On Scum

Stephen Miller Beats Trump In Definitive New Poll

A few days ago, writing for The Nation, John Nichols expressed what so many of his feel, namely that Every House Member Who Aided The January 6 Rioters Must Be Expelled. And that isn't an amorphous abstraction. We're talking very specifically about Marjorie Traitor Greene (Q-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Madison Cawthorn (Nazi-NC), Lauren Boebert (Q-CO), Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Mo Brooks (R-AL). These 7 "aided and abetted the insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election" and they should-- for starters-- be expelled in accordance with the 14th Amendment.

No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

"This is no time for forgive-and-forget politics," wrote Nichols. Members of Congress, Democrats, and responsible Republicans, have to have the courage to confront colleagues who invited deadly violence into the Capitol of the United States of America. Cori Bush (D-MO) is ready. 'My resolution to investigate and expel the Members of Congress who helped incite the deadly insurrection on our Capitol is just waiting for a vote,' she said. 'It’s inexcusable to wait any longer.'"

On Thursday, Michael Gerson wrote for the Washington Post that although ideologues exist on the left and the right, only one side threatens the country. He seems desperate in wanting-- very sincerely-- to hold together the crumbling edifice of Anglo Saxon liberal democracy. "[T]he genius of American government," he wrote, "has been to contain fundamental policy disagreements within a legal structure where political victory is never total and political loss is never final. And Americans have generally viewed this liberal democratic framework not only as an efficient form of self-government but as a noble one. People may be rivals in a balance of power, but they are also partners in a great enterprise. America coheres due to shared pride in a brilliant set of democratic procedures crafted in the 18th century. And the successful operation of that system presupposes citizens with certain democratic ideals: a respect for truth, the rejection of politically motivated violence, a commitment to social and political equality, and reverence for the rule of law."

Looks like coherence is fading... very rapidly-- a result if greed run wild, unaddressed by the governing structures of liberal democracy for far too long. Gerson isn't there yet. He's not looking at roots causes, just glaring symptoms. He wrote that his "main concern here is with [what he laughably calls] previously rational and respectable conservatives who are providing ideological cover for the triumph of Trumpism on the right. Often some scruple prevents them from joining fully in former president Donald Trump’s gleeful assault on democratic legitimacy. So their main strategy is to assert that leftist depredations against democracy are equivalent. If both sides have their rioters and petty autocrats, why not favor the rioters and petty autocrats whose success will result in better judges? But here’s the rub: By any rational standard, both sides are not equivalent in their public effect."

Only one party has based the main part of its appeal on a transparent lie. To be a loyal Republican in 2021 is to believe that a national conspiracy of big-city mayors, Republican state officials, companies that produce voting machines and perhaps China, or maybe Venezuela, stole the 2020 presidential election. The total absence of evidence indicates to conspiracy theorists (as usual) that the plot was particularly fiendish. Previous iterations of the GOP tried to unite on the basis of ideology and public purpose. The current GOP is united by a common willingness to believe whatever antidemocratic rot comes from the mouth of an ambitious, reckless liar.

Only one side of our divide employs violent intimidation as a political tool. Since leaving the presidency, Trump has endorsed the view that the events of Jan. 6 were an expression of rowdy patriotism and embraced the cruel slander that the Capitol Police were engaged in oppression. Turn to Fox News and hear hosts and guests referring to a coming “purge” of patriots, alleging that the left is “hunting” the right with the goal of putting conservatives in Guantánamo Bay, and speaking of “insurgency” as a justified response.

Only one political movement has made a point of denying the existence and legacy of racism, assuring White people that they are equally subject to prejudice, and defending the Confederacy and its monuments as “our heritage.” This is perhaps the ultimate in absurd bothsidesism. My side suffers from economic stagnation and the unfair application of affirmative action. Your side was shipped like coal and sold like cattle; suffered centuries of brutality, rape, family separation and stolen wages; and was then subjected to humiliating segregation and the systematic denial of lending, housing and justice. Who can say which is worse?

Only one president-- as released documents show-- attempted to overturn the results of a fair election, tried to block the certification of his successor and discussed in the Oval Office the possibility of imposing martial law. Only one president had minions prepare the step-by-step instructions for a constitutional coup.

