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Former Republican Senator Now Voices What We Suggested Weeks Ago…

On December 16th, 2020, I wrote and pub­lished the fol­low­ing arti­cle in which I sug­gest­ed that it was now time for a new polit­i­cal par­ty in the United States. I argued it was the right time because the Republican Party has become a full-blown Fascist Party that can no longer be trust­ed to look after the Democratic Republic.
In light of the Lincoln Project’s posi­tions, a group of for­mer Republicans who saw the par­ty they love leave them behind, I went as far as to sug­gest that maybe the Lincoln Project should orga­nize and become an alter­na­tive polit­i­cal par­ty to what the Republican par­ty has devolved into.
The true nature of the dan­ger the present Republican Party pos­es to the United States’ well­be­ing can­not be over­stat­ed. Despite those dan­gers, the main­stream media has not prop­er­ly artic­u­lat­ed what’s at stake in a way that the American peo­ple can ful­ly appreciate.
Neither has the weak and feck­less Democratic Party.

HERE IS THE ARTICLE

Now that the Republican Party has demonstrated that it can no longer be trusted to see to the wellbeing of American Democracy; and now that it has become a full-blown autocratic party; now that far-right fringe groups like Qanon and other white supremacist groups like the proud boys and others have taken up residence in the party; and now that the party has all but decided that democracy is antithetical to its goals, there must be a change.

Donald Trump did not cre­ate the nas­ti­ness that now defines the Republican Party; as a dem­a­gogue, he took full advan­tage of it. Ever since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil and Voting Rights into law and whites ran away from the Democratic Party and took up res­i­dence in the Republican Party, the par­ty has exem­pli­fied itself as the polit­i­cal par­ty for white resent­ment and white grievance.
Despite the hoopla about their good­ness, most white Americans have nev­er been com­fort­able with black Americans enjoy­ing the same rights and priv­i­leges they so sum­mar­i­ly enjoy.
Doctor King spoke about their shock when they saw peo­ple being beat­en on the so-called bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus bridge. Still, when it came time to take action against the insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism that made what the police did pos­si­ble, they backed away.
Dr. King; “Like the nation, Negro and white, trem­bled with out­rage at police bru­tal­i­ty in the South, police mis­con­duct in the North was ratio­nal­ized, tol­er­at­ed, and usu­al­ly denied,” he wrote. Leaders in Northern and Western states “wel­comed me to their cities, and show­ered praise on the hero­ism of Southern Negroes. Yet when the issues were joined con­cern­ing local con­di­tions, only the lan­guage was polite; the rejec­tion was firm and unequiv­o­cal.”

President Barack Obama spoke to whites’ pan­ic on his ascen­den­cy to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States.
Brack Obama; “My very pres­ence in the White House trig­gered a deep-seat­ed panic.”
At the risk of sound­ing parochial, they have some nerve, slaves built that damn house, but I digress.
One of the most notable things that Donald Trump banged the drums on as he held his super spread­er cam­paign events across the coun­try with his legions of faith­ful sheep [flock­ing] to them ador­ing­ly, was high­light­ing to his racist fol­low­ers that Kamala Harris should nev­er be the first female President of the United States.
There is a cred­i­ble argu­ment to be made for America’s inabil­i­ty to rec­on­cile that women are not intel­lec­tu­al­ly infe­ri­or to men, and there­fore are equipped to take on any task, includ­ing being pres­i­dent of the United States.
That aside, Senator Kamala Harris, half black, half Indian her­itage, was not the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date; Joe Biden was. Nevertheless, Trump played up Joe Biden’s age, mak­ing the case to his hate­ful fol­low­ers that Biden was like­ly to drop dead at any minute, leav­ing Kamala to become President of the United States.
The main­stream media refus­es to acknowl­edge these truths, even as they pre­tend that they have no clue what is behind the lunatic denial of the Joe Biden/​Kamala Harris win.
On the same day that the Electoral College con­firmed the White House vic­to­ry of Joe Biden, retir­ing Rep. Paul Mitchell of Michigan told lead­ing Republicans that he was leav­ing the GOP and becom­ing an Independent for the final days of his Congressional career, fed up with President Donald Trump’s nev­er-end­ing effort to sub­vert Biden’s victory.

