(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A majority think Donald Trump is being treated fairly and is guilty [1] [] Date: 2023-08-26 POLITICO magazine: Lock Him Up? A New Poll Has Some Bad News for Trump A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll punctures some prevailing political narratives about the Trump indictments. A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll provides some bad news for Trump: Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects. The survey results suggest Americans are taking the cases seriously — particularly the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — and that most people are skeptical of Trump’s claim to be the victim of a legally baseless witch hunt or an elaborate, multi-jurisdictional effort to “weaponize” law enforcement authorities against him. Furthermore, public sentiment in certain areas — including how quickly to hold a trial and whether to incarcerate Trump if he’s convicted — is moving against the former president when compared to a previous POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll conducted in June. This latest poll was conducted from Aug. 18 to Aug. 21, roughly two-and-a-half weeks after Trump’s second federal indictment and several days after Trump was criminally charged in Fulton County. The poll had a sample of 1,032 adults, age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents. From Ipsos: More Americans believe the Justice Department came to their decision to indict Trump in the 2020 election case through a fair evaluation of the evidence and the law, not as a way to gain political advantage for Joe Biden. A majority agree that “The Justice Department’s decision to indict Trump in the 2020 election subversion case was based on a fair evaluation of the evidence and the law” at 59%. However, a significant minority (44%) agree that “The Justice Department’s decision to indict Trump in the 2020 election subversion case was based on trying to gain a political advantage for Joe Biden.” There are significant partisan differences here. The key, as always, is independents. NBC News’ “Meet the Press” blog: Tim Scott has tense back-and-forth with New Hampshire voter over support for Trump “You don’t stand up to Trump, how are you going to stand up to the president of Russia and China?” Coffey asked... In an interview with reporters after his back-and-forth with Scott, Coffey appeared dissatisfied with Scott’s responses to his questions. “He’s a politician. Right? He avoids direct questions, because he doesn’t want to lose a lot of Republican voters by saying what Christie is saying and some of the others are saying,” he said. The interaction provided another glimpse into how Scott and other candidates are reacting to tough questioning, particularly about Trump. Throughout his campaign, Scott has been hesitant to directly criticize the former president over his legal troubles, his actions on Jan. 6 or his repeated claims that the 2020 election was stolen, often instead deflecting to highlight what he refers to as the weaponization of the justice system. Coffey says that hesitancy fails to take into account the voice of voters who are ready to move on from Trump. “The bottom line is that a lot of people like me, they’re sitting here saying, I don’t want that person as president.” Coffey said. Marc Jacob/Courier: 12 WAYS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BECAME THIS RADICALIZED It’s a mistake to think Donald Trump turned the Republican Party into the dangerous anti-democratic movement it is today. The GOP’s descent into fascism was a lengthy process that was well underway when Trump was a young man in the 1970s helping his father discriminate against Black apartment seekers. Here’s a look at 12 key steps in the Republican radicalization: Circa 1964: Southern Strategy Pro-segregation Southern Democrats became increasingly annoyed at calls within their party for racial justice. These “Dixiecrats” defected to the Republican Party, with prominent racist Strom Thurmond making the switch in 1964. Republican adviser Lee Atwater later described the GOP’s “Southern Strategy” to attract the votes of white supremacists: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘[Atwater said the n-word three times].’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘[n-word]’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff.” In the 1970s, GOP candidate Ronald Reagan pushed a “welfare queen” myth to demonize the poor and make white people think lazy Black people were taking advantage of them. In 1976, Republican Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz resigned after it was revealed he privately said some other extremely racist things. POLITICO magazine: History Offers Answers in the New Debate Over Trump v. the Constitution A new debate over the 14th Amendment could Early last year, University of Baltimore law professor Kim Wehle raised an intriguing legal question in POLITICO Magazine concerning Donald Trump’s eligibility to run for elected office: Could the 14th Amendment, which prevented ex-Confederates from seeking office after the Civil War, also bar the former president from reclaiming office after his actions in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election? Now, with Trump facing down his fourth criminal indictment — this time for his effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia — the idea is gaining traction. Earlier this month, a pair of conservative legal scholars affiliated with the Federalist Society — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — endorsed the theory in the New York Times. A recent piece in the Atlantic added two more voices to the chorus from across the ideological spectrum: Laurence Tribe, a liberal constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School, and retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig both support the notion that the Constitution stands between Trump and the White House. It even came up during the first GOP debate this week, when former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he would not “support somebody who’s been convicted of a serious felony or who is disqualified under our Constitution.” x This pretty much sums up what you get if the Republicans win in 2024.@POTUS @JoeBiden and Dems will always fight for reproductive freedom. Elections Matter.https://t.co/JiaaznAgmc via @YouTube — John Anzalone (@JohnAnzo) August 25, 2023 “Abortion as an issue will fade!” ~some unnamed Republican operative, likely male, repeatedly. Hanna Rosin/The Atlantic: The First GOP Debate Makes It Obvious Where the Republican Party Is Headed No one can escape Trump’s long shadow. Nikki Haley came across as the reasonable, truth-telling candidate. She got nowhere. Newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy, meanwhile, offered an updated and shinier version of Trumpism. On this week’s Radio Atlantic, we talk with Atlantic staff writers McKay Coppins, reporting from the debate, and Elaine Godfrey about why Ramaswamy popped, why Ron DeSantis didn’t, and what all of that means for the future of the party and the culture of politics. x President Biden on whether he had seen Trump’s mugshot: “I did see it on television. Handsome guy.” — Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 25, 2023 Margaret Sullivan/The Guardian: Vivek Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting The Republican debate became the entrepreneur’s coming-out party, with the news media boosting him along his way The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, may talk a good anti-woke game but Ramaswamy wrote the book. His Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, published in 2021, takes aim at the nation’s “new secular religions like Covid-ism, climate-ism and gender ideology”. His night in the spotlight, and its aftermath, shows that neither Republican voters nor many in the mainstream media have learned much since Trump came down the elevator in 2015 and proceeded to wreak havoc on the country. In case there was any doubt, now we know: they will always fall for the attention-seeking, the policy-unencumbered, the candidate quickest with a demeaning insult. That’s a “winner”, apparently. And it’s all too familiar. The GOP primary voters have not fallen for anything. They've loudly proclaimed, “this is who we are and this is what we want," with eyes wide open. The rest (especially those who run for office) follow. It’s the non-primary GOP voter (a larger universe) who will decide the issue, but the people who got played (again) were the media. x This is kind of hilarious. The guy who sings ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ was perplex by his song being used in the Republican debate: "I wrote that song about those people." https://t.co/iDh8jiRsq5 — McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) August 25, 2023 Matt Robison talks with pollsters about the debate: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/26/2189653/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-A-majority-think-Donald-Trump-is-being-treated-fairly-and-is-guilty Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/