IT'S NOT TRUMPISM, IT'S REPUBLICANISM, PART LXXXVII

The Atlantic's Olga Khazan describes Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne as "the new face of Trumpism in Texas":

Last year, President Donald Trump’s popularity among Texans was flagging, and Democrats in the state, who hoped to take control of the Texas House and win several congressional seats, thought diverse suburbs such as Irving would be reluctant to elect Trumplike Republicans. Van Duyne’s district—where the Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke beat Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2018 while losing statewide—looked like one of their best opportunities....

But Republicans, including Van Duyne, won all the Texas seats Democrats had targeted, and the GOP maintained control of the state legislature. Van Duyne outperformed Trump, winning her district even as the then-president lost it to Joe Biden—one of the nine House Republicans to manage that feat. Democrats weren’t just beaten; they were beaten by the exact kind of candidate they thought voters were done with....

Trump may be gone, but Trumpism is very much alive.

But when you read Khazan's account of Van Duyne's career, it becomes obvious that she made her name as a mid-2010s Fox News Republican, not as a Trump Republican.

In 2015, in the Dallas suburb of Irving, the fates of two very different Texans collided.

One was 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, a precocious kid in a NASA T-shirt who had built a clock out of spare parts and brought it to school in a pencil case. His English teacher decided it might be a bomb, and the school called the police, who arrested Mohamed for bringing in a “hoax bomb.” ...

The other Texan was Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne, a blond 44-year-old with Disney-princess bone structure. She defended Mohamed’s arrest on Facebook, then went on The Glenn Beck Program to repeat the “hoax bomb” lie and complain that the child hadn’t given police enough information....

In 2015, Van Duyne seized on a claim, promoted by the conservative site Breitbart News, suggesting that a Muslim court in Irving was operating under Sharia law. She swiftly posted a condemnation of the idea on Facebook....

The “Sharia Law Court” was in fact a mediation panel for resolving disputes among Muslims in Dallas. These types of mediators exist for Christians and Jews too, and the area’s Islamic community said its panel complied with American laws. The fact-checking site Politifact rated “false” the claim that Muslims “attempted to establish the first Islamic Sharia court inside the United States in the town of Irving, Texas.”

Nevertheless, Van Duyne went on Glenn Beck’s show to denounce the panel. “Equal treatment under the law doesn’t seem to exist,” Van Duyne told Beck. “I think you need to put your foot down and say, ‘This is America; we have laws here already.’ If you want to consult, if you want to arbitrate, that is well within our law ... I’ve got no problem with it. But setting up a separate court—setting up separate law—is not anything.”

Beck cut her off. “This is an actual court?”

“Correct,” Van Duyne responded, inaccurately.

Afterward, Van Duyne pushed the Irving city council to pass a resolution endorsing a Texas House bill that would bar “foreign” laws from superseding American laws. The measure was widely known as an “anti-Sharia” bill, and it thrilled the state’s far-right Republicans.

This isn't Trumpism. Trump is a bigot, but he wasn't responsible for the right's obsession with these stories -- Fox and other right-wing media outlets were. Trump has never really shared the right's obsession with imaginary outposts of Sharia law in America. (According to the Trump Twitter Archive, he tweeted the word "Sharia" only once in all his years on the site.)

If Van Duyne wasn't seen as extreme in a district won by Joe Biden, maybe it's because for years Fox has been regarded as a somewhat opinionated but perfectly respectable news organization. Many centrist suburbanites came to regard Donald Trump as a monster, but they've never felt that way about Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Brian Kilmeade.

Van Duyne kept up with times and ran a 2020 congressional campaign you might call Trumpy. Alex Samuels of the Texas Tribune tells us:

Early in her bid for a North Texas congressional seat, Beth Van Duyne went on “Fox & Friends” with three other Republican women to take aim at the brand of liberalism they planned to fight in Washington, D.C.

Informally named a “conservative squad” — the GOP’s antidote to a quartet of progressive women in the U.S. House known as “the squad” — Van Duyne said that, if elected, the GOP group’s goal was to influence a Congress “run by extremists.” ...

After the “conservative squad” appeared on “Fox & Friends” last year, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said in a tweet that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Van Duyne responded: “Socialism is the severest form of treachery.”

... In the runup to Election Day, she took up the president’s defense with a gusto, advocating for reopening schools and against further pandemic-related shutdowns. She also espoused pro-police policies, stoking fear about “violent criminals” and the decline of Texas cities in the face of protests over racial injustice.

“Make no mistake: There are gangs. We’ve got drug cartels that are doing business in our street. We’ve got sex trafficking,” she told The Morning News. “Those aren’t things we’re just making up. This is real city crime.”

But most of this is what Republicans would have been saying for the past year with or without Trump. It's what they're saying now, at a time when Trump is speaking up only occasionally, and mostly to whine about his election loss.

Van Duyne's is pro-Trump, but she's not a Trumpist. She's a bog-standard Fox News Republican. Far too many Americans, including quite a few Biden voters, still have no problem with that.

THEY THINK WE'RE OUTVOTING THEM, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY THINK WE OUTNUMBER THEM

I won't attempt a thorough critique of that Nate Cohn piece about sectarianism, but I'd like to comment on this passage:

Sectarianism has been so powerful among Republicans in part because they believe they’re at risk of being consigned to minority status. The party has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and conservatives fear that demographic changes promise to further erode their support.

Republicans do believe that they’re at risk of being consigned to minority status -- but please note one of the photos accompanying Cohn's piece:

These Trump supporters are holding signs that refer to them as "the silent majority." You and I know that the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections -- but Trump voters don't. They don't believe their candidate lost the 2020 election. They don't believe he lost the popular vote. They regularly point to the large crowds at Trump rallies and the sparse crowds at Biden rallies, and scoff at the notion that Biden won 81 million votes. It's quite likely that they believe Trump won the popular vote in 2016 as well.

Since the Bush years, they've been told that Democrats cheat in every election. They're told that Democratic "machines" add phony votes in big cities. They're told that unions and other organizations bus Democratic voters across state lines. They're told that undocumented immigrants vote in large numbers in California and elsewhere. They're told that any vote tallied more than a few hours after the polls close is fake. And they believed all this even before 2020, when large numbers of Democrats voted by mail or drop box, which Republicans assume is a sure sign of fraudulence, even though Republicans used to vote these ways much more than Democrats.

In addition, Republicans believe that Democrats support "open borders" in order to flood America with brown-skinned people who inevitably become Democratic voters. Never mind the fact that these immigrants aren't becoming citizens, and aren't guaranteed to vote Democratic if they attain citizenship. (They might be a bit more inclined to vote GOP if Republicans would support their hopes of becoming Americans, as some used to.) GOP voters assume undocumented immigrants are voting (exclusively for Democrats) now, and more are coming.

I can't prove this, but I suspect that many Republicans don't feel outnumbered yet. They think the moment is coming -- it's always in the future, like a Democratic president seizing all the guns -- but I don't think they believe it's here yet. They think they're the real Americans. They live in bubble-like partisan enclaves where nearly everyone is like them. I don't think they believe there are more Democratic leaners than Republican leaners in America -- to them, the cities and suburbs where Democrats are in the majority are unimaginable. I think they feel Democrats have to cheat in ever newer ways to win. (Abolishing the Electoral College? Cheating. The For the People Act? Cheating.)