A hard-right career conservative Republican himself, Gerson wrote that he "could go on. Yet it gives me no pleasure. I would prefer to witness the return of a principled party of the right because I hold many conservative views on policies that I’d like to see enacted. But when fellow conservatives claim that the GOP remains the best of bad options, they become contributors to the ruin of our democracy. Only one party in the United States is committed to liberal democracy. And in the absence of that commitment, influence is merely the will to power."

I was already graduating from high school and thinking about the War against Vietnam that was taking the lives of young men in my neighborhood when Gerson was born. I've racked my brain and do not remember any semblance whatsoever of what he terms "a principled party of the right." He was recruited by Karl Rove as a speech writer for George W Bush and before that worked as an operative for the Heritage Foundation, which is one of the organizations of his "principled right" that helped lay the foundation for the rise of fascism, something he still can't seem to wrap his head around. Gerson is an evangelical with the blinders that allowed him to come of with the phrase "the axis of evil" he wrote for Bush. What he should be doing now is reassessing his phrase and what it actually describes.

Speaking of which... the New Republic conducted a readers' poll, described by Michael Tomasky as "Who are the worst of the worst? Who’s the most dangerous senator? Which House member is the biggest threat to democratic order? Which governor is most irresponsibly putting his or her state’s people at risk? Who mounted the most shameless defense of the January 6 insurrection? Which Fox News host is the most despicable? (OK, we probably know that one, so who’s the second-most despicable?) Who’s the most obnoxious and unscrupulous Twitter star? Who’s the most flagrant racist?" Here's a bare-bones summary of their results:

Worst Senator

• McConnell (R-KY)- 60%

• Ted Cruz (R-TX)- 17%

• Ron Johnson (R-WI)- 10%

• Josh Hawley (R-MO)- 10%

• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)- 4%

[I'n guessing the poll was taken before anyone had heard of Kyrsten Sinema other than DWT readers.]

Worst House Member

• Marjorie Traitor Greene (Q-GA)- 37%

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 25%

• Gym Jordan (R-OH)- 22%

• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)- 13%

• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)- 3%

Worst Insurrection Defender

• Paul Gosar (R-AZ)- 58%

• Louie Gohmert (R-TX)- 26%

• Andrew Clyde (R-GA)- 15%

• Brian Mast (R-FL)- 2%

Worst Governor

• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- 59%

• Greg Abbott (R-TX)- 32%

• Kristi Noem (R-SD)- 6%

• Brian Kemp (R-GA)- 2%

• Greg Gianforte (R-MT)- 2%

Worst Embarrassing Trump Sycophant (Congressional)

• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)- 47%

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 21%

• Gym Jordan (R-CA)- 15%

• Ted Cruz (R-TX)- 13%

• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)- 4%

Worst Embarrassing Trump Sycophant (Non-Congressional)

• Rudy Giuliani-46%

• Mike Lindell- 20%

• Michael Flynn- 13%

• Steve Bannon- 12%

• Kayleigh McEnany- 10%

Worst Fox News Host

• Tucker Carlson- 78%

• Sean Hannity- 9%

• Laura Ingraham- 8%

• Jeanine Pirro- 3%

• Maria Bartiromo- 2%

Worst Non-Fox Host Media Celebrity

• Ben Shapiro- 49%

• Toni Lahren- 22%

• Diamond & Silk- 11%

• Ben Domenech- 9%

• Chanel Rion- 9%

Worst Twitter Star

• Dinesh D'Souza- 46%

• Candace Owens- 33%

• Mike Cernovich- 13%

• Jack Poobiec- 6%

• CJ Pearson- 1%

Worst Dirtbag White Supremacist

• Stephen Miller- 56%

• Donald Trump- 30%

• Nick Fuentes- 5%

• Gavin McInnes- 4%

• Richard Spencer- 4%

Worst Big Donor

• The Kochs- 62%

• Rebekah Mercer- 22%

• Sheldon Adelson- 10%

• Vince & Linda McMahon- 4%

• Richard Uihlein- 2%