The reason they lie so obviously is simple: It works

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos, has a couple interesting quotes. First, he quoted the title and key phrase from Perry Bacon of FiveThirtyEight”

Why Republicans Don’t Fear An Electoral Backlash For Opposing Really Popular Parts Of Biden’s Agenda Put another way: The opposition party can guarantee a lack of bipartisan support — and then criticize the president for lacking bipartisan support.

Then from Kurt Bardella of USA Today:

There is no “Civil War” brewing within the Republican Party. Sure, there are a few, and I mean a few, folks who happen to still be in the Republican Party, who oppose what Donald Trump has done to the GOP, but let’s be very clear here: They are outliers. They are the fringe. They are the exception, not the rule. For all of the talk and headlines about there being some kind of GOP “Civil War” playing out in front of our eyes, the functional reality is that this so-called war was fought and decided five years ago, when Donald Trump insulted his way to the Republican nomination.

David Neiwert of Kos wrote:

The reason MAGA-loving Republicans lie so obviously and remorselessly is really pretty simple: It works. The two most brazen falsehoods they keep repeating to justify the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection—“the election was stolen” and “antifa did it”—are in fact widely believed by Republican Donald Trump voters, over 70% of whom ardently believe the first claim, and some 58% of whom lap up the latter lie as well. And as far as they’re concerned, that’s all that matters: They have a narrative for Trump supporters to tell themselves and each other. Because that’s really the only audience for their lies that matters to them. Who cares if the rest of the world knows it’s all bulls---? ... Indeed, the two lies contradict each other narratively speaking: If the election was stolen, why would antifa want to invade the Capitol? But logical consistency is meaningless in their alternative universe. What matters most is muddying the waters so they can evade consequences for their innate violence... Conservatives—and their supposed ideology of “personal responsibility”—in fact have a long and colorful history of gaslighting the media and the public with narratives that turn reality on its head, bullies into victims, and victims into bullies. It’s how they can look the public in the eye and tell them without blinking that last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were much worse than the Capitol siege. As Laura [Clawson of Kos] says, Republicans’ lies are all easily disproved: The reason they need so many of them is just to keep the public discourse flooded with them.

Susan Davis of NPR discussed the difficulties in the House of having 139 Republicans support objections to the Electoral College certification. That has eroded trust and affected lawmakers ability to work together. For example, Sean Casten voted no on a symbolic vote because an insurrectionist Republican introduced it. Casten said:

I have taken a decision that I'm not going to vote for things that are sponsored by anybody who gained their power through a democratic election and then voted to overturn our democracy.

Jim Jordan of Ohio accused Democrats of politicizing the Postal Service (!). That prompted Gerry Connolly to snap:

I didn't vote to overturn an election. And I will not be lectured by people who did about partisanship.

The Natural Resources Committee has banned guns in their meeting room because members don’t feel safe. Republicans accuse Democrats of installing metal detectors based on “wild conspiracy accusations.” All this during discussions of the makeup of a possible commission to investigate what happened leading up to and during the Capitol attack. It’s not going well. Pete Aguilar said Democrats see the only path to a more congenial atmosphere is for those 139 to acknowledge that Joe Biden won. Susan Davis doesn’t mention another way out of the mess: expel all 139 of the known GOP traitors. Steven Dennis, a Bloomberg reporter at the Senate, tweeted a link to a Washington Post article about how the Democrats could gut the filibuster if they’re too reluctant to end it. I can’t read the article without subscribing. But Dennis and commenters reported what’s in the article or offered other suggestions. * Instead of 60 votes to end a filibuster (where 39 of those senators could be in Cancún), require 41 votes to keep the filibuster going and require those votes daily. * Require an actual filibuster – being on the Senate floor talking, even if reading from a phone book. Ian Millhiser of Vox discussed the history of the filibuster, how frequently the rules for it change (five times in the last ten years), and offers a few other ways to reform it. One of these is to make fewer bills subject to the filibuster, as is now done for budget reconciliation bills. In a post from a couple days ago Joan McCarter of Kos discussed a voting rights suit before the Supremes. Oral arguments before the court were actually yesterday. McCarter reviewed what the suit is about. The Voting Rights Act of 1964 had five sections and two of them are the important ones. Section 5 required states with a history of voter suppression (such as the South) had to get clearance from the Department of Justice for any changes they made to their voting laws. That included such things as where and how many polling places there would be. The Supreme Court overturned Section 5 back in 2013. The Court said the important part, Section 2, is still intact, so everything is cool. Along the way Chief Justice John Roberts listed ways something similar to section 5 could be passed by Congress and please the court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sharply dissented, saying it is one thing to prevent voter suppression from happening, quite another to elect people to office while building up proof that there is voter suppression going on. Section 2 is the core of the law. A voting procedure cannot deny or abridge the right of a citizen to vote based on race. If a voting law impacts one racial group more than another it is illegal. And that is what is before the Court. Arizona passed a couple voter suppression laws. The 9th Circuit Court struck them down. Arizona appealed to the Supremes. And there are 250 voter suppression laws in 43 states waiting to see how this case goes – to see how this conservative court will handle it. Democrats are pushing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It would reinforce the original VRA, supply a replacement for Section 5 (following what Roberts had written), and do several other things to strengthen democracy. But to get it passed, Democrats will have to reform or eliminate the filibuster. The GOP will not contribute any votes to the JLVRAA. Then they would have to implement Supreme Court reform to prevent the Court from overturning it (we know the GOP will get it before the Court). Will Democrats do it? After the Supremes heard the case (ruling to happen by the end of June) Tyler Bishop tweeted:

This literally just happened at the Supreme Court: Justice Barrett: What is the interest of the GOP in keeping (laws that suppress minority voters) on the books? Republican Lawyer: It puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.

Leah McElrath responded:

Saying the quiet part out loud on voter disenfranchisement.

Replying to McElrath Lost In Thought added:

And they’ve said it before, many times! What is wrong with Dems’ messaging that Republican atrocities don’t seem to reach the public?

And RO97 wrote:

Remember, any time you see one of these "quiet part" tweets, there is no quiet part anymore. There doesn't need to be, unless and until Dems hold Republicans accountable for their conduct and statements.

Yeah, I’m back to using “vice nasty” because he seems to have gotten over having been the target of the mob wanting his head and is back to saying dangerous stuff. He wrote an op-ed about the John Lewis voting law and lied about the Constitution along the way. Leah Litman tweeted:

On some level, it's like "lol. Sir ... can I introduce you to the elections clause and the 15th, 19th, 24th, & 26th Amendment???" But on another level, this underscores that ANY democratic-led efforts to protect the right to vote at the federal level will be immediately challenged in federal court on constitutional grounds -- and have the backing of GOP political elites. That creates the real possibility that federal courts would invalidate democratic-led efforts to protect the right to vote, and it's something that dems need to be taking seriously.

Kno, whose Twitter bio says producer & songwriter, tweeted a response to the news of the Texas governor ending the mask mandate:

Can't imagine how unvaccinated retail, service etc. workers in Texas feel right now. Their jobs are about to be packed to the gills with maskless s---heads breathing on them solely to make a point -- when we're mere months away from vaccinating anyone who wants it. "wHAt AbouT thE BusinESSes" -- if the Texas government simply took care of their own we wouldn't be having this conversation. If you push two people in the water you don't get a pat on the back for simultaneously tossing one life jacket and one metal anchor on their heads.

Kno ended the thread with an image of dinosaurs watching the approaching comet and saying, “Oh, s---! The economy!!”