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Take a flying leap

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 15, 2023

To the rude, inappropriate and manipulative

Kat Abughazaleh of Media Matters is sick of being asked.

One of the most outrageous features of the public response to any mass terror attack is the assumption that everyone from the ethnic group of the terrorists is expected to publicly and immediately condemn the villains or be condemned themselves as a terrorist sympathizer. (Unless the perpetrator is a white American, naturally.) The premise behind the demand is assignation of mass guilt by association.

Plus, the demand itself is annoyingly manipulative, and not just limited to (in this case) Palestinians. It kind of works like, “If you are outraged by this act of terror, if you are horrified and sickened, we, your neighbors (and political adversaries), demand you shout your outrage from the rooftops. We demand you feel the way we feel and express your feelings about the attack the way we do, now, performatively, publicly and loudly. That is, unless you want to draw suspicion and condemnation yourself.”

Despite the wailing mothers seen on TV, not all people express their feelings the same way. Not all people experience grief the same way, nor express them as openly and immediately. It is rudely and inappropriately manipulative to insist you either join us in our performance of outrage or you are with the terrorists. But some people are just that rude, inappropriate and manipulative. They’re too busy trying to score points to care.

I’ve not met Abughazaleh and have no other connection to Palestinians except for my humanity, but I too respond poorly to being manipulated.

Drowning democracy in the bathtub

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 15, 2023

By any means necessary

Still image from Fatal Attraction (1987).

Shamelessness is their superpower. You’ve likely heard that somewhere.

Voters in Louisiana on Saturday by 73 percent passed Amendment 1. It bans state and local governments from using funds, goods, and services donated by foreign governments or nongovernmental (private) sources for the purpose of conducting elections.

Bolts reported back in August that this makes Louisiana the 26th state to adopt such a restriction. As the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL) described them back in July:

All legislation on this topic has been enacted since the 2020 election when the COVID-19 pandemic led to unexpected expenses related to mailing and processing an increased number of absentee/mail ballots, providing larger in-person voting facilities to accommodate social distancing and sudden demands for more cleaning and hygiene supplies. 

Generally, elections are funded by state and local budgets—with occasional federal infusions. To meet the additional needs during the pandemic, philanthropic funding for local election offices was made available by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, with donations from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Grants ranged from $5,000 to $19 million. 

Those who support banning or limiting such grants argue that private funds could result in the donor or grant-making organization having undue influence over elections and perhaps favoring some jurisdictions over others. Opponents, however, say that elections are chronically underfunded and that such bans may prohibit election offices from using donated resources they have long relied on, such as cybersecurity tools and the use of polling places. 

Currently, over one-third of the states [now with 26 it is over half] have passed laws prohibiting or limiting the use of private funds in elections. Eleven states did so in 2021 (similar bills were vetoed in Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina,  Pennsylvania and  Wisconsin that year), and 13 states followed suit in 2022. The specifics vary, with some states passing outright bans on election officials accepting or using philanthropic funds and others setting new regulations on how and when such funding can be accepted. 

Bolts put the conservative hostility to benefactor funding a tad more bluntly in August:

[The bills are] directly inspired by what conservatives have demonized as “Zuckerbucks” spent on elections during the onset of the pandemic. The billionaire’s donations have drawn particular ire from conservatives convinced that CTCL boosted Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts, and the partisan outrage is clearly reflected in state policies: 23 of the 25 states that already adopted such restrictions voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 or have Republican legislative trifectas, or both. 

NCSL’s article needs updating. The Republican-controlled state House and Senate in North Carolina overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of SB 747 last week. One of its provisions prohibits “the State Board and county boards of elections … from accepting private monetary donations or in-kind contributions for the purpose of administering elections or employing individuals on a temporary basis.” *

North Carolina’s legislature is underfunding election services here while adding new requirements elections officials must fulfill. Conservatives decades ago railed against unfunded mandates. Not now. But what they really, really dislike is benefactors stepping in to help fund elections operations Republicans mean to monkey-wrench.

If any reader has seen a current set of measures by which GOP legislators have tried to limit who can vote, make voting more difficult and take longer, skew equal representation away from unfriendly populations, and manipulate election outcomes to ensure Republican victories, please send along a link. Their efforts to overturn the 2020 election are now legend and being litigated in multiple courts.

