The Blueprint: The far right has a plan to remake America. They even wrote it down.

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/politics/2023-11-27-far-right-blueprint-america/



It’s not like we haven’t been warned. Should the Republican presidential nominee (likely Donald Trump) win the election next year, conservatives have been pretty clear about what they intend to do. In fact, explicitly clear. Trump himself isn’t much on policy, of course. The 2020 Republican National Convention was notable chiefly because, at his behest, it made no effort to pass a party platform, effectively giving Trump carte blanche for whatever he wished to do in his second term. But Trump’s all-too-personal vision for a second-term agenda is now leaking into the press. According to stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post, it begins with transforming the Justice Department into an instrument of his vengeance, initially against those first-term appointees Trump thinks betrayed him: former Attorney General Bill Barr, former chief of staff John Kelly, former Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley, and others who opposed his attempted seizure of power. Then comes filing charges against Joe Biden and his family, with the substance yet to be determined.

To this end, Trump is assembling a cadre of lawyers who supported his attempt to cling to the presidency, and who won’t be deterred from doing his bidding—as those wusses from the Federalist Society were—by the niceties of constitutional law. A leading figure among these l’état c’est Trump legal eagles is Jeffrey Clark, a Trump Justice Department official who during the plot to overturn the 2020 election countered a White House counsel’s argument that Trump’s putsch would lead to “riots in every major city” by noting, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act”—a law that allows the president to deploy the Army to quell protests. That exchange is quoted in the federal indictment of Trump for fomenting the January 6th insurrection. (The Post indicates that Trump is plotting to invoke the Insurrection Act on the first day of his presidency: January 20, 2025.) At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire, Trump stumbled into a rationale for going after Biden, should he win the 2024 contest. “This is third-world country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump said. “And that means I can do that, too.”

If nothing else, that quote explains why Trump is seeking more lawyers like Jeffrey Clark. But Clark’s current ambit isn’t confined to Mar-a-Lago. He’s also part of Project 2025, an initiative of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which, in collaboration with over 80 other far-right groups (including the Center for Renewing America, where Clark is a senior fellow and director of litigation), is laying out the tasks and recruiting the candidates that the next Republican president must employ to de-woke-ify America, banish liberalism, and extirpate modernity. When the Post reported that Clark is leading a study on how to implement the Insurrection Act, a Heritage Foundation official quickly sought to assure the wider world that “there are no plans within Project 2025 related to the Insurrection Act or targeting political enemies.” Oh really?



Earlier this year, Project 2025 published a 920-page manifesto called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, laying out its agenda for Trump or any other Republican who should win the White House. The book consists chiefly of the world’s longest enemies list, with detailed instructions on how to target them, oust them, and reverse their policies, both real and imagined. I’ve read every damn page of that book. Here’s what it says. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME Heritage has sketched out a blueprint for a conservative presidency. In 1980, the think tank aided another neophyte politician with revolutionary aspirations—Ronald Reagan—with a report, also called Mandate for Leadership, that stretched to 1,100 pages and covered virtually every nook and cranny of government. Heritage boasts that Reagan took up the majority of their proposals, including across-the-board tax cuts, “Star Wars” missile defense, inner-city “enterprise zones,” and a hard line with the Soviet Union. On the latter, Heritage claimed that “Reagan sticks so closely to the Heritage suggestions that [Mikhail] Gorbachev complains to Reagan about Heritage’s influence in the first few minutes of the [1986 Reykjavik] summit.”

snip

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

[Lonestarblue]

3. The far right had a plan in 2010 they published in the WSJ to take over state government.

It was Karl Rove’s REDMAP. Democratic leaders ignored it, and Republicans invested a great deal of money to capture state governorships and legislatures over the next decade, gerrymandering states to ensure their future elections. They succeeded and now control more states than Democrats.

I hope Democratic leaders are not ignoring Project 2025 because it is the blueprint for taking over the country and installing a dictator for life. Those behind Project 2025 saw that career employees and honest people stymied Trump’s more aggressive and outrageous behavior, so their solution is to get rid of anyone in government who follows the law. Unless the Senate breaks Tuberville’s hold, Trump (or any Republican president) would have 400-500 top military appointments to fill with those who are personally loyal only to him. They plan to weaponize the DOJ and neuter the Supreme Court and Congress. And yet our national media are still normalizing the Republican Party as a serious political organization instead of a party promising fascism. What will it take for them to stop catering to Republicans?

[redqueen]

5. Why did Dem leaders ignore Rove's plan?

I didn't realize that was the case. Really aggravating and I hope the people who made that decision have been removed from those leadership roles now.

[Lonestarblue]

11. I only know the results, which has been extreme gerrymandering by Republicans.

My speculation is that leaders abandoned the 50-state strategy favored by Howard Dean, who was head of the DNC from 2005 to 2009 in favor of investing in states to win the Electoral College votes. Republicans invested more in local and state elections, Democrats invested more in national elections. Plus Democrats spent little time or money on states assumed to be a lock for their party, alienating some of their voters. As an example, Hillary Clinton’s advisers did not even have her visit Michigan during the campaign, a big mistake in my opinion. Nor do top Democrats visit Texas, a state that is virtually divided between red and blue and thus sending the message that Texas voters are not important to them.

[sop]

9. What would happen if a Democratic senator were to put a hold on all military appointments

If/when Trump regains power?

[Lonestarblue]

10. I think it would depend on the balance of the committee.

If Republicans have a larger majority, they will have more seats on the committee and could change the rules or to take the vote to the whole Senate.

[sop]

4. To "de-woke-ify America, banish liberalism, and extirpate modernity"

Republicans want to 'extirpate' (root out and completely destroy) every single social advance from the last two centuries they see as 'liberal' and 'modern,' by force if necessary. Clearly that includes civil and voting rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights and all forms of pluralism. Conservatives want to take America back to a time when only white christian men of wealth had power. Scary stuff.

[mzmolly]

6. Yeah but - Biden's old.

[speak easy]

7. They will spit the Union.

[Hotler]

8. I you don't own a gun yet, think about getting one for protection. They will round up Dems & Libs if they take power.

They are already talking internment camps.