It's not just that they feel outnumbered. They feel outnumbered by fake ballots and illegal voters. They can't conceive of the possibility that most American voters aren't like them.

WHO'S GOING TO BUY WILLIAM BARR'S BOOK?

Politico reports:

William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general who resigned two days before Christmas after disagreeing publicly with Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories, recently sold a book about his time at the Justice Department, according to three people familiar with the deal.

We're not told much more about this -- who the publisher will be, what the advance was -- but I don't expect the book to sell well. If Barr had laft office a year early, he might have been seen as a hero in MAGA World. But here are some of the most recent headlines about Barr at Gateway Pundit (which is where I go to measure Trumpist sentiment):

* Barr Says He Will Not Appoint Special Counsel to Investigate Election or Hunter Biden (December 21, 2020)

* Bill Barr Did Not See Fraud Because He Refused To Look (December 26, 2020)

* “Orchestrating a Mob to Pressure Congress Is Inexcusable” – Former Attorney General Bill Barr Piles on Trump (January 7, 2021)

* “He Was Really Working Against this Administration in a Lot of Ways” – Trump Administration’s Peter Navarro on Deep State’s AG Bill Barr (February 7, 2021)

GP ran a piece yesterday citing a Washington Post report that said Barr refused to release sensitive documents that Trump loyalists hoped would turn what they call "Spygate" into a massive scandal. GP's response to this story is about as subtle as you'd expect:

Bill Barr turned out to be more dedicated to the Deep State than to the President and America. It took nearly two years but his true colors showed at the end of his time in office.

We knew after the corrupt election with thousands of instances of crimes and fraud across the country that when Barr’s response was to do nothing on behalf of the American people, he was not a good guy. This was not complying with his oath. It was shameful and potentially criminal.

Now we know it was Barr who recommended not releasing information to the American people that would show the crimes by the Democrats and others involved in the Trump – Russia collusion sham. He likely prevented these documents from being released because it would have shown the DOJ’s total disgusting anti-American bias and criminal actions in covering up this same scam.

So your MAGA relatives will give this one a wide berth.

The Politico story also mentions a forthcoming Amy Coney Barrett book. For that one, an advance is mentioned, and it's in the seven figures, which makes sense because there's a large Christian book market. She'll do fine.

We're told that COVID skeptic Dr. Scott Atlas has a book coming out from a division of Post Hill Press. Post Hill is the publisher of forthcoming book by one of the cops who shot Breonna Taylor -- a book that Simon & Schuster won't distribute despite its ongoing distribution arrangement with Post Hill. S&S doesn't seem to have problems with COVID nonsense like Steve Deace and Todd Erzen's Faucian Bargain, also published by Post Hill, so I assume it will raise no objections to the Atlas book. It will undoubtedly carry blurbs from Alex Berenson and Laura Ingraham and be a bestseller.

And Politico also tells us that there's a new book coming from the very Trumpy Peter Navarro. Will the MAGAs buy that one?

Navarro declined to say who the publisher was, but did say: “I can tell you it won’t be Simon and Schuster based on their unethical cancel culture treatment of Josh Hawley and his fine and powerful book on the social media oligarchs juxtaposed against their publication of the whitewashed book by Hunter Biden that conveniently ignores his sellout of America to communist China.”

I think we have our answer.

TRUMP MIGHT NOT RUN, BUT WITHIN THE PARTY HE WON'T BE BEATEN

The first part of Ross Douthat's latest column makes the standard case for Ron DeSantis as a 2024 Republican presidential nominee: He was attacked for COVID recklessness, but his state's per-capita caseload and death numbers are about average for the country; he thrilled right-wingers when he lashed out at 60 Minutes for a piece on him that was subsequently criticized by fact checkers; he's surprisingly popular in his state even among non-Republicans; and on and on.

But then we learn what Douthat really means when he suggests that DeSantis could be the 2024 candidate:

Of course all of this means that he may soon attract the ire of a certain former president, who has zero interest in someone besides himself being the party front-runner for 2024....

Still, if you were betting on someone who could theoretically run against Trump, mano a mano, and not simply get squashed, I would put DeSantis ahead of both the defeated Trump rivals (meaning Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz) and the loyal Trump subordinates (meaning Mike Pence or Nikki Haley). Not least because in a party that values performative masculinity, the Florida governor’s odd jock-nerd energy and prickly aggression are qualities Trump hasn’t faced before.

Douthat is suggesting that DeSantis could beat Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries. That's insane. No one will beat Trump if he runs. That will be true even if he's under indictment. (Being under indictment would make him even more popular among Republican voters -- he'll say "witch hunt" every day and the rubes will go wild.)

Also, Douthat doesn't believe that Trump has ever faced someone with "odd jock-nerd energy and prickly aggression"? Um, Ted Cruz?

But Douthat isn't the only one entertaining the notion that Trump will be defeated, not merely replaced:

As I said to Brian Williams on @11thHour last night, the 2024 GOP nomination fight between Donald Trump and Liz Cheney is going to be lit.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 17, 2021

Liz Cheney is very likely to lose a House primary in 2022. Even if she squeaks by, Republican voters, including those who are only moderately besotted with Trump, will conclude that she shouldn't have attacked him so frequently and should have saved her ire for the evil socialist Democrats. Douthat's scenario -- that Republican voters, including some Trump fans, will say it's time for a change -- strains credulity, but not as much as Kristol's belief that the scales will fall from GOP voters' eyes and they'll decide that they should back someone who despises Trump.

I suspect there won't even be primaries if Trump decides to run again. His loyalists run many of the state parties. He got primaries canceled in several states in 2020 even though he would have won them with at least 85% of the vote. If he decides to run, I assume he'll put pressure on party organizations in the states to declare him the nominee by acclamation. I bet they'll do it.

But even if that doesn't happen, no one will beat Trump if he runs. Only Trump haters will even try, and they'll do about as well as the Trump haters did against him last year.

GREENE, GOSAR, GAETZ, AND CARLSON ARE MOVING THE OVERTON WINDOW (updated)

You probably know about this already:

In an effort to "follow in President Trump's footsteps," a new America First Caucus led by far-right lawmakers is seeking to protect "Anglo-Saxon political traditions."

The new caucus is recruiting members, reports Punchbowl News, and is appealing to a "common respect for Anglo-Saxon political traditions," including pushing for infrastructure that "befits the progeny of European architecture." Punchbowl described the materials being distributed as "some of the most nakedly nativist rhetoric we've ever seen."

The new caucus is being led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert (Texas) and Barry Moore (Ala.) are also reportedly going to join the group.

Moore's office denies that he's joining the caucus, and Colorado congressman Ken Buck, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has denounced the group. But Matt Gaetz is an eager recruit.

I’m proud to join @mtgreenee in the #AmericaFirst Caucus.

We will end wars, stop illegal immigration & promote trade that is fair to American workers.

This is just a hit piece from the America Last crowd in Big Media, Big Tech & Big Government.https://t.co/hjGiuSLwBW

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) April 16, 2021

This comes at a time when Tucker Carlson is pushing the limits of what's acceptable in mainstream, high-profile commentary with his proud invocation of "replacement theory."

