Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Bankruptcy, fistfights and leather couches

Rachel Maddow’s staff noticed a sprawling story that while not exactly headline news ought to be. (I’d missed it until her show Monday night.) Multiple state Republican parties are at or near bankruptcy. The headline for Jim Geraghty’s National Review column last week dubbed it a “quiet collapse” in four key states.

Political donations follow power. Especially in the states. Especially in non-general election years. So it is not surprising that in four states with Democratic governors that state Republicans are not seeing their coffers as full as when the GOP holds the governor’s mansion. What Geraghty sees in that less is something more. In Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota Republicans are “going broke and devolving into infighting little fiefdoms.”

Arizona Republicans are down to their last $23,000 in their federal account while their failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake barnstorms the country as “real” governor in exile. She could be raising money to help her fellow Arizona Republicans, but no. Four years ago at this point in the cycle, the party had nearly $770,000 in the bank.

Colorado Republican Chair Dave Williams is attacking his own legislators and threatening to disenfranchise from the primary process “more than 900,000 Republicans” and “more than 1.8 million unaffiliated voters, 47% of the electorate,” reports the Colorado Gazette:

Stolen election conspiracist Dave Williams, the new state chairman, has announced the Colorado Republican State Central Committee (CRC) will vote on August 5 on whether to cancel the 2024 Republican primary election. And to accomplish this act of political suicide, they want to make a change in the committee’s voting rules that would make the old Soviet Politburo proud.

(What was it I wrote about the Republicans’ Soviet leanings yesterday?)

Minnesota Republicans have “barely $54 cash on hand” and “more than $335,000 in debt, according to the FEC paperwork filed in late June.“

Four county Republican parties in Michigan are at odds with one another, Geraghty recounts from a June Washington Post story:

At least four county parties in Michigan have been at open war with themselves, with members suing one another or putting forward competing slates that claim to be in charge. The night before an April state party meeting, two GOP officials got into a physical altercation in a hotel bar over an attempt to expel members. The state party’s new chairwoman, Kristina Karamo, has struggled to raise money and abandoned the party’s longtime headquarters.

Michigan Republicans have but $93,000 in their account under 18 months ahead of the 2024 elections. Donors who’d rather their money was well spent are closing their wallets.

Then there is Georgia. Gun-toting Republican Brian Kemp is governor and Republicans have a firm grip on the legislature. Yet the party’s accounts are bleeding for the legal defense of its “alternate” electors in the scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential results. They still have $1.4 million banked after raising $722,000 through June this year. But they’ve spent over a half million in legal expenses, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, more than $340,000 of it defending the fake Trump electors.

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson called it five years ago: “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”

Geraghty laments:

In these states, we are seeing the self-marginalization of the Republican Party. No outside force came along and forced these state parties to spend money, alienate traditional supporters and donors, pick nasty fights with their own lawmakers, turn loyalty to Trump into the preeminent litmus test on all issues and disputes, and alienate and repel once-persuadable swing voters. No, the people who took over these parties chose this path.

Political operatives who handle the boring day-to-day of party operations do some things right: “get more money coming in than is going out, pay attention to down-ballot races, and avoid infighting and messy public squabbles.” The MAGA Republicans who have replaced them are “blustering nutjobs” in the mold of Dear Leader, himself not exactly a paragon of financial or managerial competence.

As zealots (the left has its own), they are more interested in ideological purity and “not interested in attracting the votes of anyone they deem insufficiently dedicated to the MAGA vision.” Geraghty concludes, “The MAGA crowd now running these state parties insisted they didn’t need anyone else. And now we see where that got them.”

Truthfully, there was an outside force. It was not a boat accident. It wasn’t any propeller, it wasn’t any coral reef, and it wasn’t Jack the Ripper. It was Donald Trump. And even he was not the cause. Just the catalyst.

Talked about Barbie bein woke this weekend. pic.twitter.com/8rj8C5my5L

— Trae Crowder (@traecrowder) July 31, 2023

Consider the now regularly scheduled, near-unintelligible culture-war freakouts on the right. Over BLM. Over CRT. Over DEI. Over “woke.” Over “grooming,” drag shows, and kids’ books. The right has been slowly melting down over losing its cultural dominance for decades. Trump was an accelerant.

