THE GOP IS GUILTY FROM TOP TO BOTTOM

David Kurtz put it well in this morning’s TPM newsletter, regarding his view of the news that came up yesterday about the completE complicity of the Republican party as the Party of the Insurrection:

“From top to bottom, the Republican Party has become the insurrectionist party. It extends from the executive to the legislative to the judicial. It’s all encompassing and unapologetic. There is value in such clarity, if we choose to see it.”

Specifically, Kurtz was referring - first - to the news that Justice Alito and his wife flew the American flag upside down - the political symbol adopted by “Stop The Steal” in late January 2021, at the time of the transfer of power and inauguration (which Alito refused to attend, a fact not mentioned in yesterday’s news), thus publicly aligning himself with the insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021.

Second was the news this week of the “Trump Army” (they all arrived wearing Trump’s “uniform” with the intent of intimidating the jury by their presence in the courtroom) of MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate, plus numerous state-level officials, to show support for their Maximum Cult Leader, with the odious Matt Gaetz explicitly taking reference to the Proud Boy insurrectionists - most of whose leadership is now in jail, convicted of seditious conspiracy.

And third was about Public Evil Fuck Greg Abbott (too bad he wasn’t killed by that tree) pardoning Daniel Perry - the murderer of Garrett Foster, a Black Lives Matter protestor - who was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Texas jury, so that Abbott could continue to demonstrate he is a Willful Fascist. As Jonathan v. Last observed, “The case had everything Republicans love: A peaceful protest with people exercising their First Amendment rights. A veteran lawfully exercising his Second Amendment right. And before the murder the killer had been searching the internet for young girls and sending sexually explicit texts to a minor.” Additionally, Perry is a racist who hates black people so much he often talked about killing them as sport.

Last year, when Perry was convicted of murdering Garret Foster at the BLM protest, Radley Balko wrote in “The Smearing of Garrett Foster”:

“Let’s be clear about what Abbott, [Tucker] Carlson and other MAGA types are advocating here. In pushing a pardon for Perry, they’re stating they believe that if someone plows his vehicle into a crowd of protesters, the protesters have no right to self-defense. They believe there should be no liability—criminal or civil—for deliberately striking protesters with a car. And while they may claim to believe the gun rights they advocate are absolute, when it comes to enforcing and protecting those rights, they clearly have little interest in defending those rights for people who don’t look, believe, or vote like them.”

Despite all the incontrovertible evidence Perry is an unrepentant scumbag, it took Abbott less than a day from the jury finding Perry guilty for the governor to publicly promise to pardon him; it took a few more days for the Abbott appointees on the Texas Board of Prisons and Paroles to send the guy who placed them on the board a recommendation that Perry be pardoned, damn the evidence to the contrary.

Like a lot of progressive Texas Democrats, I really wish that tree that fell on Abbott had been more successful.

I completely agree with Jonathan V. Last’s conclusion:

“There is no legal or moral justification for pardoning Perry. His trial was fair. The jury acted reasonably. The laws he broke were well-defined and serious. He is not a good guy who had one bad moment. There is no indication that he has repented and become a different man than the one who fantasized about murder and then carried it out.

“The only reason to pardon Perry is political. Pardoning Perry creates political gain for Gov. Abbott because his constituents like Perry. And these voters like Perry precisely because of who he murdered.”

What’s even more shocking than the pardon is what Abbott now plans to do. In 2023, het and the Republican -controlled legislature passed a law allowing the state to remove “rogue” locally-elected district attorneys from office, the justification being that some DA’s were too lenient on crime.

As of this morning, the state is looking into removing the DA who prosecuted Perry, Travis county District Attorney José Garza, who Abbott claims “demonstrated unethical and biased misuse of his office in prosecuting Daniel Scott Perry.”

Jesus Fucking Christ! Not content to pardon Perry’s racist murder of Garrett Foster, Texas Republicans also want to send a message that using the law to bring charges against members of the ingroup who kill members of the outgroup is not allowed.

By all accounts, Garrett Foster was the damn definition of “a good guy with a gun.” He gets murdered by a racist piece of shit, and then the “Party of Law ‘n’ Order” uses state power to protect his murderer.

This native born Texan is damn glad to be as far from Texas as you can get and still be in the same country. I renew my wish to see Texas expelled from the Union and a 10-foot high concrete wall built around that fucking swamp. (With provision for evacuating all the Good Folks, who are Better Good Folks than good folks elsewhere, since it’s harder to do there.)

What all of yesterday’s news demonstrated is the fact that - for way too many Republicans - the threat of political violence, and actually carrying it out, has become a matter of “shirts and skins.” For Republicans, the purpose of the law is to harm your enemies.

Regarding the appearance of the “Trump Army” at his trial in New York, the inimitable Rick Wilson provides a description no one else could match for quality and accuracy:

“This week’s display of the MAGA Village of the Damned behavior was the inevitable pilgrimage by the latest tier of masochistic pilgrims to the holy site of the Martyrdom of St. Donald Lachrimosa, e.g. the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan in the ongoing election fraud and porn star hush money trial. From the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Anime Catgirl Porntown) down to the human flotsam of Matt Gaetz (R-Venmo), Anna Paulina Maga, J.D. Vance, and Vivek Ramascammy, all were drawn to New York like hungry maggots to ripe roadkill.

Ramascammy is a good description; I also like Ramasmarmy.

While many of us initially thought in 2015-16 that the Trump phenomenon was something new, it wasn’t. The first display of where the Republican “base” was really at came in 2008 at the rallies held for Sarah Palin, where many of the audience showed up carrying stuffed-toy monkeys, as a slur on Obama.

The fact that a Black Man defeated the White Man for the presidency was an “insult” the white supremacists - who have come to dominate the party after Nixon invited them in with the “Southern Strategy” - could not abide.

But the scumbaggery in the Republican Party goes back further than that. Way back. Way way back.

A significant part of the Republican Party has been pro-fascist for at least the past 100 years, when they supported the rise of Benito Mussolini and held his fascist party and dictatorship as a positive example for the future of American politics. Many of these people had been attracted to Kaiser Wilhelm and the Prussian Militarists before World War I and during the war had advocated for support of Germany over the “rapacious democracies” of Britain and France. Jacob Heilbrunn goes into detail on this history and brings the receipts in his invaluable new history of the American Far Right, “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance With Foreign Dictators” (which you should buy and read, if you haven’t done so yet).

These days, the Republican Party attracts fascists like a moth to a flame. And it’s accelerating.

If I had forecast the Publick Batshittery seen this week back in January, I think most of the readers here would have - rightly! - written it off as TCinLA being extreme in his dislike of Republicans.

But when it happened this week, I took it as normal, and from comments I have seen here and around Substack and other sites, so did most of you. That’s how their malicious, evil behavior is now traveling at what I hope is its top speed, though I won’t oppose anyone who says “you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!”

A year ago, most people writing here at Substack were not calling the Republican Party per se “fascist;” references to Hitler were still considered “going too far.” In the past twelve months, Godwin himself has declared “Godwin’s Law” repealed and identified the MAGA movement as explicitly fascist. Today, it’s hard to find a pro-democracy political site that is not pointing at the actions of Republicans and calling them out as the fascists they are. The fact that Trump is now calling President Biden and his administration “fascists” is proof his movement is fully fascist, since every accusation he makes is a public confession of guilt.

We have long known that the 2024 race was going to be a test of character. The entire Republican Party has now failed that test.

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