(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Red Caesar and 'poisoning the blood of our country' [1]

[]

Date: 2023-10-06  

David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:

A Broken Congress Is What MAGA Always Wanted If they couldn’t shut down the government, they proved they could cripple the House of Representatives as a consolation prize. There have been MAGA true believers shitting on the floor of the Congress ever since Jan. 6, 2021. But the right wing’s active desecration of the U.S. government extends far beyond ugly recent events on Capitol Hill, and dates back long before the Trumpist insurrection of two and a half years ago. In fact, the origins of the attacks on the government date back at least four decades to the Reagan administration, when the former president popularized the idea within his party that government was actually the enemy. His joke that the scariest words one could hear were, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” has metastasized from being a pitch for smaller government into a movement to blow the whole damn thing up.

Darren Samuelson/The Messenger:

Trump’s Lawyers Ask Judge to Dismiss Jack Smith’s 2020 Indictment, Citing ‘Presidential Immunity’ Trump's trial is scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump's attorneys on Thursday asked a federal judge to throw out in its entirety Special Counsel Jack Smith's criminal indictment charging the former president with trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The former president's 52-page motion to dismiss the indictment centers around an untested legal argument that Trump had "presidential immunity" that protects him from any criminal charges tied to his actions leading the country. "Breaking 234 years of precedent, the incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie not just within the 'outer perimeter,' but at the heart of his official responsibilities as President," Trump's lawyers argue. "In doing so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties."

This is an important challenge and gets to the heart of the Trump defense. He should lose resoundingly, but in this world nothing’s certain except death, taxes, and GOP House dysfunction.

x Back in August, my #SCOTUS newsletter focused on Nixon v. Fitzgerald, and why the Court's 1982 decision *doesn't* support a President's absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, especially if the prosecution happens after the President leaves office:https://t.co/ZVU0teSrjY — Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) October 5, 2023

Also on the legal front but a different case:

x Judge McAfee DENIES Sidney Powell's motion to dismiss the case against her in Fulton County, says the jury's role is to adjudicate contested facts contrary to the aim of the speaking demurrer and that the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct are insufficient to warrant action. — Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) October 5, 2023

Well, that one went nowhere.

x Donald Trump was supposed to be deposed by @MichaelCohen212 on Monday in a lawsuit Trump himself filed against his former attorney.



Instead, Trump dropped the suit tonight. https://t.co/bX30yHGEte pic.twitter.com/X9F433gDGZ — Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 6, 2023

That one went nowhere as well.

Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:

America needs to talk about the right’s ‘Red Caesar’ plan for U.S. dictatorship “Thought leaders” of the far right talk openly about a 2025 dictatorship. People need to be alarmed. TV pundits compared a near-shutdown of the federal government and Kevin McCarthy’s subsequent ouster as speaker to the iconic sitcom Seinfeld — a show about nothing. In capitals around the globe, world leaders and baffled analysts struggled to make sense of the utter dysfunction paralyzing the nation that just a generation ago held itself out as the lone superpower. Yet to a small but influential gaggle of so-called “thought leaders” on the edge of the stage — the pseudo-intellectuals of right-wing think tanks, and chaos-agent-in-chief Steve Bannon — the growing rot infecting another key U.S. institution is just more evidence for their stunning argument now flying at warp speed, yet under the radar of a clueless mainstream media. The D.C. dysfunction is more proof, they would argue, that the nation needs a “Red Caesar” who will cut through the what they call constitutional gridlock and impose order. If you’re not one of those dudes who thinks about Ancient Rome every day, let me translate. The alleged brain trust of an increasingly fascist MAGA movement wants an American dictatorship that would “suspend” democracy in January 2025 — just 15 months from now.

Steve Benen/MaddowBlog:

Trump pushes envelope with comment on the ‘poisoning’ of U.S. ‘blood’ There’s nothing new about Donald Trump attacking those seeking a better life in the United States. But “poisoning the blood of our country” is new. It’s often tempting to ignore reports on Donald Trump’s rhetorical excesses. Everyone has seen countless examples of the former president making unhinged remarks about matters large and small, to the point that they start to have diminishing returns. But in recent days, there’s been a flurry of new reporting on the Republican’s radical rhetoric, and given the specific details, it’s best not to shrug one’s shoulders and look away. Axios reported this week, for example, that Trump's “violent rhetoric ... has grown more extreme as the walls have begun to close in on his business empire, livelihood and personal freedom.” Since he left office, Trump’s erratic behavior has been masked, numbed and normalized by the political fatigue permeating the media and the public. But his words’ violent turn in recent weeks — calling for a U.S. military leader to be executed, mocking a potentially fatal assault on a congressional spouse, urging police to shoot shoplifters — suggest a line has been crossed. For those who keep up on current events, much of the list will likely seem familiar.

x This is stomach-churning.