Consider Tucker Carlson’s and Josh Hawley’s embarrassingly public insecurity over manliness. Consider Ben Shapiro’s extended-cut rant — excuse me, rants — over the Barbie movie. These men don’t need more testosterone, bigger audiences, bigger guns or bigger penises. They need therapy.

The Republican Party as well. Not that they’d fund it.

Maddow’s segment is here:

To all who celebrate

This will only be effective if EVERYONE refrains from tweeting (X-ing?) on August 1st a/k/a #TweetlessTuesday. Let's show the owner the POWER OF THE PEOPLE. Honestly, would it kill you to keep your thoughts to yourself for 1 damn day? Read a book! 👀 #August1stTweetOutDay https://t.co/0apu2XsbAC

— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) July 30, 2023

An old GOP hand on Ron DeSantis

Oh my:

Last year, longtime Republican strategist Ed Rollins was leading the Ready for Ron PAC, and announcing his plans to help DeSantis — then an undeclared 2024 candidate —  take on Trump in the primary. A longtime Trump supporter, Rollins wanted to turn the page on the twice-impeached former president, and he thought DeSantis was the candidate to do it. But in just a few months, that hope vanished. Today, Rollins says he is “not involved” anymore in the pro-DeSantis efforts.

“I don’t think it’s the campaign’s fault at all; it’s his,” Rollins tells Rolling Stone. “I think he’s been a very flawed candidate. I know some of the people around him, and some of them are good, talented people. But every time he opens his mouth, he has a tendency to — shall we say — think out-loud, and he clearly doesn’t understand the game. … When you get into these culture wars the way that he has, the vast majority of people don’t understand what they are.

But Rollins doesn’t see another threat to Trump in the 2024 primary field: “At this point in time, I would be shocked if Trump were not the nominee.”

Rollins is also predicting that, “unless something serious happens,” President Biden is on track toward reelection.

Yep.

Wow, that is just depressing.

The original Woodstock featured The Who, Jimmy Hendrix, and The Grateful Dead.

Republican Woodstock features Donald Trump doing his jerking off two giants dance. pic.twitter.com/oYbIXV50nN

— Joe is Me (@YeahJeeetsYeah) July 31, 2023

Update:

The NY Times had this quote explaining why they love Donald Trump:

“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”

There is nobody, NOBODY, who is a bigger whiner and cryer that Donald J. Trump. Not even the world’s most spoiled five year old princes snivel as much as he.

But they just want to feel good about saying things like “make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore” and Trump gives them permission.

And, by the way, what results????

I think DeSantis and the gang see this as a feature not a bug. But it isn’t. There comes a point at which turning your state into an antediluvian hellscape starts costing real money:

With the start of the 2023-24 academic year only six weeks away, senior officials at New College of Florida (NCF) made a startling announcement in mid-July: 36 of the small honors college’s approximately 100 full-time teaching positions were vacant. The provost, Bradley Thiessen, described the number of faculty openings as “ridiculously high”, and the disclosure was the latest evidence of a brain drain afflicting colleges and universities throughout the Sunshine state.

Governor Ron DeSantis opened 2023 with the appointment of six political allies to the college’s 13-member board of trustees who vowed to drastically alter the supposedly “woke”-friendly learning environment on its Sarasota campus. At its first meeting in late January, the revamped panel voted to fire the college president, Patricia Okker, without cause and appoint a former Republican state legislator and education commissioner in her place.

Over the ensuing weeks, board members have dismissed the college’s head librarian and director of diversity programs and denied tenure to five professors who had been recommended for approval.

In a statement given to 10 Tampa Bay about faculty vacancies that was issued earlier this month, NCF officials said that six of the openings were caused by staff resignations and one-quarter of the faculty member departures “followed the changes in the New College board of trustees”. One of those resignations was submitted by Liz Leininger, an associate professor of neurobiology who says she started looking for an exit strategy as soon as she learned about the DeSantis appointments in the first week of 2023.

The 40-year-old scientist joined the New College faculty in 2017, drawn by the opportunities of living near her ageing parents on Florida’s Gulf coast and working closely with undergraduates at a relatively small school where total student enrollment hovers around 700. But as the Republican-controlled Florida legislature passed a series of bills over the last two years that sought to curtail academic freedom and render a professor’s tenure subject to review at any time, Leininger witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of the new laws on her colleagues’ morale.