As Josh Marshall observed last week, Republicans’ MAGA wing now reject democratic processes even within the GOP caucus. He wrote regarding the failure of U.S. House Republicans to elect a new speaker after the majority of their caucus voted to approve Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Nope. Not if the MAGA faction doesn’t get its way:

Couldn’t happen to a nicer caucus, of course. But we should note that there’s a clear thread connecting this to 2020 rigged electionism and, perhaps more tightly, the dramas of debt ceiling hostage-taking and government shutdowns. The premise of all those dramas is that they’re what you do when you don’t have the votes to do what you want. If you’ve got the votes in the Congress and a President who will sign your bills, you just do it. Threatening to shut down the government is what you do when you don’t. Do what I say even though I don’t have the votes or I start breaking things. That’s the bottom line behind every one of these gambits.

It’s all cut from the same cloth.

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot, meant to “starve the beast,” to “cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” That was nearly 25 years ago. What has become of the Republican Party in the intervening years is working furiously by all means it can think of to drown democracy itself.

* As we featured on Wednesday, Voto Latino, the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force, and Down Home North Carolina (with help from Marc Elias) immediately sued to prevent implementation of SB 747’s “Undeliverable Mail Provision.” Plaintiffs contend the section “will arbitrarily disenfranchise North Carolina’s same-day voters, those who register to vote on the same day they cast their ballots during the state’s early voting period.”

Insurrectionist in power

Published by digby on October 14, 2023

Jim Jordan was one of the coup plotters. Now they want to make him Speaker of the House?

I guess that’s a stupid rhetorical question. Of course they do. They’re all prepared to vote for the chief coup plotter so what’s the difference?

Just watch Jordan on that Youtubte try to wriggle out of it. Greg Sargent tweeted out these excerpts from the January 6th Committee Report in case you forgot the details:

The Baby Party

Published by digby on October 14, 2023

Republican voters act like children

This is ridiculous:

David Alexander, an engineer who attended the Iowa Faith and Freedom dinner last month, called the absent Donald Trump “arrogant” and “egotistical” while praising a raft of other Republican presidential candidates who attended.

But he doesn’t blame Trump for skipping the event — and figures the former president is busy defending himself from indictments on 91 criminal charges. The “beating” Trump has taken is a key part of his appeal, Alexander said.

“The people that don’t like him. … When they dislike him, it helps me like him more,” said Alexander, 61, who called Trump his top choice in the 2024 nominating contest. “If they ignored him, I probably wouldn’t like him as much. Does that make sense?”

Only if you are a toddler. Mature adults don’t think like that. The whole damned party is a bunch of whiny little babies.

Interviews with scores of voters in multiple states show thatTrump’s constant message of victimhood has seeped in not just among the Trump faithful — but also among center-right voters who were previously skeptical of him. Many of the voters echoed his long-running attacks on the law enforcement system that he has sharply ratcheted up in recent months. In many cases, Republicans who said they were initially interested in another candidate more than Trump were dismissive of the seriousness of the charges. Some said they believed Trump had made mistakes, but they contend there was an unfair double standard against him.

Those supposedly “center-right” voters are lying. They voted for him before (even if they say they didn’t) and were always going to vote for Trump if he stayed the front-runner. There are no Biden voters who have decided that poor Donald Trump is being persecuted so they’re going to make him president again. It’s absurd.

Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020 and believe that he actually won that election were always going to vote for him again if he was on the ballot. Why wouldn’t they? And anyone who believes he actually lost the last election and has staged this epic tantrum based on a lie but are going to vote for him anyway because the law is holding him accountable for that and his other misdeeds (stealing hundreds of classified documents!!!!) have the logic of a five year old. I honestly don’t think there are more than a handful of those.

Rigged!

Published by digby on October 14, 2023

He may be the front runner but that hasn’t stopped him from making back room deals to secure it

The NY Times lays out Trump’s strategy to ensure that he can’t lose the nomination. Does anyone think he won’t do the same with the general election if he can?

Not long after the new chairman of the Republican Party in Hawaii was elected in May, he received a voicemail from none other than Donald J. Trump.

