The Republicans' Only Plan Is to Keep Pretending Trump Isn't a Huge Liar

[Nevilledog]

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Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait
It appears the conservative plan to wean voters off Trump by humoring his election lies has somehow failed

The GOP’s Only Plan: Keep Pretending Trump Isn’t a Huge Liar
Maybe this time it will finally work!
nymag.com

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-election-fraud-coup-lies-republicans-biden-won.html

A week after Election Day, Ross Douthat wrote a short Twitter thread defending the Republican party’s refusal to challenge President Trump’s deranged lies about the election. “Republicans aren’t ‘coddling’ the president,” he argued. “A minority are cynically adopting his arguments. Most are trying to figure out how to do the right thing without ratifying his stab-in-the-back narrative among voters who trust him more than them.”

That was a month ago. So how is the refusing-to-challenge (but definitely not coddling!) strategy working out for the Republicans? A rather grim prognosis can be found in, of all places, Douthat’s latest column. Our columnist is surprised by “the sheer scale of the belief among conservatives that the election was really stolen, measured not just in polling data but in conversations and arguments, online and in person, with people I would not have expected to embrace it.”

Douthat’s impression seems to be universal. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel reports from Georgia that “not a single Trump supporter said Biden would take office on Jan. 20,” and notes that every reporter he’s talked to has found the same.

It’s as if the Republican Party’s decision to humor Trump’s lies has somehow led to a situation where many Republican voters believe them. Who could have predicted?

Douthat, who is normally an outstanding columnist, is himself unsparing both toward Trump’s campaign of defamation and the various coup-like efforts springing from them. His case for appeasement rested on the anti-Trump grounds that Republicans needed to win over Trump fans who subscribe to his lies in order to ease him out of the party’s leadership. “And if you hate and fear Trump,” he argued, “you should want his political party, which shows absolutely no signs of being ‘burned to the ground,’ to figure out how to persuade its own voters that Trump is not a glorious martyr who deserves a glorious resurrection four years hence.”

*snip*

[grumpyduck]

1. In my not-so-humble

and totally-unasked-for opinion, Republican lawmakers are caught between a rock and a hard place, a place they created for themselves.

Some of them want to distance themselves from him, but can't. On one hand, they're afraid of repercussions if they hang in there, and, on the other hand, they're afraid of "looking bad" to their voters if they turn away after years of supporting this PoS -- which would essentially mean admitting they were wrong.

[Chainfire]

2. I do not understand how anyone would worry about a future Trump Presidency.

He ran this time as the most powerful man in the world. He was able to milk the press, have rallies on the government dime, manipulate the news with his craziness, and still couldn't win. Even if he was not an historic loser, he is old, he is sedentary, he eats garbage and he is obese. I would like to see what an actuary would think about his chances of being physically able to run for anything in four years. And besides all that, do you really think the Republican leadership will want him back after getting rid of him this time? They will find a newer, cleaner, sharper, wittier Fascist to run next time.

When Trump walks away from the White House in January, he walks out of power, for good.

[Cosmocat]

5. You really could not be more wrong

nm

[Chainfire]

6. Time will tell

He will continue to "campaign" and fleece the royal subjects, but his days of power are screeching to a halt.

[concretebluetwo]

3. "Douthat, who is normally an outstanding columnist..."

Well, there's your problem right there......

[Cosmocat]

4. This is what got us here in the first place

Republicans rolled over to the POS during the 2016 campaign, then rolled over him him 1,000,000 times while he was POTUS.

How many of those Saddam Huissan type ass kissing moments did we see from the very start when he took office where his cabinet or congressional Rs slavishly fawned over him and treated him like Kim Jong-un?

The reason the base is where it is now is because they never stood up to him in the first place. Yeah, some of them talked big for a second in the campaign, but they quickly turned into his lackies.