The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(01-12-2021, 08:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-09-2021, 05:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Some posts from the Facebook site that got promptly buried.  I'll repeat them here where you have the forum format's greater control.  I'm sort of with Dave in having a dislike of Facebook.

I have heard that the insurgents behind the capital riots are starting to talk about a repeat on January 17th. The internet talk has been intercepted. The police could be ready for it if they chose to be. We will see if the force available and the no arrest policies have changed. It seems likely. Putting up huge forces against BLM but obviously inadequate forces against Trump's insurgents has drawn attention. MSNBC's Joy Reid ranted on the subject. Meanwhile, I expect the insurgents might break down and wear masks and not put their insurgency on the net.

The House is running a fast track impeachment. In the Senate, McConnell put out a memo suggesting he will slow schedule it, that he would not start a trial until Biden was going to be inaugurated anyway. Last night, Schiff was on MSNBC. He thinks McConnell is bluffing. If he were to block rapid impeachment, he would own everything Trump did in the remaining days. McConnell would be better off putting the credit or blame on all senators, rather than shining history’s spotlight on himself.

Rachel also made another point. Conviction requires two thirds of the senators present at the trial. It does not require two thirds of the senators. If 20 or so senators stayed away from the trial, the fifty or so Democratic and independent votes for conviction is enough for two thirds, plus a few Republicans who have suggested that they would vote to convict. That allows Republican a route by staying away to not bump into Trump head on but still do their part to see Trump convicted.

Another point is that while it takes two thirds to convict, it only takes a simple majority to ban the convicted from holding office or a position of authority again. This would be a later vote held only if they got a conviction.

They also showed a draft version of the article of impeachment. While it was short and to the point for a official document, it could be made shorter and easier to attract Republican votes.

The GOP is clinging to life right now and when it is widely understood among them that impeaching Trump would result in the death of the GOP and the rise of a much more formidable American First party that would be able match the Progressives tit for tat the chance of them actually going along and doing it will be none. McConnell and The GOP establishment that's left are f-d either way. All it would take is one more hollow victory to wipe them and leave them behind for wolf food.

Possible scenarios now that a Trump dictatorship is no longer possible. In view of some threats to the inauguration, the definitive earthly statement on who will be inaugurated President on January 20, 2021 is now the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which leaves no ambiguity about the 2021 election. Lacking an obvious and unambiguous link to the Almighty, I cannot think of anything more definitive.

1. The Republican Party fades into near-irrelevance for a while and becomes an alternative for those running against corruption in the Big Tent party or as the only meaningful alternative when machine politics entrench pols. It revives in the wake of some economic distress (like those involving post-WWII reconversion to a civilian economy) or perhaps (because we are no longer early in the Crisis of 2020 -- more likely near its end) as a cultural struggle emerges in the next Awakening Era. Such parallels what happened to the party of Lincoln after the Great Depression. 

2. The Republican Party dies as did the Federalists (about 1820) or Whigs (about 1850), with the Democratic Party becoming an unwieldy Big Tent party that accepts a wide variety of positions among its membership. It is the only game in town (think of South Africa at the end of Apartheid), and after a couple of decades later it rifts as incompatible factions form within it. Those Parties become Parties in their own right. That is how the Free Soil (now Republican) Party. 

3. The Republican Party becomes increasingly a fringe party as the Democratic Party starts to represent something like 60-70% of the vote. The Democratic Party enters an era of Good Feelings (there is no more apt time than a 1T for such), and the Democratic Party separates in a way mor ereminiscent of some other near-two-Party systems as in Germany or the UK (Christian Democrats and Social Democrats; Conservatives and Labour; paradoxically the US system was more like the Irish political divide, with neither Party quite calling itself socialist).

We are in what is most likely a swift transition to another Skowronek Era in which the political language and strongest agendas are very different from those of the preceding era. Donald Trump is becoming a scapegoat, and with him go down any political tendencies that fostered or went along with him.