“It’s your all-time favorite president,” Mr. Trump told the chairman, Tim Dalhouse. “I just called to congratulate you.”

The head of the Kansas G.O.P. received a similar message after he became chairman. The Nebraska chairman had a couple of minutes and a photo arranged with the former president during an Iowa stop. And the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Michael McDonald, who had served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, was among a group of state party officials who were treated to an hourslong Mar-a-Lago meal in March that ended in ice cream sundaes.

Months later, Mr. McDonald’s party in Nevada dramatically transformed the state’s influential early contest. The party enacted new rules that distinctively disadvantage Mr. Trump’s chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by effectively blocking the super PAC he relies upon from participating in the state’s new caucus.

Mr. McDonald has tilted the rules so significantly that some of Mr. Trump’s opponents have accused the party of manipulating the election for him — and have mostly pulled up stakes in the state entirely.

As Mr. Trump dodges debates and is regularly seen on his golf courses in branded white polo shirts and red MAGA hats, it can seem that he is bypassing the 2024 primary fight entirely. He has done relatively few public campaign events until recent weeks. But Mr. Trump and his political team have spent months working behind the scenes to build alliances and contingency plans with key party officials, seeking to twist the primary and delegate rules in their favor.

It amounts to a fail-safe in case Mr. DeSantis — or anyone else — scores a surprise victory in an early state. And it comes as Mr. Trump faces an extraordinary set of legal challenges, including four criminal indictments, that inject an unusual degree of uncertainty into a race Mr. Trump leads widely in national polling.

“They’ve rigged it anywhere they thought they could pull it off,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official who founded Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that was essentially ousted from the Nevada caucus.

The maneuvering is the type of old-school party politics that Mr. Trump, who cut his teeth in the machine politics of 1970s and 1980s New York, relishes and knows best: personal calls and chits, glad-handing, relationships and reprisals. Advisers say that in contrast to some tasks, getting him to make those calls is a breeze. Plus, the seemingly arcane issue of delegate accumulation — tallying up formal support in the states to secure the nomination at the party convention next summer — is deeply personal to Mr. Trump after he was outflanked in exactly this fight in 2016.

Then, a better-organized Senator Ted Cruz of Texas worked Trump-skeptical state parties to win more delegates even in some places where he had lost at the ballot box. Mr. Cuccinelli was one of Mr. Cruz’s top delegate hunters at the time. Now, surrounded by a more experienced team and the authority of a former president with loyalists entrenched nationwide, Mr. Trump is doing to Mr. DeSantis exactly what he once accused Hillary Clinton of doing to Bernie Sanders: bending the system in his favor.

Mr. Trump’s backroom campaign reveals the extent to which he has become the establishment of the Republican Party.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s not talked about in the news,” said Scott Golden, the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, who was invited to speak briefly in private with Mr. Trump when the former president visited his state this spring. “This is important stuff. It is ultimately about making sure your person is the nominee.”

In presidential primaries or caucuses, voters’ casting of ballots is only the first step. Those elections determine the individuals — called delegates — who go to the national party convention to formally choose their party’s nominee. The rules each state uses to allocate delegates and bind them to particular candidates can shift from year to year, and the people in charge of those rules are otherwise obscure state party officials.

Wooing those insiders can be crucial. Among those who attended the Mar-a-Lago dinner in March was Alida Benson, then the executive director of the Nevada Republican Party. Now she is Mr. Trump’s Nevada state director.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s campaign warned state parties nationwide about the legal risks of working with super PACs. In the past, super PACs have generally been allowed to organize and advertise in both primaries and caucuses. But in Nevada, a new rule was enacted that barred super PACs from sending speakers, or even literature, to caucus sites, or getting data from the state party.

The unstated goal: to box out Never Back Down.

Alex Latcham, who oversees Mr. Trump’s early-state operations, called the Nevada party’s moves especially sweet. He noted that Nevada is the state where the super PAC’s largest donor, Robert Bigelow, lives and where its chairman, Adam Laxalt, just ran for Senate.

“Not only is it a strategic victory, but it’s also a moral defeat for Always Back Down,” Mr. Latcham said, purposefully inverting the group’s name.

Advisers to Mr. DeSantis, known for his bare-knuckle tactics in Florida, have complained about an imbalance in the playing field.

