The former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney “hopes to be able to rebuild” the Republican party after Donald Trump leaves the political stage. Mitt Romney, the retiring Utah senator and former presidential nominee, reportedly hopes so too.
Among other prominent Republicans who refuse to bow the knee, the former Maryland governor Larry Hogan is running for a US Senate seat in a party led by Trump but insists he can be part of a post-Trump GOP.
Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chair turned MSNBC host, advocated more dramatic action: “We have to blow this crazy-ass party up and have it regain its senses, or something else will be born out of it. There are only two options here. Hogan will be a key player in whatever happens. Liz Cheney, [former congressmen] Adam Kinzinger and Joe Walsh – all of us who have been pushed aside and fortunately were not infected with Maga, we will have something to say about what happens on 6 November.”
Trump is happening because far right republicans realized after Watergate that if they wanted to get away with crimes in the future, that they needed to have news that presents “alternate” facts that are favorable to their narrative or that would at the least muddy the waters. Roger Ailes his plan worked basically.
Without censoring his appearances, Trump comes across as petulant/weak/selfish/stupid/hateful/… Without censoring his history, republican voters would have known that he was a serial scam artist, serial adulterer, … Basically without that alternate fact media supporting rightwing skullduggery, there would never have been a president Trump.
Imo it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out, when those voters are so misinformed that they consistently vote against their own interests and believe stupid conspiracy theories that are being pushed to rile them up against the “other”. As long as that many people live in an alternate reality based on lies and hate, there is no helping them. So the challenge becomes: how do you bring them out of it and how do you prevent it from happening again in the future.
That’s not exactly what I am saying. It’s more that there isn’t yet a consensus of what the root problem is. There are a lot of theories, sure, like yours. That’s one theory, but, confident though you may be that that is the exact problem, not everyone agrees, or at least they think there’s more to it than that.
I think there might be some truth to your theory, but I don’t agree with the idea that these people are essentially doing fine, but they’ve been brainwashed into thinking they’re not doing fine. That it’s all just a result of some kind of mass hypnosis. That kind of erases the very real problems that many of these people do face.
One thing we can all agree on is that the problem that upsets voters has nothing to do with lack of healthcare, inability to purchase a first home, lack of a decent social safety net nor anything to do with inflation, money in politics or dark money corporate pak donations