XPost: alt.politics.usa, stl.general, alt.politics.nationalism.black
XPost: dc.politics
In article <u4inoh$2jvko$
1@dont-email.me>
David Hartung <
kicking.rudys.ass@Hotmail.com> wrote:
The FBI is a corrupt organization of political sycophants.
Democrats grow increasingly desperate as they continue to fail,
so they’re hysterically attempting to brand Republican leaders
as “authoritarian.”
People on the right are calling Joe Biden’s vicious “MAGA
Republicans” speech “unpresidential” and “divisive” when in
reality, it was simply desperate. That’s a new theme on the left
that has become obvious on a comical level.
The national media have spent the last several weeks insisting
that after enduring months of record inflation, unaffordable gas
and electric bills, plus a completely avoidable war costing
taxpayers billions (and counting), the country is now feeling a
new sense of affection for Biden. I’m sure. Now they’re hyping
up the Democrat line about some “extreme MAGA ideology” (what?)
and “authoritarian leaders” who “represent an extremism that
threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Those are all quotes that Biden slurred his way through last
week in Philadelphia, but the sentiment was just as sweetly
captured the previous day in a New York Times column by Thomas
Edsall. But instead of targeting the unnamed yet ever-so-
fearsome “MAGA Republicans,” Edsall and a round of scholars went
after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, aka God’s Chosen One.
“The fact that Ron DeSantis … is favored to win re-election is a
clear warning to those worried about declining support for
democratic institutions and values in the United States,” wrote
Edsall.
A popular governor might be chosen by voters in his state for a
second term. That certainly doesn’t sound like cause for worry.
But maybe Edsall has a bigger point.
Should DeSantis win reelection, he wrote, it would indicate that
voters in a major swing state “will tolerate, if not actively
embrace, the abuse of traditional political norms by domineering
leaders.” It’s unclear what Edsall meant by “abuse of
traditional political norms,” but he noted that the governor
“has made no secret of his intent to use executive authority to
the fullest extent.”
If an elected official’s use of authority “to the fullest
extent” is “the abuse of traditional political norms,” it would
be interesting to know what Edsall makes of Biden unilaterally
spreading hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt
among taxpayers, including many who never went to college and
many who had already paid off their own. It would be interesting
to know what he makes of Biden’s failed attempt at coercing
millions of workers to inject themselves with an experimental
drug.
Those weren’t an abuse of traditional political norms. Those
were bold progressive actions!
Edsall went on to cite some of DeSantis’s more widely known
achievements in office, including his crackdown on public
schools that were teaching children that to be white is a
problem; punitive measures he took against corporations that get
tax breaks and then get mouthy about politics; and his removal
of a state attorney general who openly said he would not adhere
to a Supreme Court ruling.
It was “surprising” to Edsall that the productive governor
hadn’t been the subject of a more focused political pushback
from Florida Democrats. But he also admitted he knew why that
was: “One answer is that his policies have substantial support.”
Ah, so it’s difficult to successfully take down an elected
official who is actually supported by the people he represents,
even if some of that support is begrudging. Who knew?!
This is where Edsall introduced his trusty gang of “experts” to
make the case that despite DeSantis having broad appeal among
the people who would have to hand him any higher office he has
designs for — we call this an “election” — such a victory would
mean certain doom for democracy.
Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli
Institute for International Studies, told Edsall that what would
worry him about a “Trump Republican” like DeSantis in office is
“the extreme politicization and abuse of federal government
power, the targeting of political enemies and the mobilization
and emboldening of the violent, well-armed, extremist fringe of
Trump followers.”
UCLA law professor Richard Hansen was then allowed by Edsall to
dream up a scenario where former president Trump runs for a
second term and “fails to win legitimately but finds a route to
being installed as president,” which, according to Handsen,
would mean the United States “ceases to be a democracy.”
As to what sneaky, illegitimate “route” Trump, or anyone else,
might take to being allowed into the White House while everyone
sits on their thumbs is unclear. Hansen either didn’t say, or
Edsall failed to include that part of his quote.
The piece went on like this at length, with various scholars and
professors consulting their dream diaries about what a future
second term for Trump or first term for DeSantis would mean.
—“Certain groups would be more vulnerable. These include
historically marginalized groups, who might find new
restrictions on voting. Or members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community
who are treated as second-class citizens.”
—“One might imagine the [Republican Party] in power during
unified government would seek to dramatically expand the number
and size of the federal courts, then fill these new positions.”
—“There could also be soft or harder controls over the media.
There would be tremendous uncertainty over what a postdemocracy
period would look like in the United States.”
Edsall concluded his piece by asserting that whether DeSantis
wins a second term as governor, it will be “a referendum on
democracy, and the odds do not look good.”
That we got from Point A — DeSantis is an exceptionally skilled
and popular policy executive — to Point B — DeSantis as
president would turn America into an authoritarian hellscape —
should leave everyone reading this with severe neck pain from
straining to find the logic.
To call this talk “divisive” is to give it way too much credit.
This is panicked. Democrats have surely spotted a threat, but
not to our system of government. The threat is to them.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/09/democrats-arent-divisive- theyre-desperate/
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