“I don’t think they play fair,” said James Uthmeier, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager.

Mr. Cuccinelli accused Mr. Trump of hypocrisy. “No one has tried to rig the rules like Donald Trump has been doing here at least in a very long time,” he said. “And no one has ever done it who, in other circumstances, complains about the rules being rigged.”

Ya thinki,Cooch? Really? How unlike him.

Not so fast

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 14, 2023

2024 is a decade away in political years

Dave Wasserman commented last night on the present chaos in D.C.: “What’s so wild about the current political environment is that if the 2024 election were held this November, I believe a) Biden’s numbers are so bad he’d lose to an indicted Trump and b) House Rs are so dysfunctional/out of sorts they would lose the majority.”

November 2024 is a decade away in political years. Donald Trump could be appealing convictions by then, be banned from the ballot in a state or two, or be drooling onto his fast food while raging about beating Barack Obama at the polls in November as a regional war burns in the Middle East.

Still, Wasserman’s warnings about Biden’s weakness point to some Democratic weaknesses I monitor.

If these infrequent voters will base their votes on “whether the economy was better under Trump or Biden,” that’s not how Republicans will campaign, especially with Trump atop the ticket. He’ll lead with “Sleepy Joe” and culture war/immigration, especially with the Hamas attacks fresh in people’s minds.

Where I agree is that with infrequent and unaffiliated voters, Democrats are policy liberals and campaign conservatives. When every damned election is “the most important election of our lifetime,” they take no chances, try nothing new. Throw the bomb? Hell, no. Too risky. Fall on the ball and hope to run out the clock instead. That is, do what they’ve always done, just more of it.

There are tens of thousands of Democratic votes in North Carolina alone among unaffiliated voters who sit at home in blue precincts where their unaffiliated neighbors overwhelmingly vote Democrat. But campaigns ignore them because these registrants have three strikes against them.

Strike 1: They are not registered Democrats.
Strike 2: They have poor voting records (low-propensity voters).
Strike 3: They reside in voting precincts so blue and that campaigns waste no time there.

Unaffiliated turnout is ~12% less than Democratic turnout in these precincts. In the rest of my state it is only 5-6% less.

Q1: Are R-leaning UNAs more motivated to vote in redder counties? If so, why?
Q2: Are D-leaning UNAs less motivated to vote in bluer counties? If so, why?

What are Democrats prepared to do about it … 2024 being “the most important election of our lifetime” and all?

An impossible situation

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 14, 2023

Pretty much says it:

As Israel launches its eye-for-an-eye effort to obliterate Hamas for murdering 1,000+ civilians on its soil in a rave of bloodshed — young and old, Israelis and tourists — multiple commentators remind us that killing the idea of Hamas is quite a different thing from killing its leaders. Flattening northern Gaza and killing more even civilians in the process will not accomplish that.

And yet no state cannot endure such a threat on its doorstep. Palestinians cannot endure life under tighter and tighter restrictions. Something was going to give. This is it. And yet.

Those of us watching, powerless to stop the killing, would do well to heed Nicholas Kristof’s admonition:

If we owe a moral responsibility to Israeli children, then we owe the same moral responsibility to Palestinian children. Their lives have equal weight. If you care about human life only in Israel or only in Gaza, then you don’t actually care about human life.

CNN reports:

Some Palestinian-Americans have received their first set of instructions that family members stuck in Gaza may be able to evacuate into Egypt on Saturday afternoon, according to emails shared with CNN.

The US State Department’s Consular Affairs Crisis Management System (CACMS) told family members that on Saturday the Rafah crossing “may be open.”

“We understand the security situation is difficult, but if you wish to depart Gaza you may want to take advantage of this opportunity,” the CACMS email said.

A State Department spokesperson told CNN they “are actively discussing this with our Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.”

“We support safe passage for civilians,” they said. “We are working with our Israeli and Egyptian partners to establish a safe humanitarian corridor both for Gazans trying to flee this war and to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need within the territory.”

What are the chances it will be only foreign nationals allowed to leave? See below.

Friday Night Soother

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

I think we all need one tonight. I know I do. (And a good stiff drink as well.)

There are a lot of good things about dogs, and their cuteness and loyalty are two of them. But we’re not the only ones who see all these positives; a sweet little sheep does, too.