Besides injecting a lot of overt racism into the discourse, all of this drags the Overton window further to the right, so Republicans who are proud Trumpists but don't speak this way appear to be part of "the sensible center." (That's nearly all of the D.C. GOP, of course, with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as rare exceptions.)

If you believe the election was stolen, think President Biden should finish the Wall, and have scheduled your ring-kissing pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago but you want it known that you would never, ever join a group that invokes "Anglo-Saxon political traditions," congratulations -- Greene, Gosar, Gaetz, and Carlson are making you look like the sane, reasonable ones. Sunday talk show bookers will see nothing wrong with inviting you to appear because, hey, at least you're not one of those Republicans. And so the "center" continues to be moved further and further rightward.

****

UPDATE: Well, so much for that.

Conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is scrapping the planned launch of her "America First" caucus after receiving blowback from leaders in her own party, despite confirming through a spokesperson on Friday that the caucus would launch.

Nick Dyer, Greene's spokesperson, told CNN in an email on Saturday afternoon the Georgia Republican is not "launching anything."

"The Congresswoman wants to make clear that she is not launching anything. This was an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved," he said in an email to CNN....

The reversal from her office comes a day after top House Republican Kevin McCarthy indirectly referenced the congresswoman's new caucus, tweeting, "The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln & the party of more opportunity for all Americans—not nativist dog whistles."

So there are limits, at least for now.

IT'S CONCEIVABLE THAT A BLACK EX-DEMOCRAT COULD BEAT BRIAN KEMP, BUT MAYBE NOT THIS ONE

New York magazine's Ed Kilgore notes that Brian Kemp's polling among Georgia Republicans looks a lot better since he signed the vote suppression law, after a period when he seemed like a dead man walking because he refused to help Donald Trump steal his state's presidential electors:

Kemp has eagerly been making the rounds of conservative media outlets to defend the new law, struggling, no doubt, to hide his glee at the liberal criticism it has attracted. The furor is helping him back home where it matters as well, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein observes:

In recent weeks, Kemp has been a mainstay on conservative cable TV shows and enjoyed raucous receptions at grassroots meetings across the state, seemingly dissuading better-known Republican rivals such as former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, whom Trump once recruited to run.

Morning Consult reports that Kemp’s job-approval rating among Georgia Republicans rose from 59 percent in mid-March to 74 percent in early April.

But Kemp does have a challenger:

Vernon Jones is a Black former state legislator and county CEO who endorsed Trump’s reelection last year and has more recently switched parties. He got a lot of MAGA attention, particularly after his featured role at the GOP National Convention. He has really taken to his new career in Republican politics, speaking at the notorious January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington and basking in the affection of the Big Man (“When are you announcing? When are you announcing?” Trump said to Jones at Mar-a-Lago last week).

Kilgore thinks Jones has some liabilities:

Aside from the fact that he’s a career Democratic politician from a jurisdiction (the Atlanta inner suburb of Dekalb County) that your average rural Republican wouldn’t visit on a bet, he has always had some issues, as Bluestein explains, calling him “a uniquely polarizing figure in state politics”:

Jones launched his political career in the early 1990s in the Georgia House before winning the first of two terms as DeKalb County’s chief executive officer in 2000. His stint was marked by controversy ...

[H]is angry outbursts and clashes with other local officials dominated headlines, as did more serious allegations ...

[A] wide-ranging special grand jury report released in 2013, after Jones left office, recommended an investigation against Jones and other DeKalb officials into possible bid-rigging and theft when he was chief executive, painting a picture of a culture of corruption that spanned from his office to workers and contractors in the watershed department.

Worse yet, Jones was accused of rape in 2005. His successful defense was that the intercourse in question was part of a consensual three-way sexual encounter. This is still not a great look for candidates in the Christian-right- dominated Georgia GOP.

Kilgore is a son of the South and I'm not, but I question whether any of this would bother MAGA voters. I'm certain that none of it would bother them if Jones were a white MAGA candidate. Ex-Democrat? Angry? Corrupt? Boasted about an exciting sex life as a defense against charges of sexual assault? All of that could describe Trump. Bible Belters love Trump.

But this could be a dealbreaker:

And speaking of the Christian right, Jones had a problem with a vote in the legislature against a “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban Kemp had championed in 2019.

Jones now supports the fetal heartbeat bill -- but this kind of thing matters to the Christian right. His flip-flop was recent, unlike Trump's. (Republican voters don't remember Trump's long-ago statements in favor of abortion rights, and he proved his Christian right bona fides in 2016 by releasing a list of potential judicial nominees that was heavy on Christianists.)

This and the fact that Jones is Black will hurt him in the primary. On the other hand, if Trump puts some real effort into backing Jones, he might have a shot.

However, what I suspect will happen is that Herschel Walker's campaign against Raphael Warnock will be of much more interest to Trump, because Trump prefers Black people who stay in their lane (sports), but he does love the reflected glory he gets from hanging out with jocks. I can imagine him showing up in Georgia and delivering a speech in which he praises himself (a lot), praises Walker (a bit), denounces Kemp (a lot) ... and barely mentions Jones's name.

So Kemp might survive the primary. Who'd have thought?

THEY'LL DO ANYTHING FOR "FREEDOM" (BUT THEY WON'T DO THAT)

Dr. Anthony Fauci had tense exchanges with Jim Jordan on Wednesday:

Ohio’s Rep. Jim Jordan got into a shouting match at a Wednesday hearing of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus where he repeatedly asked National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci when Americans will “get their freedoms back.”

“Fifteen days to slow the spread turned into one year of lost liberty,” Jordan said before asking Fauci: “What metrics, what measures, what has to happen before Americans get more freedoms?”

After Fauci told him that precautions to prevent spreading he virus can be lifted after the nation vaccinates as many people as soon as it can and infections decrease, Jordan again demanded “What measure, what standard, what objective outcome, do we have to reach before before Americans get their liberty and freedoms back?” He declared “First Amendment rights,” and rights to attend church, petition one’s government, freedom of the press and freedom of speech have “all been assaulted.”

Fauci noted, correctly, that infections are still high and we still need to vaccinate a lot of people. He didn't provide "metrics." That infuriated Jordan.

"You're making this a personal thing, and it isn't ... my recommendations are not a personal recommendation. It is based on the CDC guidance ... we're not talking about liberties. We're talking about a pandemic that has killed 560,000 Americans" -- Fauci to Jim Jordan pic.twitter.com/Q0TzaaGlAG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 15, 2021

The right-wing rank-and-file may still believe that the pandemic is a hoax, but right-wing politicians and pundits have shifted their rhetoric: Okay, the pandemic is real, but it's over now. The vaccines work. Why can't we spike the football on the 20-yard line and call it a touchdown?

Here's National Review's Jim Geraghty:

... 80 percent of people over the age of 65 who live in the United States have now received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, according to the CDC, and 64 percent of seniors are fully vaccinated.

... out of 66 million people who completed their vaccinations and waited at least two weeks, just 5,800 got COVID-19.