“All of the legislation surrounding higher education in Florida is chilling and terrifying,” said Leininger, who is rejoining the biology department at St Mary’s College in Maryland this fall where she had been teaching before moving to central Florida. “Imagine scientists who are studying climate change, imagine an executive branch that denies climate change – they could use these laws to intimidate or dismiss those scientists.”

The new laws have introduced a ban on the funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Florida’s public colleges and universities, withdrawn a right to arbitration formerly guaranteed to faculty members who have been denied tenure or face dismissal, and prohibited the teaching of critical race theory, which contends that inherent racial bias pervades many laws and institutions in western society, among other changes.

In the face of that and other legislation backed by DeSantis and Republican lawmakers that has rolled back the rights of Florida’s LGBTQ+ community, many scholars across the state are taking early retirement, voting with their feet by accepting job offers outside Florida or simply throwing in the towel.

I wonder if the Democrats and apathetic Floridians will wake up and realize that he’s ruining their education system from Kindergarten to college. It will take a lot of effort to build it back once it’s gone.

Roy Edroso breaks it down — and everything he says is right on:

Back when I did a regular “rightbloggers” column for the Village Voice, I covered a few of the loonier rightwing conspiracy theories those folks promulgated. I didn’t make a habit of running them down, though. I thought the bloggers’ and web propagandists’ ridiculous interpretations of major events were loony enough themselves, and also more germane to way conservatives were polluting our political discourse and indeed our politics, than the occasion crackpot cock-and-bull story about, for example, Barack Obama’s secret gay life.

Back then, despite what Tommy Lee Jones said in Men In Black, what one might read in the supermarket tabloids or their web equivalents was not considered the best investigative reporting on the planet.

Not that I didn’t occasionally enjoy the spectacle of conservative writers working one of these obvious slanders for political advantage — as when, for example, a transparently fake claim that Michelle Obama had gone on a rant about “Whitey” was, during the 2008 Presidential race, circulated by operatives, promoted by rightbloggers, passive-agressively shoveled into the mainstream by National Review (“My guess is that even most Democrats recognize she’s capable of remarks like that”) and then, when it became clear no one was going for it, reimagined by some of these guys as a Democratic dirty trick against Republicans to make them look like credulous fools.

But by and large in those days I ignored the political-celebrity-specific conspiracy theories that were most popular among the rightwing rabble — such as the “Clinton body count” stuff about all the people Bill and Hillary Clinton had allegedly ordered killed. True, its first great effulgence was promoted by no less than the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which JAQed off to the rumor that Vincent Foster had not, as his suicide note indicated and two investigations confirmed, killed himself, but was personally ordered whacked by Bill and Hill.

But back in those days it was easy — easier, certainly, than it later became — to assume no one took these stories seriously — not even their promoters; they were just stirring the muck to muddy the waters, as it were, to raise vague suspicions rather than rouse true believers, and thus suppress voter enthusiasm. It stank, but at least it made some kind of sense.

Also, it seemed back then that the Clinton Body Count thing really had lost its effectiveness. When Clinton was making her big Presidential run, having already made the Congressional Republicans who tried to Benghazi her look foolish, the brethren pushed the hazy accidental death of a minor U.N. official as the latest of Red Hillary’s murders, and got approximately zero bites.

But Her Emails and other bullshit pushed President Hillary off-course, and she mostly went quiet — and, apart from the unending calls for her arrest by Tubby and his minions, so did the Clinton Body Count industry. Occasionally we’d get a Bill Clinton reference whenever someone ran the tape of Trump partying with Jeffrey Epstein, but the CBC theorists clammed up, which made sense — no Clinton would be running for anything anytime soon.

But as we’ve seen, in the MAGA era conservatives have gone bugfuck crazy for even weirder conspiracy theories. There are a lot of little ones — like the “Biden Orders US Dollar Replaced with Trackable ‘Spyware’ Version” gibberish I cover in my Hardcore editions — but it’s the big ones that are most alarming, like all the COVID conspiracy theories (that Democrats and Anthony Fauci worked with the Chinese to cause COVID, or that COVID isn’t real, or that it is real but that masks are just tools of repression and the vaccines are full of microchips), the Stolen 2020 Election, J6 as false flag, etc.

