keep_left
keep_left's JournalI was hoping this would show up!
Randi Rhodes on Air America...those were the days!
Trump has been sucking up to extremist radtrad Catholics for the last few years.
It's hard to understand why, since they are tiny in number. I guess he thinks he can appeal to every whacked-out group in the nation and somehow that will amount to a measurable percentage of the electorate.
Trump's appeal to the persecution fetish of the radtrads is loosely based on something real: an FBI memo was leaked earlier this year with the title “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities”. (The memo is mentioned in the article at Yahoo News). And the FBI should be paying attention to the most whacked-out radtrads. To give just one example (of many), conservative author Damon Linker resigned from the radtrad journal First Things after it published a front-page op-ed advocating secession and treason. (The incident is recounted in Linker's excellent book The Theocons). 
A couple of years ago, they also "dragged" Cavuto over the Covid vax.
Cavuto has several health problems including MS, and he was one of the few right-wing media personalities to support mass vaccination against Covid (as did Fox News, which we later found out had a "no jab, no job" policy). Cavuto apparently got credible death threats for his stance, and he eventually went public about it, denouncing anti-vaxxers in a lengthy on-air rant.
And speaking of Covid, let's not forget the interminable Covid press conferences...
...where Trump whined about his treatment by the press, lavished unearned accolades on his failson-in-law for his "handling" of the contagion, and recommended unproven treatments for the virus--when Trump wasn't just pretending it would simply go away. (Anyone remember "I would love to have the country opened up by Easter"?). 
Yep. Fuentes' moronic "Groypers". Rob Smith has clashed with these idiots before...
...at one of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA events. Fuentes has been going after Kirk for several years now, with his followers often creating disturbances at TPUSA functions. They really hate Smith for some reason, and they apparently are following him around where he makes appearances. One wonders when the Groypers will grow the fuck up and get actual jobs, if ever.
Check out "Ur-Fascism", an essay by Umberto Eco.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fascism#Ur-FascismIt's classic fallacious thinking that's very typical of those with fascist sympathies. Trump's characterization of Biden is what I call "Schrödinger's dementia": Biden is one moment deranged and incapable of the simplest actions, and the next he is plotting conspiracies that rival those from the X-Files.
And that is a slogan, along with many others, that they are stuck with--as long as they want to remain...
...viable candidates in an increasingly far-right party.
This "messaging problem" is reinforced day after day, year after year by the mullahs of the religious right who control the culture-war apparatus of the Republican party. There are entire culture-war "think" tanks and institutions devoted to this kind of messaging. EWTN, the radtrad Catholic cable network, features numerous personalities and shows that are totally unapologetic about pressuring young women into carrying to term offspring that are products of sexual assault. For anti-abortion groups on both the Catholic and Protestant wings of the movement, this is now a mainstream position. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it myself.
It's quite a surprise that MTG doesn't have a "think" tank or two lined up to launder bulk purchases...
...which has been the de rigueur strategy for many decades now when right-wing politicians want to publish one of their unreadable and unsellable books. It suggests that either she has no real support from the usual Republican institutions, or that she burned her bridges to them a long time ago. It probably also doesn't help that MTG's "book" is reported to be not much more than an expanded collection of her recent history on Twitter/Xitter.
Basically, the WSJ editorial board is pissed off because the Trump followers are populist...
...far-right rather than the usual anti-tax neocon far-right (which they much prefer). Some of the Trumpers even espouse an inchoate social-democratic philosophy, in particular an enthusiasm for things like a national industrial policy. Of course, Trump himself always says one thing and does another, in every case selling out his MAGA working class fans. But Trump talks a good game, as do his favored acolytes.
He may be the only Democrat who can stand up to Trump's bullying and abuse.
That may actually be the most important trait that any candidate opposing Trump possesses. It sounds insane to say so, but if you're going up against a professional shitposter like Trump, you'd better be a master of shitposting yourself.
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