There’s been a slight increase in cases and hospitalizations in the past two weeks nationally, but the number of deaths has declined 19 percent in the past two weeks. Deaths should continue to decline; a majority of the most vulnerable among us are now protected.

... But you can tell within the ranks of public health experts, government officials, and a lot of media voices there is a widespread and surprisingly steadfast resistance against saying “we’re winning,” or “the crisis is ending,” or “the pandemic is winding down.”

... Government officials are reluctant to declare good news, because this would mean giving up some of the far-reaching powers they’ve gained during the crisis.... And some journalists don’t want to acknowledge good news because a sense of crisis is good for ratings, traffic, and readership.

Yes, it's all a plot. Even the respectable, allegedly non-conspiratorial National Review believes that liberals in government want to maintain pandemic restrictions for the sheer joy of it, and for the power. The press, apparently, has nothing else to write about -- police shootings, mass shootings, Biden vs. the GOP and Democratic moderates, Donald Trump's stirrings in Florida, none of it draws eyeballs like COVID, according to Geraghty. We'll continue masking and distancing just to prop up The New York Times and CNN, I guess.

At Townhall, Guy Benson is making similar points:

Let's start with the astoundingly great news: The vaccines work, and they're spectacular. We've known this for quite some time, of course, with thorough trials producing exceptionally strong results -- which have stood up among a much wider population in nearly-fully-vaxxed Israel. Cases in that country have plummeted by a staggering and heartening 98 percent since a peak in January....

Based on CDC data, more than 66 million Americans have been fully vaccinated (the total number has now swelled by 10 million). Among those people, just a few thousand experienced 'breakthrough' infections. And only a few dozen have died from the virus.... This is how the pandemic ends, period.

... The lesson of a 0.008 percent breakthrough case rate, with a lopsided number of those cases being mild, is not that "even vaccinated people are still at risk" and should still wear masks and socially distance. The lesson is the opposite. Vaccinated people are safe and can resume their normal lives.

Israel really does appear to have crushed the curve. But although the U.S. is vaccinating at a fast pace, we still don't have Israel's vaccination numbers. Also, Israel had a third lockdown from late December to early February. Only now is it lifting restrictions on going maskless outdoors. And one of the keys to Israel's reopening is its Green Pass vaccine passport.

None of this -- the recent lockdowns, the ongoing (if greatly relaxed) restrictions, the passport -- qualifies as "freedom" by Jordan's, Geraghty's, and Benson's standards. They want 100% normal life, now now now. But they don't want to do what it takes to get there.

IS BEING INVOLVED IN THE SHOOTING OF AN UNARMED BLACK PERSON A GOOD CAREER MOVE NOW? (updated)

The Louisville Courier-Journal reports:

One of the Louisville Metro Police officers who fired shots during the attempted search warrant execution that left Breonna Taylor dead in her apartment last year is writing a book about the case.

"The Fight For Truth: The Inside Story Behind the Breonna Taylor Tragedy," written by Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, 48, will be edited and published by Tennessee-based Post Hill Press.

Post Hill Press Senior Publicist Devon Brown confirmed Thursday morning that Mattingly's book will be published by Post Hill this fall.

Mattingly will be available for interviews then, she said....

HuffPost has more:

The book will be published by Tennessee-based Post Hill Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster....

Post Hill Press focuses on “Christian and conservative political books,” among other areas, according to its website. The company has published several right-wing authors including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who is currently facing accusations of sexual misconduct, and Laura Loomer, a far-right, anti-Muslim extremist.

Post Hill is a small publisher, but it has the ability to make a book a bestseller. One of its recent titles is an attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci titled Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History. The book, by Steve Deace and Todd Erzen, reached #1 at Amazon, #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and #4 on the USA Today bestseller list.

I know that right-wingers have no problem with cops involved in the shooting of unarmed black people, but I'm struggling to remember when one of those cops has tried to become a celebrity. (I'm not counting George Zimmerman, who wasn't an actual police officer when he shot Trayvon Martin.) But I guess this is a natural progression for the right -- war criminals such as Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher have been Fox News stars, and some of those indicted (or even convicted) in connection with Trump-Russia have worn their indictments as badges of honor. So why not these cops?

I'd like to believe we'll someday emerge from this period of right-wing madness, but I suspect things will get worse before they get better (assuming they ever get better). Eventually, I imagine, a shooting of this kind will turn the perpetrator into a genuine right-wing superstar. Maybe the shooter will get a permanent slot on Fox, or run successfully for the Senate.

I suupose there are still limits to conservative depravity -- the subtitle of Mattingly's book refers to "the Breonna Taylor tragedy." But in time I expect a cop in an incident like this to own his bloodlust and be praised for it. Or maybe Kyle Rittenhouse will beat all the cops to the punch.

****

UPDATE:

pic.twitter.com/iYYsiK6D0m

— Simon & Schuster (@simonschuster) April 16, 2021

OVERTURNING ROE: WHAT WOULD THE PLUTOCRATS THINK?

Even with a 6-3 Republican majority that includes Amy Coney Barrett, there hasn't been a big Supreme ruling on abortion this term. Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo is puzzled.

The Court has had the chance to take up an abortion case for the entirety of Barrett’s tenure. It first scheduled Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case centered on a 15-week abortion ban out of Mississippi, for conference at the end of September 2020. That case has since been relisted 18 times.

“I don’t know the record for relisting, but we have to be close,” said David Cohen, professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline law school and author of “Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America.”

At least one abortion opponent thinks anti-choicers won't get what they want this year.

At first, the assumption among the anti-abortion crowd was that the delay was innocuous: Barrett was simply getting caught up on the caseload.

Now, it’s starting to cause uncertainty.

“She’s been on the Court long enough now that I think an alternative explanation is needed,” Walter Weber, senior counsel at the Christian-based, conservative American Center for Law & Justice, told TPM....

“The Court is going to deny review, and a Justice is preparing a dissent,” Weber suggested as a possible cause for the lag. “This is, statistically speaking, the most likely explanation for any delay in announcing an order.”

I assume that the prime directive of most of the Republicans on the Court isn't to fight the right's culture wars -- it's to preserve and defend the corpocracy. They want whatever Charles Koch and like-minded right-wing billionaires want. They also want to ensure that pro-plutocrat Republicans continue to be elected, which is why they gutted the Voting Rights Act, issued the Citizens United ruling, and refused to impose limits on partisan gerrymandering.

The problem for the Court's Republicans is that, electorally, it's never really a good time to overturn (or effectively overturn) Roe v. Wade -- it will inevitably drive Democratic turnout in the next election cycle, and probably suppress Republican turnout, because the major goal of many evangelical Republicans will already have been accomplished. Maybe the Supremes will go for it in four years if Republicans have retaken Congress and the White House, but this seems like a bad time. Democrats turned out a lot of voters in November, as well as in January in the Georgia Senate runoffs. The Democratic president is popular. Republicans have a very good shot at retaking Congress in 2022, however, and the Court, or at least John Roberts and a couple of other conservatives, don't want to screw that up. And while it's unlikely that Democrats will be able to muster the votes to expand the Supreme Court, they're studying it and writing legislation to do it. Overturning Roe now could make that seem like a very mainstream idea -- or at least that's what I assume some of the GOP justices believe.