You don’t need me to tell you (though I often do!) that this endless series of Big Lies reveals a conservative movement and Republican Party increasingly unmoored from reality. But I have to tell you there’s something about the smaller, political-celebrity-specific fantasies they’ve been pushing lately that strikes me as ominously extra weird.

The Joe Biden fantasies made vivid by the Republican House investigations are by now something any Democratic president would have to expect. But did you see the one about how Fauci burned down Rand Paul’s office?

Others have picked up the theme — and if you’re thinking, yeah, well, this is just a fringe thing just like the old days, be aware that Fash Beardo here has more than a million followers and none of them is going to be skeptical about this absurd insinuation.

Also you may have heard that Barack Obama’s chef died in a paddleboarding accident the other day, and if you follow conservative media, you will also “know” that Obama had him murdered:

QAnon conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin alleged that “it’s about time we start discussing the Obama Body Count” and asked of Campbell, “What did he know?”

Conspiracy theorist Roger Stone shared a screenshot of an article on Campbell’s death and implied that his death was purposeful, saying, “Clearing the decks for her 2024 candidacy. Tying up the loose ends #MichelleObama2024.”

White nationalist Stew Peters posted, “Clinton White House Chef: DEAD. Obama White House Chef: DEAD. If I’m Joe Biden’s chef, I’m quitting and getting FAR AWAY from that family.”

This story is now being spread by unaccountably-popular bullshit artist Benny Johnson (“The Obamas said they were nowhere near Martha’s Vineyard when the tragedy of Tafari Campbell’s death occurred…”), prominent conservative intellectual Catturd2, and the Washington Free Beacon (“Axis of Evil? Obamas, Clintons Linked by Suspicious Deaths”).

So it’s not just the little fish nibbling at this. Once upon a time conservatives of any prominence — and yes, calling these guys “prominent” may seem a stretch, but who in their movement is more qualified for the term? — would have been silent or at least a lot cagier about promoting this murder fantasy. But now it’s standard procedure: If a Democrat is popular and prominent, conservatives will declare them them the prime suspect in any crime that occurs in their vicinity.

Given my previous lack of interest in this kind of thing, and the larger and more consequential fantasy versions of national events to which conservatives are now devoted, you may wonder why I care about these alt Body Counts.

Well, for one thing, highly personal political fantasies have a way of turning into stochastic terrorism, as with the guy who got excited when Tubby reported Obama’s address, got his arsenal and went looking for him.

But it’s also, and I guess mainly, this: I’ve said before that Republicans and conservatives don’t have policies as such anymore — just sadism and paranoia and related pathologies. Back in the Clinton Body Count days, they at least seemed to know that they were peddling bullshit in order to achieve coherent political goals.

But now there’s only the slander, and increasingly their pitch for elections is that they need power so they can throw their opponents in jail, because those opponents are all groomers and murderers and arsonists — read about it in our tweets! — and what else can you do with supervillains like that?

This animates all of what we once would have called their politics. They’re trapped in this lurid cartoon version of reality, and they want to make us all live it out with them.

I don’t normally reprint Edroso’s work but I read it every day. It’s one substack that’s really worth subscribing to. Highly recommend.

God knows why…

Donald Trump stepped on to the stage in Des Moines Iowa on Friday night to the ubiquitous GOP rally song called “Only in America” just as the lines, “one could end up going to prison, one just might be president” were blaring over the loudspeakers. Everyone in that room has probably heard the song a thousand times, Trump included, but never have the words been more relevant.

Omg. That line hits right when he gets on stage. https://t.co/nXOGcw9Ol1

— Dave Aronberg (@aronberg) July 29, 2023

If they were mad at Gov. Reynolds they shouldn’t have been. The song was played for every candidate who spoke. It’s just that those particular lyrics only apply to one of them.

The crowd cheered lustily for the former president and current front runner for the Republican nomination anyway ,as they always do. It’s doubtful any of them even heard those lyrics, and if they did they no doubt saw it as more evidence of the massive conspiracy against Donald Trump. We know this because earlier in the evening one lone Republican candidate tried to tell them the truth:

Reporters inside the room said the booing was much louder and more energetic than what appears on the video. One man reportedly yelled, “go home you son of a bitch!”

