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The Republican Party Is An Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy: An Open Thread

23 Comments

It’s so obvious, yet, predictably, it is so rarely discussed, if at all.  But on matters both macro and micro, the Party could be indicted under the RICO statutes, if said statutes applied to political parties.

The purpose of this criminal conspiracy?: To retain power, even if it requires the destruction of democratic norms.  No, let me rephrase that: To retain power which, by necessity, requires the destruction of democratic norms.

You see examples, both huge and small every single day. Take yesterday, for example, and take the most criminally-culpable of all. No, not Donald Trump. Mitch McConnell. Here’s what he did yesterday:

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/03/senate-republicans-trigger-nuclear-option-to-speed-trump-nominees-1253118

One way to ensure that those no longer in power retain power is to have the third branch of government place their Federalist thumbs on the scale of justice. Trump guilty of all sorts of crimes? Not if the judges say he’s not. In other words, there’s a method behind this power play. To obliterate the notion of impartial justice from R power grabs. (BTW, whenever you hear about our senators talk about bipartisanship, understand that bipartisanship only exists when the Rethugs want it to exist.)

My hope is that this will become an ongoing open thread, and that we will chronicle the relentless lawless behavior of the Rethuglican Party. Why? Because somebody needs to demonstrate the ongoing criminal behavior of the Republican Party. Who knows? Maybe it will catch on.

I’ll be back with more examples later, but I’ve gotta go to work.  Submit your examples. Oh, and would-be trolls?  Stick to the topic or you’re gone. And remember, this is a work-in-progress.

 

23 Comments

  1. RE Vanella
    April 5, 2019,

    McConnell is putting on an exhibition. Elizabeth Warren is now out supporting an end to the Electoral College and the Filibuster. Personal I think we should abolish the Senate on democratic grounds. Make it an honorary thing like the House of Lords.

    All of these “institutions” are vestiges of white supremacy. Compromise with oligarch slave owners. Fuck ’em.

    “There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.” —James Madison

    http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llfr&fileName=002/llfr002.db&recNum=60&itemLink=r?ammem/hlaw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28fr00218%29%29%230020061&linkText=1

  3. Paul
    April 5, 2019,

    I agree with the underlying premise. There is no difference between the Republican leadership and the administration. And it will remain thus until Citizen’s United is repealed and replace with NO money in politics. NONE.

  4. nathan arizona
    April 5, 2019,

    Trump wants to abolish the “institutions” too.

  5. Senator Chris Coons
    April 5, 2019,

    Wait, you mean to tell me Republicans aren’t our trusted partners in effective governance?

    • Alby
      April 5, 2019,

      The first thing he does every morning is tape the “kick me” sign to the back of his suit jacket.

  6. El Somnambulo
    April 5, 2019,

    Nathan, one of those ‘institutions’ is the IRS. The law requiring the IRS to turn over the tax returns of anybody to the Chair of the House Ways And Means Committee is clear. And has never been challenged. Well, look what Trump and the Senate did:

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/trump-grooming-irs-lawyers-to-hide-his-tax-returns?verso=true

    Does anybody doubt that this guy has been placed there for the express purpose of overturning close to a century of legal precedent?

    I don’t.

    • El Somnambulo
      April 5, 2019,

      Which reminds me. The Rethugs are stacking the courts with so many judges predisposed to ignore the notion of ‘blind justice’ that we can no longer count on the courts to follow a century of precedent.

      If that’s not enabling of criminal behavior, I don’t know what is.

  7. nathan arizona
    April 5, 2019,

    Me either.

  8. El Somnambulo
    April 6, 2019,

    Rethuglicans routinely steal elections. Once the federal Voting Rights Act was eviscerated by the Supreme Court, allegedly b/c it was no longer necessary, anti-democratic R state officials began massive purges of the voting roles, you know, because of ‘ACORN’. ACORN was one of the first of the false memes that provided cover for R’s to steal elections.

    For every example of voter fraud, if you can even find an example, you have massive disenfranchisement as the alleged antidote to alleged fraud. Take, for example, Georgia. The guy running for governor was the Secretary of State, and this is what he did:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/how-voter-suppression-actually-works/575035/

    That election was stolen, pure and simple. Many more samples to follow…feel free to post your own.

