My takeaway is that Trump is a Democrat plant.

Sure, someone can be all over the place policy wise, but as long as they are loyal to Trump, they can be prominent in the GOP, and even take a leadership role. That's sort of what I've been arguing the last page or two.

Not sure how perpetuating the Big Lie while Biden proposes trillions in new spending is taking him on, but I think I'm beating a dead horse here.

Biden is promising to make the intellectual property of the mRNA vaccine public.

I hope the pharma companies are shitting themselves at their shortsightedness.

Is Stefanik actually all over the place, policy-wise? I genuinely dont know. What I do know is that she is able and willing to stick to the message and not feed the media with stories about bitter factional struggles within the GOP ranks...

The position you (and others) were arguing was a bit stronger though: you claimed that the GOP has become Trump's personality cult, and that fealty to him is the only thing that matters.
Other Republicans, like e.g. Katko, Valadao, Gonzalez or Kissinger, have voted for impeachment too, some of them have even publicly denounced Trump. And while they did get some flak over it, they haven't nearly drawn the same ire from the activist base of the party as Cheney. Why is that, particularly when an official's positioning on Trump is supposedly the only thing that matters?

The answer is pretty straightforward: some of them come from Biden districts (Katko, Valadao) where padding their bipartisan credentials is in their own strategic interest, and thus the interest of the party. All of them are not high-ranking members of leadership. And all of them have managed to keep their public criticism of Trump lowkey enough that it does not hurt the party and its messaging. Cheney fails to check any of these boxes, and that's why she's getting the axe.


Likewise, Cheney isn't actually saying anything new in recent days - she had made very similar statements back in January after the storming of the Capitol. Back then, she easily survived the vote on her leadership status among the House caucus. But the rest of the party has sent very unambiguous signals that it wants to move on from these events and talk about something else - and Cheney stubbornly refuses to get the memo and keeps needlessly bringing up this thorny issue in needlessly public fashion, to the detriment of her party.




First of all, I never claimed that Trump was currently being effective at opposing the Democrats.

Second: I do not want Republicans to perpetuate the Big Lie - I want them to ignore Trump when he rambles about the stolen election. Trump is welcome to play a productive role in shaping the future of the party if he wants to. But as long as he's a self-absorbed whiny little bitch, he should be "punished" by withdrawing attention from him. Not feeding the beast is clearly in the best interest of the GOP and American democracy.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 7 2021 04:22pm

There's fundamental policy differences between those aligned with the Trump cult. Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul both have Trump's blessing because they kiss his ass, but they are far apart on many issues. What matters most is loyalty to Trump.

Don't you see how you're contradicting yourself? If the party wants to move on from the Big Lie and Jan. 6th, why is the person replacing Cheney continuing to talk about it? The point isn't to move on from it... it's to have people in leadership who align with Trump's position on it. There's no room in Republican leadership for someone who doesn't support overturning a valid election.

The party is signaling they want to move on from Jan 6th because a portion of them are complicit in the events of that day. They want to bury this shit deep, as quickly as they can. Cheney "stubbornly refuses to get the memo" because she's unwilling to let sedition fomented by the ex-president slide.

Cheney received overwhelming support from the Republican caucus when she criticized Trump on a vote of conscience. But her antics are now creating division within Republican ranks, and that's unacceptable coming from someone in a leadership position. Her job is to elect Republicans. If she can't do that in good moral conscience, then she needs to resign.

Her antics cause divisions. LOL
Moral conscience. In comparison to who?
The GOP is three steps away from flat earth being their mainstream

... which is perfectly normal in a healthy party which is representing a big tent of ideas and not a uniform hive mind.



Do you have any sources for this claim that Stefanik keeps talking about the insurrection at the Capitol? I just searched for news articles on that and found nothing.




True... and by doing that, Cheney refuses to toe the party line and insists on arguing it out on an issue that would tear her party apart and inflict great harm in terms of public opinion and news coverage. Hence, she is unfit to be a leader of the GOP, at least in this particular moment.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 8 2021 02:26am

Her antics involve responding to continuous lies from Trump about the election being stolen.

Does lying about the election being stolen help elect Republicans? Did it help in Georgia?

Again, every Trump supporter here starts with the assumption "Trump's actions and words cannot be criticized, no matter the effect on the party. He is not responsible for them. Everybody else must keep their mouths shut." That was the attitude when Trump refused to accept the election results. "Just ignore him, he'll move on eventually". And here we are, after a concerted effort to steal the election, after an insurrection at the Capitol, and you guys are still pretending that Trump can do whatever he wants, and the response should be to enable him.

What happens if Trump decides to run again, and he replays 2020 with the lies about election fraud, and any Republican opposed to his lies has been stripped of power, and then he loses again? You think the cult is going to accept it this time? How does the health of American democracy look after that? Do you guys care?



If policy matters in the Republican party and among the cult, one would think adherence to right-wing populist ideology would be the measure of a politician. Obviously loyalty to Trump is what truly matters.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/06/stefanik-defends-election-falsehoods-told-jan-6/

She participated in efforts to steal the election at the time, voting for various measures and claiming that 100,000+ votes in Georgia were fraudulent. She continues to cast doubt on Georgia's results. She went on Bannon's show Thursday to support the effort in Arizona to cast doubt on the election. If McCarthy wanted someone that would just shut up about the issue, he made the wrong pick.