They believe democracy has been stolen

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy trying to use the Department of Justice as a weapon to go after his political appointments. Until the nasty guy took office and again under Biden the president kept his hands off the DOJ (other than appointing the head) so that what the DOJ did was not seen as political. Yeah, that changed under the nasty guy, but during his first term he was slowed down because of institutional inertia – enough career employees refused to do his bidding. Even some of the Attorneys General he appointed pushed back. That won’t happen in a second nasty guy term. He will have an AG that wants to do his bidding and he will sweep out all career employees, both in the DOJ and across the federal government, filling vacancies with people willing to say, “Yes, sir!” to whatever punishment he wants to visit on his opponents. Also in the second time around he will have planning already done by Project 2025. And he’s getting help from current Republicans in office. Speaker Johnson introduced a plan on how the House Republicans can launch investigations into state and local prosecutors that didn’t go along with plans to overturn the 2020 election. Republicans will also increasingly pass along criminal referrals, which allows them to pretend they’ve found crimes by political opponents, and then attack the DOJ for inaction. The nasty guy doesn’t have to win in November to cause lasting damage to the rule of law. This isn’t something the nasty guy might do. It’s something he’s already done. And white supremacist Stephen Miller, reportedly on the shortlist to be AG, is already urging Republican District Attorneys at the state and local level to start every investigation that will help their cause. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Jon Stewart, in “The Daily Show,” talked about why Republicans hate court procedures applied to them. Stewart said:

Courts are the last remaining guardrail that is a standard of evidentiary presentation. It is the last place where you have to prove what you say, and you see the difference in what they say out of court versus what they say in court. ... The difference between in court and out of court is that in court, someone can say ‘prove it.’

And out of court it is all about public opinion and no evidence is needed. Stewart again:

What the courts do really well is look backwards and reconstruct the realities of what happened. The news media could do the same.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the Republican Accountability PAC is investing six figures in billboards with a simple message.

I’m a former Trump voter. I won’t vote for a convicted felon.

Also included is the person’s photo and name. The billboards are being placed in tossup states. Back on May 22 Andy Kroll of ProPublica posted an article about the Republican Party and MAGA in Michigan. The article begins with a campaign event by Peter Meijer of western Michigan running for the US Senate. The event went well – until Meijer insisted the 2020 election was not stolen. Shortly after that Meijer dropped out of the race. Then Kroll gets into the big issue.

What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s Republican insurgents believe democracy has been stolen, and they don’t trust the ability of democratic processes to restore it.

The “America First” movement treated party leaders and big donors as the enemy because they denied the nasty guy a rightful second term. They did that by not supporting the allegations that Democrats had committed widespread election fraud (note that Republicans in Michigan investigated those allegations and Republicans determined there was no evidence of fraud). Therefore the old elites needed to be purged from the party. The America First group – yes, the ones who believe all the conspiracy theories – used the “precinct strategy” promoted by Steve Bannon. Each precinct elects at least one delegate to county conventions, which go on to elect state party positions. Many times no one runs for the precinct positions and they remain empty. American First people easily won many of them just by saying they were willing to run. In August 2022 this new majority nominated candidates Matthew DePerno for Attorney General and Kristina Karamo for Secretary of State. It was impressive for the state convention. It was disastrous in November. Both lost. A few months later DePerno and Karamo ran against each other for party chair. Karamo won. The old party leadership said they let Karamo win because they thought they could make her fail faster than DePerno. They were probably right. Karamo didn’t emphasize traditional party operations. She instead focused on “election integrity” which we now know is code for disrupting the election. She pushed for a revised Republican Party constitution that replaced primary elections with closed caucuses – which mean only precinct delegates (the people they just installed) chose candidates. No democracy here. In January 2024 there began an attempt to remove Karamo and restore the elites. It was a contentious and complicated process (which Kroll describes). The nasty guy recognized she wasn’t doing the things he needed the party to do to win the state, so he endorsed Peter Hoekstra, the elite whom the elites of the party voted as Karmano’s replacement. She was gone by March 2. There is still a division in the party between the elites and the American First people. A couple cartoons in the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos. Many of the other cartoons feature the nasty guy and prison. A cartoon by Garth German shows a man in a MAGA hat explaining to a dubious woman, “If they can convict Trump for falsifying business records when paying off a porn start to hide an affair in an attempt to influence a presidential election, they they can get me for doing that, too!!” A cartoon by Fiona Webster has a caption “If things were fair...” It shows a father with his hand on his son’s shoulder. They stand before a vasectomy clinic that has posted signs saying, “Mandatory at puberty for everyone with male reproductive organs. Reversed only with written consent from someone with a uterus.” In the comments of another pundit roundup is an image posted by Irena Buzarewicz. It shows the sleeping Snow White. Prince Charming is approaching – to throw a bucket of water on her. At the top of the comments are many cartoons appropriately commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the largest amphibious landing ever, which started the last phase of World War II. They’re worth a look.