled out? Great! Trump could’ve done that as well, just like he could’ve avoided the investigation altogether by simply returning the documents that weren’t his. But for people conditioned to believe that there is a Deep State uniParty, this is just more supporting evidence. The system is going after their God King Trump, yet the Deep State got to Trump’s own handpicked partisan hack, making sure that Biden didn’t get charged with all the fantasy crimes they convinced themselves actually happened. 6) Send billions more to Ukraine. The crowd that claims to hate “identity politics” have surely wrapped themselves up in the Russian flag, identifying as Putinistas. Again, this is all Trump-driven. Had Trump declared Putin a personal enemy, this same crowd would be railing against Russia, cheering American weapons killing their soldiers. There is no core ideology here like “freedom,” which is clearly now a liberal value. They are simply following their cult leader’s dictates. 7) Cave at every turn to Democrats because of "muh principles." 8) Make excuses for being weak and ineffective. 9) Beg for money. 10) Beg for even more money. Remember when we had these same complaints about Democrats? And then, over the decades, Democrats got better. Here at Daily Kos we were always willing to beat up on Democrats when they failed, but kept a realistic outlook as well. We understand, for example, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s math in West Virginia, where Trump won 69-30 in 2020. He sucks so bad in the Senate, but we could also acknowledge that without him, we wouldn’t have had the Senate in 2020, helping Biden pass much of his first-term agenda. Politics are messy and complicated and rarely ideal. It’s possible to despair at what isn’t working, while simultaneously celebrating what is, while also working to improve the situation. Republicans understood this for a long time, particularly the Christian Coalition religious right voters that did much of the Republican Party’s ground organizing. They were clearly condescended to, with wealthy Republicans happy to pay lip service to abortion while doing little to actually make it illegal. And yet these grassroots organizers kept at it for decades, until they finally got the Supreme Court they wanted, and the ruling they so desperately worked for. Trump was too dense to realize the Republican long-con of the religious right. Republicans weren’t actually supposed to deliver on those promises, and now that they have, it cost them big electorally. As a result, Republicans are now a minority party. They lack the White House and the Senate, and their House majority is so tiny, they don’t even need Democrats as an opposition—their various factions are doing a good job obstructing their own agenda. “We are in the minority,” is actually a good, salient excuse for being ineffective. Not that Catturd and his ilk will accept that. They’ll call it “weak” and further agitate his people against McCarthy and other elected Republicans. For them, “strong” would’ve been tanking the United States economy with a national default, failing to understand that like abortion, this wouldn’t just hurt people, but would further harm Republicans’ electoral chances. Strong would be standing up to Putin and fighting for Ukraine’s freedom. Now, Republicans will beg for more money. As will Democrats. Politics runs on money, it’s an inescapable fact. Yet Republicans haven’t depended on grassroots donors to the extent that Democrats do. And Republicans have struggled with those small-dollar donors for several years now. Why? Because Trump sucks up that money, uniquely able to sucker poor conservatives to send him—a supposed billionaire—all their money. Next week ... repeat 1-10. The Republican Party is completely worthless, spineless, and not worth voting for anymore. Yup! We can all agree on this—the Republican Party is worthless and not worth voting for anymore. Hopefully, a good chunk of Catturd’s followers heed that advice. Maybe we’ll get extra lucky and Musk will amplify that message. And then Republicans could sit there wondering why conservatives are getting their marching orders from a pseudonymous account named after animal shit. It seems somehow fitting. There have been sooo many hot takes about the 2022 midterms, which is why we're joined on this week's episode of "The Downballot" by Michael Frias and Hillary Anderson of the progressive data firm Catalist to discuss their data-intensive report on what actually happened. They explain how they marry precinct-level election results with detailed voter files to go far beyond what the polls can tell us. Among the findings: Highly competitive races were much more favorable to Democrats than less-contested ones; Republicans paid a "MAGA tax" by nominating extreme candidates; and non-college white women shifted toward Democrats by notable margins compared to 2020. 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