Who but a demon?

We’ve seen this kind of thing before – the people get fed up with GOP policies and elect a Democrat to one job or another. The GOP legislature responds by stripping some or all of the power of that job. Indiana (when the vice nasty guy was governor there) did it to the statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction. Wisconsin did it to the governor.

And now the GOP is considering the idea of doing it to the newly elected Democratic governor of Kentucky. This governor-elect is Andy Beshear, who was in the news a lot in November because he won by a small margin and the GOP incumbent who got booted tried to get the GOP legislature to make trouble.

Stephen Wolf of the Daily Kos Elections staff reports the GOP is starting small. The bill is limited to the state Department of Transportation and would mean the Secretary of Transportation is the only cabinet position requiring Senate confirmation. That hands a key post to corporate interests. There are enough Republicans in the legislature they could overturn Beshear’s veto.

These schemes amount to a refusal on the part of Republicans to acknowledge that Democrats are a legitimate opposition party entitled to govern when they win elections.

This is an ominous trend, and one that could rear its head at a level far above state politics. Prior to the 2016 elections, Donald Trump refused to say he would honor the results if he lost, and ever since, he’s repeatedly claimed without any evidence that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote. The GOP establishment has given its full support to these power grabs in the states. They could culminate in Trump rejecting a legitimate election loss and refusing to leave office next year—a prospect that Americans must be prepared for.

Walter Shaub is a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics. He served under Obama, but shortly after the nasty guy took office he resigned saying he could do no more to curb the ethical violations within the nasty guy administration.

Shaub posted a long Twitter thread outlining 39 unethical things the nasty guy has done and which the GOP is permitting. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos lists them all. I’ll just list a few:

* Soliciting foreign attacks on our elections.
* Refusing to build defenses against interference in our elections.
* Refusing to comply with Congressional oversight.
* Firing the heads of the government’s top law enforcement agencies for allowing investigations of the president.
* Abandoning steadfast allies without warning Congress.
* Relentlessly attacking the free press.
* Misusing the security clearance process to benefit his children and target enemies.
* Accusing members of Congress of treason for conducting oversight.
* Hosting foreign leaders at his private businesses.
* Supporting authoritarian leaders and undermining NATO.

Shaub concludes:

None of the Republican Senators defending Trump could say with a straight face that they would tolerate a Democratic president doing the same thing. But, given this dangerous precedent, they may have no choice if they ever lose control of the Senate. Is that what they want?
...
At this point, I would remind these unpatriotic Senators of the line ‘you have a republic if you can keep it,’ but a variation on this line may soon be more apt when Trump redoubles his attack on our election: You have a republic, if you can call this a republic.

Contrast that with this. Georgia Logothetis is part of the Daily Kos team that does a regular roundup of what pundits are saying.

From Dana Milbank of the Washington Post:

On Fox News on Sunday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry reported that he told Trump he was God’s choice: “I said, 'Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, 'You were.’”

Who but a demon could vote to impeach God’s chosen one?

The surest way to make a climate-change denier even more aggressive in his denial is to present him with more science. Likewise, presenting Trump supporters with evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing only makes them more defiant of the demons doing the presenting.

Pete Wehner of The Atlantic adds:

Just ask yourself where this game ends. ... Are we supposed to believe that Adam Schiff’s words during the impeachment inquiry are not his own but those of demons in disguise? Were the testimonies of Ambassador Bill Taylor, Fiona Hill, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman truthful accounts offered by admirable public servants that badly hurt the president’s credibility—or the result of demonic powers?