  9. Jason330
    April 6, 2019,

    Maybe the worst part of this rampant corruption is that it is supported by people like Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester who shrug and view it as the status quo.

  10. El Somnambulo
    April 6, 2019,

    Here’s an overview of just some of the tactics R’s use to suppress the vote and/or disenfranchise voters. They all have two things in common: They are designed to suppress minority participation, and they’re all anti-democratic:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/us/politics/voting-suppression-elections.html

    This sums it up nicely:

    “Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford University law professor and elections scholar, said what was going on reflected a shift from a belief in shared rules of democracy toward one that sees elections as struggles for power “in which you need to push up against the rules to win.”

    He added, “We’ve reached a situation in which the fight over the rules and who gets to vote is seen as a legitimate part of electoral competition.”

    Don’t forget, it was the Supreme Court’s blowing up of the Voting Rights Act which has eliminated protections from these blatant abuses.

    Which, of course, is why Mitch McConnell is blowing up Senate rules to stack the courts full of Federalist Robojudges.

  11. El Somnambulo
    April 6, 2019,

    When election results don’t go the Rethugs’ way, that doesn’t stop them from ignoring the will of the people. Quite the contrary.

    Here’s what they did in Wisconsin:

    https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/gop-lawmakers-vote-in-wee-hours-to-pass-lame-duck/article_2efeec58-75cc-5ecc-807b-c8437a8fde33.html

    Here’s what they did in North Carolina:

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/north-carolinas-legislature-tried-strip-power-new-governor-will-states

    Here’s what they’re doing in Florida:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-florida-felons/politics-cloud-felon-voting-rights-restoration-in-florida-idUSKBN1OE0C2

    Yep, many more examples to come.

    The North Carolina power grab is especially ironic since here is pretty much the ONLY example of voter fraud that one could find there:

    https://wlos.com/news/local/ap-exclusive-nc-election-fraud-probed-long-before-2018-race-01-09-2019

  12. El Somnambulo
    April 7, 2019,

    There’s no doubt about it. The Attorney General of the United States, who auditioned for the position by writing a screed against the Mueller investigation, is engaged in a criminal cover-up of the Mueller report:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/scrutiny-and-suspicion-as-mueller-report-undergoes-redaction/2019/04/06/5dcdddfc-57d5-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html?utm_term=.dc9c600ede74

    There can be only one reason why. I mean, think about that for a second. This AG was put in place BECAUSE of his willingness to deep-six an historic investigation. The new crew at the IRS was put into place BECAUSE of their willingness to protect Trump’s tax returns from official scrutiny.

    This is an ongoing criminal conspiracy perpetrated by one of the two major political parties. Nothing less. It is time that it be labeled as such.

  14. El Somnambulo
    April 8, 2019,

    Nothing threatens an ongoing criminal conspiracy quite like a free and vibrant press. Georgia Rethuglicans think they have a way around that, and, even by Rethug standards, it’s despicable and, of course, is in furtherance of said criminal conspiracies. A Journalists’ Overview Board:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-board-to-oversee-georgia-journalists-sounds-like-orwellian-fiction-the-proposal-is-all-too-real/2019/04/08/dffcd33a-5a16-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html?utm_term=.e77bf176f3b6

  15. nathan arizona
    April 9, 2019,

    El Som etc: Looking back at this thread I think I might have been misinterpreted. When I said Trump “wants to abolish institutions too” I didn’t mean that Trump is doing the right thing. It was meant as a kind of warning to REV that destroying institutions might be something to think twice about if an asshole like Trump wants to do it too. I guess I’m picking at a small thing here but I really, really don’t want to give the impression that I have anything but loathing for Trump.

  16. RE Vanella
    April 9, 2019,

    I am for destroying undemocratic “institutions”. The filibuster isn’t an institution anyway. I am for abolishing the Senate. It’s undemocratic and based on the same thing as the electoral college.

    The Senate was appointed by state legislatures until 1913! The fact that it’s undemocratic is well established.

    This idea the all “institutions” are equal (especially if they are in the constitution!) is a fetish.

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