This could all change at any time. But if there really is hesitancy on the Court regarding abortion, I think it's because of the billionaires.

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE RIGHT-WING FREAKOUT IF THE CAPITOL POLICE HAD DONE THEIR JOB?

The New York Times reports:

The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which “Congress itself is the target.” But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator.

In a 104-page document, the inspector general, Michael A. Bolton, ... found that the agency’s leaders failed to adequately prepare despite explicit warnings that pro-Trump extremists posed a threat to law enforcement and civilians and that the police used defective protective equipment. He also found that the leaders ordered their Civil Disturbance Unit to refrain from using its most powerful crowd-control tools — like stun grenades — to put down the onslaught....

“Heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership,” Mr. Bolton wrote. Officials on duty on Jan. 6 told him that such equipment could have helped the police to “push back the rioters.”

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the report says that the Capitol Police had adequate warning of what was coming and should been able to prevent the Capitol from being breached. On the other hand, do we trust any police agency right now to find the sweet spot where order is maintained without the use of excessive force?

Even if the Capitol Police had used an appropriate amount of force, if that included stun grenades, can you imagine the right-wing reaction -- not just at the time, but even now, and for the foreseeable future? Can you imagine this being done ... not to evil BLM/Antifa commies, but to Real Americans?



We'd have never heard the end of it. We'd have been told that all the rioters we saw on the real January 6 were as meek as lambs and wouldn't have dreamed of destroying property, attacking cops, or threatening to hang the vice president and members of Congress. The cops would be "Nancy Pelosi's fascist goons" now. Every protester who was even slightly injured would be a right-wing media star. And on this alternate January 6, it's likely that more rather than fewer Republicans would have voted to challenge the results of the election. Maybe they all would have, because the suppression of the riot would have become their equivalent of the death of George Floyd, a moment that proved their systematic oppression conclusively.

If you think Republicans feel "canceled" now, imagine if the cops on January 6 had canceled their riot. Even the ones who deigned to acknowledge before January 6 that Biden won the election would be desribing it as one of the great acts of totalitarianism in American history.

CEOs AND CORPORATIONS WON'T SAVE VOTING RIGHTS

Wow! Amazing!

Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies and executives signed on to a new statement released on Wednesday opposing “any discriminatory legislation” that would make it harder for people to vote.

... the new statement, which was also signed by General Motors, Netflix and Starbucks, represented the broadest coalition yet to weigh in on the issue.

“It should be clear that there is overwhelming support in corporate America for the principle of voting rights,” [former American Express CEO Kenneth] Chenault said.

But:

The statement does not address specific election legislation in states, among them Texas, Arizona and Michigan, and Mr. Chenault said there was no expectation for companies to oppose individual bills.

“We are not being prescriptive,” he said. “There is no one answer.”

And:

Coca-Cola and Delta, which condemned the Georgia law after it was passed, declined to add their names, according to people familiar with the matter. Home Depot also declined, even though its co-founder Arthur Blank said in a call with other business executives on Saturday that he supported voting rights. Another Home Depot co-founder, Ken Langone, is a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump.

And:

JPMorgan Chase also declined to sign the statement despite a personal request from senior Black business leaders to the chief executive, Jamie Dimon, according to people briefed on the matter.

I'm with Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times -- I don't believe this represents a commitment to voting rights that will be sustained. Hiltzik notes how quickly corporate pledges to withhold money from supporters of Trump's attempted election theft are breaking down:

JetBlue, which said in January that it would “temporarily pause all contributions as we review the political landscape,” was the first company to donate directly to an election objector. The airline made a $1,000 contribution to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), according to a company campaign finance filing on April 5 first reported by Bloomberg....

Other companies have circumvented their own doubts about contributing to election objectors by donating to political committees. That’s how AT&T rationalized its $5,000 donation to the House Conservatives Fund, which is chaired by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), another election objector. Every single one of the fund’s 10 “priority members” also voted against certifying the vote.

And so on. Hiltzik also notes that previous pledges of corporate virtue were mostly talk:

The fate of the 2019 pledge by 187 big-business CEOs to serve all corporate stakeholders — employees, suppliers, customers and communities — not just shareholders provides another data point to help analyze the value of high-profile corporate promises. The pledge was viewed as a possible sea change in how companies were managed. A “watershed,” even.

One year later, however, the promise was revealed as empty. As we reported, a few companies raised their minimum wages, but typically either in compliance with or anticipation of government mandates to do so. Some consumer companies offered frontline workers “hero” bonuses for their work during the pandemic, but withdrew them even before the pandemic ebbed.

The first CEO to abandon his pledge to dump the shareholder-value model was Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. After Bezos signed the pledge, his company cut health benefits for part-time employees at Whole Foods, which Amazon had acquired.

Business groups, including the Business Roundtable, which sponsored the 2019 pledge, continued to lobby to roll back environmental laws and make it harder for ordinary people to have a voice in corporate decision-making. Why, just a day or two after the big Zoom meeting of CEOs, the Business Roundtable unveiled its new ad campaign: Opposing the corporate tax increase being considered by the Biden administration.

The corporations are generating publicity that might last through this weekiend, when the Sunday talk shows sum up the events of the week. But after that, we'll never hear about it again, and the same companies and individuals will be donating to vote suppressors by midsummer.

RIGHT-WING SITES LAUNCH PRO-VACCINE ATTACKS ON BIDEN, BUT THEIR READERS ARE STILL ANTI-VAXX

The Biden administration has paused distribution of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine after a small number of recipients (fewer than one in a million) developed blood clots -- and because a Democratic president is temporarily withholding this vaccine, the conservative media is suddenly very, very pro-vaxx.

Gateway Pundit:

President Donald Trump blasted the Biden administration and the FDA over the ‘pause’ in the Johnson and Johnson vaccine for the COVID-19 China coronavirus announced Tuesday morning.... Trump warned the pause would hurt vaccination efforts and questioned whether the FDA was working with rival Pfizer on the vaccine ‘pause’.

Breitbart:

Trump defended the “extraordinary” results of the vaccine but lamented the company’s vaccine would never recover its reputation after the pause was announced by federal regulators.

Fox News:

Media members across the political spectrum have come together in agreement to bash the decision by the FDA and CDC to recommend a pause in the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine after six instances of severe blood clots in recipients.

"6 cases. Not 6,000 cases. Not 600 cases. Not 60 cases. 6 cases out of more than 4 million shots delivered. Our public health experts continue to fail us," conservative Marc Thiessen wrote.

FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver called the decision "a disaster" that is "going to get people killed" and create more vaccine hesitancy. Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor quoted Silver’s tweet, adding "I can't disagree with this."

But their readers are unpersuaded. From the Gateway Pundit comments:

I don't care if President Trump turns water into wine...

Not taking an untested, unapproved shot.

****

even if it was tested AND approved I wouldn't take it

****

Same here. Also, I don't like this road trump has been going down. He needs to stop promoting these vaccines. I'v said this for a while. I'm also disappointed he hasn't said jack crap about passports. I'v been watching this vaccine crap for over a decade and these issues are huge for me.