On October 10, 2023, TikTok user Lunatic Asylum (@lunatic.asylum6) shared a video of a miniature sheep named Kevin, who loves dogs so much he thinks he is one. Take a look!

@lunatic.asylum6 kevin thinks he’s a dog #nz #miniaturesheep #lilguy ♬ Funny Song – Funny Song Studio & Sounds Reel

@lunatic.asylum6 Kevin the miniature sheep 🐮 #miniaturesheep #happydog ♬ Happy Dog – DJ Moody

Kevin is a miniature sheep and he’s the cutest thing. He is small and has fluffy black and white wool, and looks to be the happiest sheep we’ve seen in a long time. But there’s something else that makes this little one stand out–he thinks he’s a dog.

In a 30-second video, Kevin’s human shared a good look at his dog-like qualities, starting from the fact that this sheep always looks happy.

He runs up to the camera and pauses to give a smile. He’s got a happy gallop when he’s being taken for a walk with his leash and collar, and he even runs along the shoreline at the beach with his brother, a dog who looks just like him.

If all that wasn’t enough, Kevin also wags his tiny tail when he’s happy and loves to cuddle up on the bed and the couch.

“Kevin thinks he’s a dog,” the caption on the video reads. And unsurprisingly, the people in the comments could not get enough of Kevin and his puppy-like qualities.

“The little hops in the run,” one viewer noticed.

“The little hops,” someone else echoed.

“Not to be dramatic, but I would die for Kevin,” added another.

“The way I’d never be depressed again,” someone else admitted.

“Adds baby sheep to cart,” another person joked.

According to TreeHugger, there are several different breeds of sheep that can be considered miniature, Babydolls, for example. 

“Babydolls are only about 18 to 24 inches tall when they’re fully grown,” the site shares. “They can weigh between 60 and 125 pounds. Because of their small size, they’re easy to handle and popular as pets for children and for 4-H projects. Babydoll sheep can be easily contained with small, low fences.”

We hope Kevin keeps his dog-like personality!

Show the crazy

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

People need to see just how looney Trump is these days. It’s worse than ever.

He’s right. Not that he’s any prize himself. I agree with George Conway here:

Former Republican George Conway said Democrats need to wage a “psychological war” against Donald Trump until it makes him so “crazy” that he violates court orders.

“I think you have to wage psychological war on Donald Trump,” Conway, a lawyer and Never Trump activist, said during a panel discussion at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit on Wednesday. “I don’t think the Democrats have ever attacked Trump enough.”

In an interview afterward with TNR, Conway explained that Democrats could wage a coordinated psychological campaign against Trump through a series of advertisements. “You can just run ads on TV in the local area where he is,” said Conway, whom Trump had once considered nominating for solicitor general.

Conway said that the ads could target the things Trump feels the most insecure about. “He knows he’s not that smart, he knows he’s not that rich, he knows that he’s not that good. And so, if you go and attack him for the things he knows he is not deep down, it makes him crazy.”

“He’s not that far from his bursting point,” Conway added. And making Trump nuts could impact ongoing his legal troubles.

“The more he gets attacked the more he will talk about things he shouldn’t be talking about,” Conway said. “I think you could even get him thrown into jail, by running the right ad,” he added.

Trump was slapped with a gag order in his New York trial after he made comments attacking New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has accused him and his associates of fraudulently inflating the value of their real estate assets. In the Georgia case, the conditions of his release on bail bar him from intimidating witnesses and co-defendants.

“You run ads that make him angry at those people, like [Mark] Meadows,” said Conway, referring to the former top Trump aide and co-defendant in the Georgia trial. “You run these creepy ads that get into his head, he’ll just go out there and he’ll violate his conditions of release.”

Conway went on to say that beating Trump requires the media to show America who Trump is. “I disagree with some of the critiques that you hear, I think predominantly from the left, about ‘You don’t give him oxygen; you don’t give him air time.’ No. You give him more. Show everybody the crazy.”

He’s already trying to back off his intermperate comments about Hezbollah, Isreal and Netanyahu. Even if we all agree that Netanyau is a monster, nobody with any sense can agree that congratulating Biden on his win is a reason or refusing to join a risky assassination plot to kill a major Iranian General is the reason. But that’s Trump’s beef and it’s out there whether he likes it or not. People aren’t going to forget them — if they see them.