Hurd said “the truth is hard” but these people don’t think so. Here’s a typical Trump voter from the next day at Trump’s rally in Erie, Pennsylvania:

Guy at Trump rally is asked why he came: “Because I believe in the man. He tells the truth, never lies, and he’s fighting for our country.” pic.twitter.com/kEX5MvEQQv

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 29, 2023

The scene of those surreal moments with Trump and Hurd came this weekend at the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner on Friday night where a whole gaggle of candidates appeared to make their pitch to Republican Real Americans. Trump was fairly low key, mostly sticking to his prepared speech and staying under the allowed 10 minutes. It was low-energy enough to even be noticed by some in the crowd.

You can understand why. All week long the press had been on indictment watch in DC waiting for news about the assumed impending charges against Trump in the January 6th investigation but instead a superseding indictment had been brought against Trump and another conspirator in the Mar-a-lago stolen documents case. As of now he’s facing 40 felony charges in that case and 32 state felony charges in New York in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. It’s enough to make any criminal defendant feel a little bit despondent.

And anyway, Trump hates appearing in venues with other candidates. He feels it lowers him to have to compete head to head with people he considers his inferiors. Although he’s qualified for the upcoming first debate in Iowa next month he’s said he doesn’t think he’ll bother. I’m not sure why. The crowds loved it back in 2016 when he talked about his penis size and crudely demeaned and insulted his rivals and the moderators.

A spat with the popular GOP Gov. Reynolds over her refusal to endorse him (or anyone) in the primary and the not so paranoid suspicion that she favors Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may have affected some inside players in the Iowa GOP, at least one of whom switched his allegiance to DeSantis, is all inside baseball. The GOP base still loves Trump. He’s polling 30 points ahead of DeSantis with everyone else in the crowded field still trying to get a foot hold. When Trump said, “there’s only one candidate — and you know who that candidate is — to get the job done” the crowd went wild.

It’s possible that there has been a slight shift in the national polling in light of all his felony indictments. According to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll , only 13% of Republicans believe Trump did something illegal, a number unchanged since the last poll, but they report that “Republicans who say Trump has done nothing wrong dropped 9 points (50% to 41%) since our June poll. ” And he’s dropped 6 points, from 64% to only 58%, who say they are more likely to back Trump if he stays in the race. Clearly, quite a few Republicans who believe he did something wrong are more than happy to vote for him anyway. Such is the MAGA phenomenon. You can see why the rest of the GOP field is stuck in low numbers. There is no shaking him loose from the top spot.

The Republican primary looks like it’s going to be a re-run of 2016 at this point. And that’s pathetic since back then nobody really knew what to make of Trump but you’d think they would have figured out a different strategy by now. This crop each have their own reasons for trying it, some more understandable than others, and they probably all figure that they might be the last man (or Nikki Haley) standing in case Trump drops out.

DeSantis clearly thought he was presidential timbre and could go one-on-one with Trump and he has learned otherwise. The spectacle of his floundering campaign is downright pitiful these days and it’s illustrated by the fact that he no longer seems to be running against Trump the front runner and is instead in a race for second place with S. Carolina Sen. Tim Scott .

Scott is a media darling and is reportedly starting to get some attention from donors, especially those who are feeling disenchanted with the anti-woke Florida governor as he’s rolled out his very expensive and ineffectual campaign. And former Vice President Mike Pence persists in believing he has a constituency as does former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Previously unknown gadfly Vivek Ramaswamy is having his 15 minutes and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is eagerly invited on every cable news show to deliver some zingers against Trump.

A few others are pretending to run as well but the strategy is the same as 2016: don’t alienate the Trump vote, challenge the other candidates so they will drop out and you will be Trump’s heir apparent when he flames out. It didn’t work then and it’s highly unlikely it will work now, especially since Trump’s minions are changing the rules all over the country to make it harder for second place finishers to collect delegates.

The Washington Post reports that in California this past weekend Trump operatives finagled a change to the delegate rules giving him a much better chance at securing all of the state’s 169 delegates. Similar changes have been engineered in other states after Trump’s henchmen set about working the state parties some time back. Whether it’s pushing for winner-take-all or caucuses over primaries or any number of other strategies, his operation has fully wired the primaries for Trump’s advantage.