****

I agree! These vaccines are going to be a disaster! Its only been 4 months since they started giving these vaccines and already people having really bad side effects compared to vaccines that have been in studies for 10 years. Trump needs to stay away from promoting any of these and do more to question forcing people to get the vaccine or you can't travel.

****

Same here. Anyone who promotes vaxxines is either a sellout globalist stooge or a moron. The drug companies can't be held liable for the damage they cause, as planned by the eugenicist owners.

****

... the majority of those getting the vaccine are sheep to western medicine which is based on the occult. Meaning, way more left of center folks will suffer or die than those on the right. Consider it like Noah's Ark; a cleansing, if you will, of the world's population.

And at Breitbart:

Sorry DJT. Not even you can convince me to take the vaccine.

****

Yep...I'll never take it and neither will my wife, a pharmacist licensed in multiple states.

We don't get Vaxxed for a 99.98% survivable disease and less than an year of trials.

****

At a function Friday night, a black lady (a definite democrat) asked me if I had gotten the vaccine. Then, she proceeded to scold me that I would harm other people if I didn't get the vaccine....to which I replied:

You and your ilk warned everyone who would listen that the "Trump vaccine" was dangerous and they could die if they took it. The vaccine hasn't changed---it's the same vaccine that was created under the Trump administration. Now you want me to take that very dangerous vaccine ONLY because Biden was elected....No thanks----you can't have it both ways. Call it the Trump vaccine if you want...but I'll never take it.

****

Similar case here too. ONLY democrats ask me if we have had our Shots.

Conservatives figure it's none of their business. We like them. A lot.

And at Fox:

... not taking any of these vaccines is not, "insanity", it is our right as Americans to take a vaccine or not take it. Second, those who are amazed they would pull a vaccine over 6 incidents out of 4 million should remember we destroyed an economy and the lives and livelihoods of many people over a virus with a 98.2% survival rate. That should surprise no one....
****

what do you want to wager that there were more than just 6 cases? Realize that this is a very rare condition, but currently don't have that much faith in CDC.

****

HAHA Nothing says "we have no idea what we're doing" than demanding everyone get vaccinated, then admitting those vaccines could be harmful.

There are also Fox commenters who think this is happening because evil Democrats who want to exercise total control over everything and everyone are losing their stranglehold on Our Freedoms:

Well, they are immunizing a virus that has an average of 98.6% survival rate, that they used as a political weapon to scare people, for power and control. They also want to maintain that power and control, and by immunizing people they are LOSING that power and control , so they come up with this. See the game now. If you don't, there are no words!

****

Exactly that’s why they want you masked up and not socializing even after your vaccinated.. biggest scamdemic to ever happen SO FAR....

I'm seeing a lot of that as well in the comments to a Twitchy post that also favorably quotes Nate Silver criticizing the pause:

My take: Public Health Officials (ex: Fauci) are going to see their stock wane as vaccinations increase....so they found a straw to grasp to keep the panic levels elevated.

****

... Power is why. These bureaucrats will lose power if everything continues at the current rate. Likely by early July at that. And well power corrupts and those who possess it almost universally seek more. It makes more sense from all angles if looked at like that.

****

I think the same thing. They need to extend their power grab and, halting vaccinations will help that. Yes, this is "only" the J&J vaccine but the distrust will extend to the other ones

****

Kind of makes you wonder just how accidental it was that 15 million doses of the J&J vaccine were spoiled at the factory a couple weeks ago. They wouldn't want to exceed Biden's target by too much - gotta slow things down to keep the plandemic going.

So the right-wing media says: Trump's mighty vaccines are good and Biden is screwing them up. Right-wing readers say: The pandemic is a hoax, the vaccines are a hoax, the pause is a hoax.

They get you coming and going.

ALL-POWERFUL DEMOCRATS!

Imagine if Democrats were as powerful as Republicans think we are. Here's something Donald Trump said in his speech over the weekend:

The former president reserved much of his venom for McConnell, who he called a “stone cold loser” and criticized for not blocking the Senate’s certification of the 2020 election results.

“If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post.

Right. Remember how Democrats got the presidential election results successfully overturned in 2000, 2004, and 2016? They were relentless!

Trump followed up yesterday:

Former President Trump said late Monday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is “helpless” against considerations by President Biden to expand the number of Supreme Court justices serving on the bench.

"With leaders like Mitch McConnell, they are helpless to fight. He didn’t fight for the Presidency, and he won’t fight for the Court," Trump said in a statement released by the Save America PAC. "If and when this happens, I hope the Justices remember the day they didn’t have courage to do what they should have done for America."

Joe Manchin oppoes Supreme Court expansion. Kyrsten Sinema opposes Supreme Court expansion. Mark Kelly and Jon Ossoff have rejected expansion. But, sure, the unstoppable, all-powerful Democrats will just ram this through.

It's not just Trump. It's also Tucker Carlson, who said last week:

“The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

"Obedient"!

... in the 2020 election, ... returns from overwhelmingly Hispanic — and, heretofore, overwhelmingly Democratic — precincts showed the incumbent president making massive gains with a demographic he’d spent five years disparaging.

... all across the country, areas with large Hispanic populations moved sharply right in 2020, even as the broader electorate moved left.

Of course, the Democratic Party, as described by Republicans, is also powerful enough to steal the 2020 presidential election using multiple form of election manipulation ... which, for some reason, were not applied to Senate races in Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, Texas, or South Carolina.

The real Democratic Party isn't doing badly right now, but it would certainly be more fun to belong to the fantasy Democratic Party described by Republicans.

"BIDEN ISN'T REALLY PRESIDENT" IS THE NEW "OBAMA ISN'T REALLY AMERICAN"

In the heyday of birtherism, some of the people who advanced the notion that Barack Obama wasn't born in America and was secretly a Muslim did it with a certain degree of deniability. Sure, there were pure birthers like Orly Taitz (and Donald Trump), but there were also people like House Speaker John Boehner -- now positioning himself as a foe of GOP conspiratorialism -- who didn't exactly say that Obama's origin story was a lie, but didn't repudiate it very forcefully:

On Meet The Press ... Boehner couldn't even bring himself to dismiss the idea:

MR. GREGORY: As the speaker of the House, as a leader, do you not think it's your responsibility to stand up to that kind of ignorance?

SPEAKER BOEHNER: David, it's not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people. Having said that, the state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That's good enough for me. The president says he's a Christian. I accept him at his word.

Taking the president "at his word" that he's not a secret MOOZLEM is the favored formulation of Obama's political opponents for avoiding a direct question about his faith.... Boehner's statement is the exact same one Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made ..., that "The president says he's a Christian. I take him at his word."

Nobody doubts that Joe Biden was born in America. The right's favorite conspiracy theory about Biden is that he's so mentally impaired that he can't possibly be the real president. Hardcore mental-impairment truthers openly use words like "senile" and "dementia" in reference to Biden.

"Respectable" Republicans feel they can't do that -- but they can tiptoe around the issue, the way Senator John Cornyn does:

Invites the question: is he really in charge?

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 12, 2021

If you ask Cornyn point-blank whether he's implying that Biden has a mental impairment, I'm sure he'll angrily insist that you're putting words in his mouth. He's just asking questions about Biden's ... sense of engagement with the job. After all, belligerent tweets are practically mandatory for a president, aren't they? (They actually do seem to be mandatory for GOP officeholders.) Cornyn is just asking questions.