Staten Island crowds torment asylum seekers in city shelter with strobing flashlights and loud speakers at night. With zero evidence, far-righters accuse those seeking refuge of being pedophiles, prostitutes, "invaders." https://t.co/YHHkoUkJL8 — Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 4, 2023

New York Times:

From a Capitol Hill Basement, Bannon Stokes the Republican Party Meltdown The former Trump adviser has helped create the spectacle of G.O.P. dysfunction, using it to build his own following and those of the right-wing House rebels who took down Kevin McCarthy. Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, the instigator of the rebellion, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of seven other Republican defectors, huddled with Mr. Bannon for a morning meeting ahead of a joint appearance on his “War Room” podcast. “Tectonic plate shift here in the imperial capital,” Mr. Bannon told his listeners at showtime, while directing them to donate to his guests online. “We must stand in the breach now. We have to lance the boil that is K Street in this nation.” From this cavelike studio not far from where Congress meets, Mr. Bannon, the former Trump adviser, has been stoking the chaos now gripping the Republican Party, capitalizing on the spectacle to build his own following and using his popular podcast to prop up and egg on the G.O.P. rebels.

Nancy Mace is no moderate.

Jonathan Allen/NBC:

The GOP armed its bazooka caucus. What could go wrong? Analysis: Republicans now use powerful procedural weapons — impeachment, removal of the speaker and election certification — to thwart majority rule and disrupt democratic institutions. It was inevitable that giving Rep. Matt Gaetz the procedural bazooka he demanded would end in the political annihilation of newly former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. For Gaetz — a 2020 election denier, a defender of the Jan. 6 insurrection and the subject of an ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and more — rules seem to matter most when they benefit him. The animating tenet of his political ideology — a strain of the broader conservative bent against taxation and spending — is that the federal government works against the public interest because it is corrupt. Chaos feeds his narrative. McCarthy's substantive sins were avoiding a national default and a federal shutdown, which interfered with Gaetz's ability to demonstrate that the government is broken. So Gaetz, R-Fla., used his procedural weapon — the "motion to vacate" — to do the next best thing: He aligned with Democrats to throw the House into a state of anarchy. For one day, at least, Gaetz and his seven followers ruled the 433-member House.

x RacetotheWH House Forecast Update - New Projection for the AL - 2



Old Map:

Projection: R+36%

Chance to Win: Dem 1% GOP 99%



New Map:

Projection: D+6%

Chance to Win: Dem 78% GOP 22% — Logan Phillips (@LoganR2WH) October 5, 2023

Washington Post:

As House GOP flails, government shutdown fears reemerge House Republicans on Wednesday started the process of choosing their next leader, but whoever they choose is likely to face the same political constraints that led to McCarthy’s ouster. The former speaker was deposed in part over the fury that followed his decision on Saturday to extend government funding with Democratic votes. After the House did not pass several other Republican spending bills, McCarthy agreed to essentially take up a bipartisan Senate measure, jettisoning the far-right’s demands for hundreds of billions in budget cuts and a crackdown on immigration. Already, the chaos on the House floor is eating into the time necessary to forge a bipartisan agreement on spending. Congress passed a law on Saturday night to keep the government operating for about 45 days. But now the House is in recess through this weekend, and the mess consuming the GOP will carry on at least into next week’s vote on the next speaker, reducing the number of days lawmakers have to work to about 30, said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Whosoever they choose, they will suck. But so did McCarthy, so here we are. And as to Democratic thinking real time, this is an excellent explainer from Aaron Fritschner on X/Twitter via Threadreader:

Some are writing about this as if we chose to overturn a status quo of Kevin McCarthy playing the part of Speaker Scarlet Pimpernel secretly fomenting plans to do the right thing. We had plenty of reason to think things could get worse quickly. It was unstable and unsustainable. Will the next Speaker be worse? Nobody can possibly know who it'll be or what the dynamic will be. But at some point - this phrase has been trotted out in bad faith many times lately so lets try to use it well - you have to think about the institution. And, you know, the country. Their so-called "moderates" who enabled McCarthy's empowerment of the right because he campaigned and raised money for them could've acted at any time to correct that course. Not one of them did so much as sign a discharge petition. They made a choice and they're still making it.

Matt Robison and Paul Hodes with Jamie Raskin:

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/6/2197599/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Red-Caesar-and-poisoning-the-blood-of-our-country?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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/