I say let it out. Make people watch it. Democrats and Independents have to be reminded what a screaming freak he is and the few Republicans who haven’t completely disappeared into the Trump cult have to realize that he’s gotten worse over his years out of the White House. It will be a close election and since Fox and the right wing media are happy to show Trump in all his glory because their audience loves the fact that he’s a crazy lunatic, the the mainstream media needs to make sure that the rest of the country sees him too. If he happens to run afoul of the law (again) well, that’s on him.

“It’s like the virus had escaped the lab”

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

It has now taken over the GOP host

Josh Marshall wrote this last night and I think it’s the only way to properly frame what’s happening in the US Congress right now. It’s bigger than the speakers race. It’s simply the way the Republican party operates now in every way:

Just moments ago news broke that Steve Scalise had withdrawn his bid to be Speaker of the House. This is a genuinely stunning development, even though I semi-predicted it earlier today. I said it half in jest. But we live in an age when half-jokes often come to pass rapidly.

I had a conversation this evening that allowed me to clarify some of my own thinking about these developments. After Scalise won the caucus Speakership vote you had a slow trickle of members saying “I’m still for Jim Jordan.” Then later you had news reports asking, “Can Steve Scalise get to 217?”

There’s a category, conceptual breakdown here that is kind of hiding in plain view. What do these members mean they’re still for Jim Jordan? He lost. It’s over. Scalise is the Republican Speaker candidate. End of story.

Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not making a case for Steve Scalise. I’m certainly not making a case for Jim Jordan. But there’s an elemental breakdown here that transcends the individuals involved. Participating in a majority organizational vote means, if sometimes only implicitly, abiding by its results. The caucus vote wasn’t a straw poll or an advisory opinion. It’s binding. It’s over. And yet it was treated as basically a given, in the GOP caucus and in the press coverage, that Scalise, having won the vote, then had to build from the 113 he got in the caucus vote to 217.

You’re probably saying: We know this Josh. They’re a mess. But we know this.

But I think that’s only a measure of how much this has been normalized when it’s actually completely abnormal. The literal definition of a caucus in American political usage is a defined group that collectively decides on actions by majority vote and then acts in unison in a parliamentary context.

From one perspective this is no more than a replay of what happened in January. A group of holdouts refused to vote for the caucus’s candidate. But there’s something a bit different. That was the rump of the ‘Freedom Caucus’, an at least somewhat ideologically coherent trouble-making group that, as I’ve explained in a few posts, has been playing this game going back more than a decade. But the holdouts for Scalise were more various — right, left, a heavy load of attention-seekers who didn’t bother to put forward any kind of reason that made any sense. It’s like the virus had escaped the lab. It wasn’t just Freedom Caucus weirdos anymore. It’s now treated as a given that caucus elections are purely advisory or essentially meaningless.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer caucus, of course. But we should note that there’s a clear thread connecting this to 2020 rigged electionism and, perhaps more tightly, the dramas of debt ceiling hostage-taking and government shutdowns. The premise of all those dramas is that they’re what you do when you don’t have the votes to do what you want. If you’ve got the votes in the Congress and a President who will sign your bills, you just do it. Threatening to shut down the government is what you do when you don’t. Do what I say even though I don’t have the votes or I start breaking things. That’s the bottom line behind every one of these gambits.

It’s all cut from the same cloth.

The best and perhaps only path for Scalise was to force the matter. What do you mean: Do I have the votes? The election already happened. I won. It’s over. If you weren’t going to honor the results you shouldn’t have shown up to vote. If people don’t want to honor the commitment they made then lets put everyone on the record. That is kind of what McCarthy did. Of course, he also negotiated. Clearly Scalise didn’t think that was possible. As I said, couldn’t happen to a nicer caucus. The pathogen they developed to break the republic ended up infecting them too. It’s of a piece with election denialism and parliamentary terrorism. All fruit of the same poison tree.

This has been growing for a very long time. Think about Gingrich and the endless ridiculous “investigations” into Bill Clinton, the 2000 election and beyond. Their motto has been to win by any means necessary and they have fewer and fewer limits.