I'm sure this is a trial balloon. On behalf of the party mainstream, Cornyn, I assume, is testing how far a Republican can push this talking point without seeming to push it. Others will follow.

IF THIS WERE AN ELABORATE CONSPIRACY, HOW WOULD IT LOOK DIFFERENT?

I'm very skeptical about this:

More than 100 chief executives and corporate leaders gathered online Saturday to discuss taking new action to combat the controversial state voting bills being considered across the country, including the one recently signed into law in Georgia.

Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.

Remember when some corporations very publicly announced that they wouldn't give money to Republicans in Congress who'd back Donald Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 election? Very soon afterward, we learned that the money was beginning to flow again. Next year, when most of these Republicans are up for reelection, I expect very few January 6-related donation bans to still be in place. Democrats want to raise taxes on the rich and corporations. Republicans don't. So corporations will be giving to the GOP again.

I expect this new campaign to be similarly evanescent, assuming it ever amounts to anything beyond this carefully crafted leak to the media. And while I don't want to fall for conspiracy theories, this almost seems calibrated to work in Republicans' favor.

Think about it. Republicans are now selling themselves as the "working-class party," the party that hates "elites." Your right-wing relatives are already easily enraged by phrases such as "woke capitalism"c and "corporate communism."

None of this changes GOP officeholders' preference for giving more and more money to corporations and the rich. But this battle makes Republicans seem like the champions of ordinary people.

So corporations make what are likely to be mostly empty gestures in response to these bills. Some liberals will be fooled and will think better of these corporations, which will help the companies' bottom line. Right-wing voters won't manage to mount serious boycotts -- they'll still drink Coke.

So the companies aren't taking big risks. Maybe they'll get one or two bills tabled or modified. And then, having pocketed liberals' goodwill, they'll go right back to giving money to Republicans, who, in turn, will have enhanced their image as the anti-"elite" party.

I don't really believe that the companies are coordinating this with the GOP, but they're not really working at cross purposes.

THEY DON'T EVEN WANT THE SHOWMANSHIP, JUST THE ABUSE

So I'm reading the latest Ron DeSantis puff piece, this one in The New York Times ...

Now, with Florida defying many of the gloomy projections of early 2020 and feeling closer to normal as the pandemic continues to dictate daily life in many other big states, Mr. DeSantis, 42, has positioned himself as the head of “the free state of Florida” and as a political heir to former President Donald J. Trump....

Mr. DeSantis’s political maneuvering and extensive national donor network have allowed him to emerge as a top Republican candidate to succeed Mr. Trump on the ballot in 2024 if the former president does not run again. The governor’s brand of libertarianism — or “competent Trumpism,” as one ally called it — is on the ascent.

... and eventually I get to the passage that appears in every puff piece about DeSantis:

Mr. DeSantis has raised his profile despite lacking the gregarious personality that might be associated with an aspiring Trump successor. Unlike the former president, no one would describe the publicly unemotional and not especially eloquent Mr. DeSantis as a showman.

In a long love note to DeSantis published by Politico last month, the version of that passage was this:

Newly ascendant though he might be, the “future of the party” is just as standoffish and uncharismatic as he’s always been.

The Politico story, by Michael Kruse, included a lengthy chronicle of the author's struggles to get face time with DeSantis; Patricia Mazzei, the autrhor of the Times story, tells us that DeSantis wouldn't agree to an interview with her.

So why is the media so taken with DeSantis? We know that some in the media crave the caffeine jolt of Trump's daily Twitter abuse.

Admit it, you want to see Trump ragetweeting through this

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 12, 2021

It's a federal crime not to give Trump his account back for at least the next twelve hours

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) March 31, 2021

But they're not getting that from DeSantis. So what are they getting?

In the Times, Mazzei writes:

... the governor’s favorite foes are the “corporate media,” against whom he has scored political points....

[A recent] “60 Minutes” [story] focused on how Publix supermarket pharmacies received [COVID vaccine] doses and left out relevant details, including an extended response from the governor at a news conference.

On Wednesday, in Mr. DeSantis’s words, he “hit them back right between the eyes,” accusing “60 Minutes” of pursuing a malicious narrative.

He left without taking questions.

They don't even care if the next Trump is boring -- they just want him to be nasty. They want someone who (a) is seen as presidential timber and (b) will abuse them.

(The abuse has to be from the right, of course. When President Biden didn't hold a press conference for a couple of months, they were livid, not besotted.)

They could get the abuse they want from any number of Trumpian lunatics who appear to want to be president -- Donald Trump Jr., Rand Paul, Ted Cruz. But DeSantis is a guy who's liked by both Trump voters and the members of the old-guard GOP establishment, people who, we're told, have been secretly whispering their disdain for Trump for the past five years. So he has across-the-board appeal (among Republicans, who are the only real Americans) and he hates the mainstream media. No wonder the MSM thinks he's dreamy.

ADD TWO LETTERS, INDUCE OUTRAGE

Here's the headline of a Reuters story:

Now here's the headline of a New York Post story based on the Reuters story:

Notice the key difference? Reuters says the Biden administration is considering payments to "Central America." The Post says the payments are going to "Central Americans."

The main difference in the wording is two letters. The difference in right-wing outrage is incalculable.

The Reuters story says:

The United States is considering a conditional cash transfer program to help address economic woes that lead migrants from certain Central American countries to trek north, as well as sending COVID-19 vaccines to those countries, a senior White House official told Reuters on Friday.

The potential program would be targeted at people in the Northern Triangle region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s southern border coordinator, told Reuters in an interview, without saying who exactly would receive cash....

“The one thing I can promise you is the U.S. government isn’t going to be handing out money or checks to people,” Jacobson said....

Biden, who took office on Jan. 20, has called for $4 billion in development aid to Central America over four years to address underlying causes of migration. On Friday, the White House requested $861 million from Congress for that effort in Biden’s first annual budget proposal. That would be a sharp increase from the roughly $500 million in aid this year.

In other words, this is the kind of response you have to an immigration problem if you're grown-ups: You attempt to use the wealth of the United States to help solve problems and improve conditions in countries from which people are fleeing in order to get to the United States.

I've added emphasis to point out specifically what won't happen. But the Post cynically tweaks the Reuters headline, knowing that anti-immigrant rage addicts will barely read past the new headline and conclude that giving cash to individual immigrants is precisely what the Biden administration intends to do.

Here's how the Post story begins:

It’s pay to stay away.

The Biden administration is considering sending cash payments to Central Americans in a bid to prevent them from making the trek north as the US grapples with the worst immigration crisis seen in 20 years, Reuters reported Friday.

The potential cash transfer program would be targeted at residents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which account for the overwhelming majority of migrants illegally crossing the border, Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s southern border coordinator, told the outlet.

So the payments are "targeted at residents," according to the Post. Six paragraphs later, near the end of the story, we're told:

Jacobson, who announced Friday she is stepping down, couldn’t explain to Reuters how the program would work but did say she can “promise” “the U.S. government isn’t going to be handing out money or checks to people.”

So the payments aren't "targeted at residents"? Which is it? But by this time it's assumed that the reader's blood is already boiling at the prospect of American checks going to individual brown foreigners.