Events like that Lincoln dinner and probably the debates as well are really just a political pageant designed to give the impression that there is a contested primary in the Republican Party. There’s a lot of money to go around to line the pockets of media companies and Republican operatives for months so why not? But unless something catastrophic happens to Trump (and criminal indictments obviously don’t count) all indications are that he’s going to be the nominee. The rest of these people are just running in place hoping that it does.

Salon

If they vote Democrat, stop them!

The outrage meter here in The Cesspool of Sin is pegging this morning.

Brad Friedman‘s X-post-factoid Sunday was pretty eye-catching. Ohio Republicans really, really don’t want the majority of state voters to cast ballots in the Aug. 8 special election. Their ultimate goal is to prevent a popular constitutional amendment securing abortion rights from passing in November.

Ohio Capitol Journal:

Early voting is ongoing for the upcoming Aug. 8 special election on Issue 1 that asks voters to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution by raising the threshold to 60%.

To get to the ballot box, voters need to keep in mind changes made to voter ID laws last year, in a late-night legislative move approved by Gov. Mike DeWine at the beginning of 2023.

Those changes, made through House Bill 458, mean different identification allowed at the polls, and limits to the absentee ballot dates.

While a driver’s license with a different address is still allowed (as long as it’s not expired), voters must be registered with the Ohio Secretary of State at the correct address before voting.

Along with unexpired driver’s licenses, a state of Ohio ID card, interim ID form from the BMV, a US passport or passport card, US military ID card, Ohio National Guard ID or ID from the US Department of Veterans Affairs counts as valid photo identification.

Under the changes, voters can no longer use a Social Security card, birth certificate, insurance card, utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or other government document, according to the Secretary of State. Even a “registration acknowledgment notice” from the county board of elections is no longer acceptable, according to the new rules.

Heads up, Ohio – new GOP voting barriers:
“Even a “registration acknowledgment notice” from the county board of elections is no longer acceptable”
GOP legislature cut early voting days, absentee ballot deadlines, window to “cure” a provisional ballot, morehttps://t.co/N6sJYfmfnZ

— Green News Report (@GreenNewsReport) July 30, 2023

No one is fooled by the obvious efforts by the Democracy-Optional Party™ to stifle voting by groups with which they disagree.

As of April 7, those without a driver’s license from Ohio or any other state can obtain a photo ID through the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles free of charge, an ID that can be used at the polls.

The deadline for absentee ballot applications is now Aug. 1 at 8:30 p.m., another change made by the legislature.

“Ballots now must be requested a full week before Election Day – the previous Tuesday by 5 p.m. – as opposed to the previous Saturday by noon (the previous deadline),” according to information sent out by the ACLU’s Ohio chapter.

It’s getting steamy around the Tar Heel State, and not because of the temperature.

At a public Democratic event here on Sunday, my state senator advised North Carolina voters to vote in person, early, and to avoid using absentee voting in coming elections if at all possible. The NCGOP has erected barriers to acceptance similar to Ohio’s that render absentee voting iffy.

Funny, the NCGOP was down with voting by mail so long as it was mainly Republicans using it. You could repeal Obamacare from the comfort of your own home! (2012 mailer above.)

NC’s absentee voters must now include with their mailed ballots a photocopy of their approved photo IDs. Or else include a Photo ID Exception Form. As if everyone who wishes to vote from home has the equipment and computer savvy for doing any of that. And even I can’t locate that Photo ID Exception Form on the state board’s website!

That’s because, thanks to the GOP-controlled NC general assembly’s foot-dragging and refusal to fund their election-suppression mandates, it doesn’t exist yet!

BTW, one can get a free photo ID at your NC county Board of Elections office. Except the software for producing it on the printing equipment the boards have on hand is still unavailable! (See previous paragraph.)

I’m going to bastardize a Ronald Reagan quote to suit MAGA Republicans’ view of popular sovereignty: If they vote Democrat, stop them. If they keep voting, regulate them. And if they stop voting, give the rich another tax cut.

All things Cold War are new again

An old joke from the Cold War comes to mind this morning. At the risk of telling it badly, here goes:

American: We have freedom of speech in my country. I’m free to criticize my president as much as I want.

Russian: But is true in Soviet Union! I too am free to criticize your president as much as I want.