Look, this guy was going to leave any­way, so his deci­sion to become an inde­pen­dent was no pro­file in courage, nei­ther does it make him a paragon of virtue. Like so many oth­er Republicans who bowed to Trumpism and left the stage out of fear of the wrath of Trump’s legions of racist trolls, Mitchell’s action’s are tan­ta­mount to throw­ing a wild punch at a bul­ly that miss­es every­thing, then cov­er­ing one’s face and cow­er­ing in fear wait­ing for the beat­down that is sure to follow.
He gets no point from me.
Don’t let the door hit you, where the Good Lord — — — . Anyway.
To the extent that Paul Mitchell, Jeff flake, Justin Amash, Will Herd, et al. had some degree of patri­o­tism, and to the extent that leav­ing the stage was the only option open to them, then I guess their exit from pol­i­tics is a sign that pol­i­tics is for the worst actors, at least on the Republican side.
The Republican purge has been a years-long process that has left all but the [dregs], Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordon, Matt Gaetz, Steve Scalise, and oth­ers. The kind we wit­nessed attach their names to a sedi­tious law­suit seek­ing to over­turn the results of a fair and legit­i­mate Presidential elec­tion. One in which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris not only won the pop­u­lar vote by over sev­en mil­lion votes, but won the elec­toral col­lege by a land­slide, even by their dear leader’s stan­dards, it was the same elec­toral col­lege win Donald Trump had with the help of the Russians in 2016, minus the val­i­da­tion of a pop­u­lar vote win.
In 2016 Donald Trump sup­pos­ed­ly won 306 elec­toral votes against 232 for for­mer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Back then, Trump claimed that he won a land­slide despite los­ing the pop­u­lar vote. Hillary Clinton won the pop­u­lar vote by over three mil­lion votes but lost the election.
In 2020 Joe Biden won the same 306 elec­toral votes, but he had to win more than sev­en (7) mil­lion more votes than Donald Trump to win the election.
The time has come, and gone for the elec­toral col­lege to be done away with.

The American exper­i­ment bare­ly with­stood the first attempt of this kind to destroy it. Almost half of the elect­ed Republican mem­bers of the United States House of Representatives demon­strat­ed that they do not believe in Democracy.
There were no doubt mem­bers of the upper cham­ber were as well, also will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the Coup’ d’etat against America.
Like a servile lap­dog, Texas United States Senator Raphael Cruz sig­naled his will­ing­ness to argue the case to over­turn the elec­tions before the Supreme Court on behalf of Trump. In a coun­try in which the rule of law is tru­ly sacro­sanct, Raphael Cruz would not only be kicked out of the Senate; he would be dis­barred from prac­tic­ing law. One of the first steps about being an offi­cer of the court, which all lawyers are, is that the per­son has good char­ac­ter. Where is Raphael Cruz’s character?
Raphael Cruz and the min­ions in the low­er house were will­ing to destroy the American exper­i­ment in sup­port of a dem­a­gog­ic despot.
This time it was half of the elect­ed Republicans; the next time, what remains as the Republican par­ty will en masse com­mit trea­son against America in def­er­ence to the next dic­ta­tor that comes along.

For those rea­sons, and the cor­nu­copia of oth­er rea­sons that this Republican par­ty can­not be trust­ed to pro­tect the demo­c­ra­t­ic process, then the time has come for an alter­na­tive con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty to emerge. One that is fun­da­men­tal­ly focused on the preser­va­tion of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process as the Democrats are.
The American exper­i­ment has two polit­i­cal par­ties that the American vot­ers alter­nate in and out of pow­er at all gov­ern­ment levels.
The effec­tive func­tion­ing of that process requires that both polit­i­cal par­ties respect the process, con­cedes when each los­es, recal­i­brate and come back to the table with bet­ter ideas.
The Republican par­ty no longer believes in that process. It has become a school­yard bul­ly that picks up its ball and goes home, even when it has struck out.
Given an elec­torate with the appro­pri­ate intel­lec­tu­al matu­ri­ty lev­els, the Republican par­ty would nev­er again hold power.
The seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion mer­its a new polit­i­cal par­ty to save America from the Republicans, and the unin­formed vot­ers who elect them to office.
The Lincoln Project has demon­strat­ed that mon­ey and savvy, can effec­tu­ate desired out­comes. It may be time for the Lincoln Project to become a polit­i­cal party.