Thought leaders on the right are now promoting the Post's version of the Reuters story:

1. Biden reverses Trump's border policies.

2. A predictable & preventable crisis at the border ensues.

3. And now Joe's solution to fixing the border crisis he caused is using money from American taxpayers to give cash payments to foreigners.

You can't make this bullshit up!!! https://t.co/BYQPGilYJR

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 9, 2021

This is how they do it. This is how they've done it for years -- big lies are useful sometimes, but tiny adjustments to the truth can pack an outrage wallop, and most people won't even notice that they're lies.

NEW YORK TIMES: THE PARTY OF FREEDOM FRIES AND BIRTHERISM HAS ABANDONED ISSUE-ORIENTED POLITICS!

Really, New York Times?

Republican lawmakers are passing voting restrictions to pacify right-wing activists still gripped by former President Donald J. Trump’s lie that a largely favorable election was rigged against them. G.O.P. leaders are lashing out in Trumpian fashion at businesses, baseball and the news media to appeal to many of the same conservatives and voters. And debates over the size and scope of government have been overshadowed by the sort of culture war clashes that the tabloid king relished....

[Trump's] preference for engaging in red-meat political fights rather than governing and policymaking have left party leaders in a state of confusion over what they stand for....

Having, quite literally, abandoned their traditional party platform last year to accommodate Mr. Trump, Republicans have organized themselves around opposition to the perceived excesses of the left and borrowed his scorched-earth tactics as they do battle.

Right -- the GOP that's fixated on culture-war talk today is totally different from the GOP that attacked John Kerry for speaking French (at a time when right-wingers loathed the Iraq-war-skeptical French government and cheered the rebranding of French fries in congressional dining halls as "freedom fries"). It's totally different from the GOP that was obsessed with Barack Obama's birth certificate, or Bill Clinton's sex life, or Hillary Clinton's health.

It’s a strikingly different approach from the last time Democrats had full control of government, in 2009 and 2010, when conservatives harnessed the Great Recession to stoke anger about President Barack Obama and federal spending on their way to sweeping midterm gains.

Yes, the anger at Obama was strictly fiscal.

The fight against Obamacare seemed like a policy fight, but in retrospect it was obviously a "You want to give free stuff to Those People" fight. Is the Times still unable to acknowledge that?

The party that hates voting rights now is the party that hated ACORN in the Obama years. The party that hates "cancel culture" now is the party that once hated...


I'm stating the obvious, though I wish it were obvious to the Times.

THE RIGHT'S VOTER-FRAUD PARANOIA AND IMMIGRATION PARANOIA ARE BASICALLY THE SAME THING

America's most prominent racist said this yesterday:

Tucker Carlson gives an passionate defense of “white replacement theory”https://t.co/QKSkGoRjzC pic.twitter.com/SOUlrxRgnt

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 9, 2021

... Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement." If you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the third world. They become hysterical because that's what's happening actually. Lets just say it that's true.

...

If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. So I don't understand why -- everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. You know the white replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting right question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote. They are diluting it. No, they are not allowed to do it. Why are we putting up with this?

The Biden administration wants an eight-year path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in America, but Carlson is talking here as if immigrants cross the border unlawfully, establish a toehold in America -- and then begin voting immediately.

If you believe that's happening, it's because you think our elections are riddled with corruption, all of it favoring Democrats. I don't know why Republicans win so many elections in America if that's the case, but Republicans seem to take it as a given that voting here can't be trusted. And why shouldn't they believe that? Since the Bush era, they've been told by the right-wing media, Republican politicians, and conservative advocacy groups that pro-Democratic cheating is widespread.

They think mail ballots are fraudulent and voting machines flip votes to Democrats and, for all I know, they think Biden votes were beamed in from Alpha Centauri last November. But they also believe that undocumented immigrants vote in large numbers -- just after he was inaugurated, Donald Trump reportedly told congressional leaders that 3 to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted against him. Trump's first press secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed that a study demonstrated that 14% of the votes in the 2016 election were cast by non-citizens.

This is what your right-wing relatives believe: that border crossers today will be Democratic voters tomorrow -- literally.

THE WORST PEOPLE

This development in Gaetz-ghazi is just too perfect:

Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County Tax Collector at the center of a sprawling criminal probe into everything from stalking to wire fraud to sex trafficking, used taxpayer money to pay $7,500 in legal fees to state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, records show.

While still serving as tax collector, Greenberg gave Sabatini a $3,000-a-month “legal counsel” contract in September 2019 — five days after Sabatini was admitted to the Florida Bar. Greenberg canceled the contract a little more than two months later, citing “extreme budget constraints.”

It’s not clear what Sabatini, a Republican from Howey-in-the-Hills who casts himself as a crusader against “wasteful” government spending, did for the $7,500.

Emails provided Monday by the Tax Collector’s Office show that Sabatini was asked to help with litigation involving a software contractor and with a trio of disputes involving former employees. But the emails didn’t show any work Sabatini produced, and records compiled as part of a Seminole County audit into Greenberg’s office spending show officials were “not sure” what exactly Sabatini worked on.

Anthony Sabatini? That would be this guy:

This legislative session I will be sponsoring an amendment to rename U.S. Highway 27 as the “President Donald J. Trump Highway.” Looking forward to working on this important designation honoring one of the greatest Presidents in American History. pic.twitter.com/x2gNzv8pxv

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) January 19, 2021

Anthony Sabatini, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, appeared to endorse QAnon this afternoon, sharing a link to a site that collects "Q" posts. pic.twitter.com/3GqgSZUY5H

— Alex Kaplan (@AlKapDC) May 3, 2020

KYLE RITTENHOUSE FOR CONGRESS

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) November 21, 2020

Birthright citizenship is the biggest LEGAL SHAM in American History

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) January 16, 2021

JANUARY 6TH!!!

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) January 3, 2021

BREAKING: Joe Biden just announced he is going to DISMANTLE the Second Amendment

Stop what you are doing and SIGN the official petition to NULLIFY Joe's gun grabbing agenda

SIGN HERE 👇👇👇https://t.co/uVQPGpzFGl

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) April 8, 2021

CALLING ALL PATRIOTS

Vaccine passports = THE FIGHT WORTH FIGHTING

The American people are WAKING UP

We will not sit quietly as Joe Biden tries to DISMANTLE our way of life

SIGN THE OFFICIAL PETITION TO BAN VACCINE PASSPORTS: https://t.co/StQEcMyFXz

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) April 8, 2021

Of course this guy is running for Congress -- and he might be handed a seat by the Florida legislature:

Sabatini has tried to emulate Gaetz’s bombastic and confrontational style in politics and has already announced plans to run for Congress himself in 2022.

Incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, who currently represents Lake County, criticized Sabatini for potentially challenging him. But Gaetz has expressed tacit support for Sabatini’s decision to run because Florida lawmakers may draw a new Congressional seat in the area when they redo legislative boundaries next year.

THe word "kakistocracy" means "government by the worst people." It would seem to apply in this case. Maybe the Gaetz/Greenberg scandal will keep Sabatini out of Congress -- but I doubt it.


(Via Betty Cracker.)