Now let’s back up to another Cold War tale I recalled at the very beginning of the Donald Trump administration (1/26/2017). Programmers and scientists across the country were rushing to back up climatic data in fear that the new administration would delete it and other research that conflicted with the administration’s chosen view of reality. They hoped to head off a MAGA Dark Age.

Oh, right. My other Cold War story (see update below):

Hedrick Smith in “The Russians” (1984) recounted a visit to Moscow’s Lenin Library. (Memory must serve, as I cannot locate the text online.) Smith, the New York Times’ Moscow Bureau Chief from 1971–74, had gone to one of the world’s great libraries to do some research. He needed a back copy of Time(?) magazine. But viewing such subversive foreign material was restricted. He had to present a permission slip from some office, which he had. While the clerk went back into the restricted stacks to fetch the magazine, Smith began leafing through a copy of Life someone had returned to the counter. When the clerk returned, she became visibly agitated. Smith had permission to read Time, but not Life.

In Trump’s America, soon we may all need permission slips.

And in the fullness of time, as the saying goes, comes an ACLU lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law blocked by a federal judge “that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing ‘harmful’ materials to minors.” Digby referenced the Associated Press report on Sunday:

“The question we had to ask was — do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties,” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement.

The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.

Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.

Book bans are unpopular among a majority of Republicans. A very slim majority.

“It was a pleasure to burn,” thought Montag. “Fahrenheit 451” is a Cold War novel inspired by Hitler’s book burnings and by the Soviets “sending writers to gulags and banning questionable books, while in the US [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy was persecuting writers …”

Don’t treat these MAGA clowns as clowns.

UPDATE: Thanks to Rick Perlstein for pointing me to the Hedrick Smith text for this online.

Floridians prefer Trump:

The warning signs were there even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stepped onto the stageat a luxury hotel near Miami.

Ticket sales for the local Republican Party’s biggest annual fundraiser were down by two-thirds. One group of reliable supporters skipped the event entirely. The ballroom at the JW Marriott Turnberry Resort & Spa was far too big for the 380 people who showed up. Staff hustled to arrange paneled “air walls” around the room to make the space look smaller.

When DeSantis arrived at the gathering in early July, he gave what two people who attended described as a familiar and lackluster speech.

“It kind of came off like a bar mitzvah speech,” said a party member who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from Miami-Dade GOP leaders. “The only time people really applauded was when he was introduced, and when he was done. In between it was clanging plates and people talking to each other.”

That evening offered a snapshot into a conundrum for the DeSantis campaign: While the governor runs on a platform to “make America Florida,” his support in the Sunshine State is showing signs of teetering. The governor’s uphill battle in his own state is a troubling sign at a moment when his campaign is struggling to regain momentum.

If a GOP primary were to be held today, multiple polls show DeSantis would resoundingly lose to former president Donald Trump in the state both men call home.

Oopsie

A March survey of nearly 1,500 voters living in the state by the University of North Florida found Republicans favored DeSantis over Trump by more than 30 points. DeSantis had the support of 59 percent of those questioned, compared with 28 percent for Trump. But more recent polling has consistently shown him trailing behind the former president.

The most recent poll by Florida Atlantic University found that of more than 900 Republican voters questioned, 54 percent would vote for Trump if a primary were held immediately, compared with 37 percent for the governor in a one-on-one matchup.

Political analysts say Florida offers a litmus test for how well DeSantis can appeal to a larger audience beyond early primary states. In attempting to win over conservative voters outside the state, some supporters now fear he may have turned away those who propelled him to success in Florida.

“It’s too early to write him off,” said Republican state Rep. Spencer Roach, who represents the Fort Myers area. “There’s still plenty of time for him to catch fire and get the momentum going.”

But even Roach said DeSantis would find a more receptive audience if he focused his message on the economy rather than “the woke war and covid.”

Several former DeSantis supporters echoed those remarks, with many expressing particular concern over policies like the state’s new abortion law. Surveys show most Floridians support access to the procedure, but DeSantis backed a six-week abortion ban recently passed by the legislature. Republican detractors also point to his ongoing feud with Disney and the amount of time he is spending out of state.

Recall that DeSantis barely won in 2018 and I think most Floridians voted tribally in 2022, an off-year election with a lackluster Democratic candidate. They assumed he was a standard MAGA Republican and they just didn’t look any further. Now they’re really seeing him and he’s just … DeSantis, And that’s not good, not good at all.