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The difference between the GOP and Britain’s Tories: The capacity for shame

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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By Jennifer Rubin
Columnist |
July 11, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

Republicans — unlike their counterparts in Britain’s Conservative Party who finally had enough of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and ousted him for his prevarications and personal scandals (not to mention economic turmoil thanks to the Brexit debacle) — have learned nothing since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. They insist on pushing dangerous election deniers and abjectly ignorant candidates for office — even when they lie to their faces.
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The Daily Beast recently reported that Herschel Walker, the GOP’s scandal-ridden nominee for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, lied to his own staff about his children that he had not publicly recognized.
“Emails and texts show advisers discussing how they don’t trust Walker — both to tell the truth to them and to handle campaign events properly — and harboring concerns that he isn’t mentally fit for the job,” the Daily Beast reported. “He spouts falsehoods ‘like he’s breathing,’ this adviser said — so much so that his own campaign stopped believing him long ago. ‘He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,’ the person said, adding that aides have ‘zero’ trust in the candidate. Three people interviewed for this article independently called him a ‘pathological liar.’ ”
The New York Times also notes that Walker has “made exaggerated and untrue claims about his business background and his ties to law enforcement.” That, on top of allegations of domestic abuse, his incoherence and his lies about graduating from college arguably make him the worst GOP nominee of the cycle. Yet Republicans are still asking the people of Georgia to vote for him.


Should we be shocked? Of course not. Former president Donald Trump — who racked up more than 30,000 false or misleading claims while in office, tried to overthrow the election and never learned the basics of his job (e.g., Why is NATO important? What is a trade deficit?) — heartily endorsed Walker and a slew of other cranks, racists, conspiracy theorists and know-nothings.
In all, the GOP has nominated more than 100 election deniers for federal and state midterm races. In Nevada, Republicans chose Jim Marchant, who has said he opposed the certification of Joe Biden’s win in Nevada, to serve as the state’s top election official. In Pennsylvania, they selected Doug Mastriano, who attended the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, for its gubernatorial candidate and TV snake oil-peddler Mehmet Oz for the state’s Senate seat. In Ohio, they chose Trump sycophant and forced birth crusader J.D. Vance for the Senate.
These candidates are so extreme that they raise questions about the party’s capacity to win back the Senate. The Post reports, “Behind the scenes, Republican operatives are growing increasingly nervous.” One Republican likened the situation to “2010 and 2012, when the party fell short of winning the Senate majority because of undisciplined and polarizing candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana.”
While these Republicans may seem like a bunch of misfits, they very much resemble the House Republican caucus or those who attend a CPAC event. Remember, most GOP nominees embrace the “big lie” that the election was stolen, the most ludicrous political falsehood since the Lost Cause myths.
It’s unsurprising that the question on Republicans’ minds is not “How did we nominate such dangerous loons who are unqualified to govern?” but “Can we get elected with such dangerous and unqualified people?” Walker’s staff, unlike Boris Johnson’s Cabinet, did not resign en masse following his scandalous revelations. The party has not cut off funding to any of its Senate nominees.
The House Jan. 6 select committee’s hearings have failed to shake the party. Neither did Trump’s disastrous covid-19 response or his praise of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. If the GOP wins back either chamber of Congress, does anyone think the party will pull out of its delusional and reactionary tailspin?
For democracy to survive, voters must reject Republicans not only because they perpetrated the “big lie” and coup attempt; they must also be rejected because they have proved that they cannot weed out morally and intellectually unfit candidates in the primaries who pose a threat to our democracy.

 
Bill Clinton says hi.

Now in fairness, I think that historically the Rs' kryptonite was hypocrisy; they generally had a tendency to resign when honor required it. D's - less so historically.

But, I do think that D's have gotten better on that front, and R's have gotten worse. Probably at a state of relative equilibrium about now.
 
This is the difference between today and Watergate. The Senate voted 77-0 for an investigation because they understood that some things were more important that politics. To this group of republicans the only thing more important than politics is fund raising.
 
Bill Clinton says hi.

Now in fairness, I think that historically the Rs' kryptonite was hypocrisy; they generally had a tendency to resign when honor required it. D's - less so historically.

But, I do think that D's have gotten better on that front, and R's have gotten worse. Probably at a state of relative equilibrium about now.
Wait. Are you comparing a BJ to the corruption of Republican administrations? They’re not remotely close to the same thing.
 
This is the difference between today and Watergate. The Senate voted 77-0 for an investigation because they understood that some things were more important that politics. To this group of republicans the only thing more important than politics is fund raising.
Nixon wouldn’t have had to resign today. What Nixon did is nothing compared to Trump, his family, and his administration.
 
Wait. Are you comparing a BJ to the corruption of Republican administrations? They’re not remotely close to the same thing.
Don't give him a hard time, it took him all morning to try to come up with a bad analogy of the level that yellowsnow tosses out naturally.
 
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