FORMER REPUBLICAN SENATOR AND DEFENSE SECRETARY WILLIAM COHEN CALL FOR NEW POLITICAL PARTY

A for­mer Republican sen­a­tor and defense sec­re­tary has sug­gest­ed it may be time for mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tives to form a new polit­i­cal par­ty as he launched a with­er­ing attack on the law­mak­ers sup­port­ing Donald Trump’s bid to over­turn the elec­tion result.

William Cohen, who rep­re­sent­ed Maine before tak­ing up the defense role in the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion in 1997, said there is now “a real divi­sion” with­in the GOP and com­pared Mr Trump’s back­ers in Congress to cir­cus ele­phants try­ing to please their “ring­mas­ter”.

His com­ments came after Missouri sen­a­tor Josh Hawley announced that he will chal­lenge Congress’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden’s elec­tion vic­to­ry on 6th January.

Despite los­ing both the elec­toral col­lege and pop­u­lar vote, Mr Trump and his legal team con­tin­ue to insist that the elec­tion was “rigged”. But the Trump team is yet to present any cred­i­ble evi­dence that mass vot­er fraud took place on elec­tion day.

A num­ber of Republicans in the House of Representatives have declared that they would chal­lenge Mr Biden’s vic­to­ry when Congress meets to cer­ti­fy the result next week.

Senator Hawley’s announce­ment made him the first GOP law­mak­er in the sec­ond cham­ber to voice sup­port for the defeat­ed pres­i­den­t’s efforts to sub­vert democracy.

Announcing his deci­sion, Mr Hawley claimed that Pennsylvania did not fol­low state elec­tion laws and said the “unprece­dent­ed effort of mega cor­po­ra­tions” like Facebook and Twitter inter­fered with the elec­tion to sup­port pres­i­dent-elect Biden. He also urged Congress to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud.

Crucially, Mr Hawley’s back­ing means that both the House and the Senate will now be forced to debate the results of at least one state and vote on whether to accept Mr Biden’s win.

It will not change the out­come of the elec­tion, but it sets up a sce­nario that Senate major­i­ty leader Mitchell McConnell want­ed to avoid, say­ing it would be high­ly dam­ag­ing for the party.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Mr Cohen, 80, sug­gest­ed that “maybe it’s time for a new par­ty”, when asked about the state of the GOP and the pow­er Mr Trump con­tin­ues to exert over it.

“[A par­ty] that abides by the rule of law, abides by bal­anced bud­get oppor­tu­ni­ties, fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty. A par­ty that is faith­ful to the peo­ple of this coun­try who vote to elect them,” a vis­i­bly annoyed Mr Cohen added.

Mr Cohen also lashed out at those Congressional Republicans embold­en­ing Mr Trump’s bid to frus­trate the will of the American peo­ple, sug­gest­ing they will be for­ev­er indebt­ed to a pres­i­dent who “can­not be satisfied”.

“The cur­rent occu­pant of the White House is a ring­mas­ter, and what he expects to do is to snap his whip and all the ele­phants jump on the chairs,” he said.

“What they have to under­stand, those who are so eager to sup­port this effort to over­turn the vote…what they have to under­stand is that he is going to con­tin­ue to snap the whip whether he is in office or out of office.”

He added: “And every time they are going to have to sit on that stool in order to sat­is­fy him and his supporters”.

Mr Cohen also called on a num­ber of more mod­er­ate Republicans includ­ing Mitt Romney (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine) and Ben Sasse (Nebraska) to do every­thing in their pow­er to oppose the sen­a­tors back­ing Mr Trump.

Mr Sasse was one of those Republicans who called out Mr Hawley’s move to delay cer­ti­fy­ing the Congress vote as he urged his col­leagues not to fol­low suit.

Writing on Facebook, he said: “The pres­i­dent and his allies are play­ing with fire. They have been ask­ing — first the courts, then state leg­is­la­tures, now the Congress — to over­turn the results of a pres­i­den­tial election.

“They have unsuc­cess­ful­ly called on judges and are now call­ing on fed­er­al office­hold­ers to inval­i­date mil­lions and mil­lions of votes. If you make big claims, you had bet­ter have the evi­dence. But the pres­i­dent does­n’t and nei­ther do the insti­tu­tion­al arson­ist mem­bers of Congress who will object to the elec­toral col­lege vote.”

Mr Trump wel­comed Mr Hawley’s sup­port. “America is proud of Josh and the many oth­ers who are join­ing him,” he tweet­ed yes­ter­day. “The USA can­not have fraud­u­lent elec­tions!”( Story orig­i­nat­ed at Yahoo news)

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