I have no reason to disbelieve Mo Brooks when he describes his role of revving up armed insurrectionists as they were preparing to sack the Capitol as just doing his job representing the bigots of northern Alabama-- his district borders on Marjorie Traitor Greene's. Brooks, likely to soon be a U.S. senator, represents 5 counties, all of which were Trumpist 2020 hellholes:
Madison- 52.77%
Morgan- 73.83%
Limestone- 70.36%
Lauderdale- 71.54%
Jackson- 83.22%
Nor do I have any reason to doubt Pastor John Pavlovitz when he wrote that he sometimes finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning realizing that "People actually still support that unhinged madman. They admire him. They look up to him. They feel affinity with him. They are fighting for him." In fact, though I have no problem getting out of bed, I'm sickened by the same line of thinking. Like Pavlovitz, "I see people regurgitating fictional Fox News talking points and hear them parroting back conspiratorial nonsense and I watch them pass by with his name affixed to their heads and attached to their bumpers in cultic adoration-- and it grieves me to know how far gone so many around me seem to be. I no longer recognize the place I’ve always called home."
So, I felt some sense of joy today, realizing that these people are incurable, when I read a poll and study showing that two-thirds of Southern Republicans-- and 44% of the population of the whole blighted region-- want to secede and form their own country (again). Presumably Virginia won't be joining them this time around and I suspect North Carolina and Florida won't either. El Paso would no doubt join New Mexico but what are Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston going to do-- not to mention New Orleans, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville...
I'm guessing the New Confederacy might also include West Virginia, Missouri (minus St. Louis), Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas,Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and, sorry to say, Montana. And there might have to be some adjustments made for the southern parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon and northeast California. You think I'm joking.
No, I'm not joking. Sure I'd prefer to see the union stay together, but only if all the Trumpists commit suicide by COVID. Normal people can't have a union with QAnon people. It's not possible. Lisa Lerer wrote this morning that "In Congress, Republicans who once praised the Trump administration for its work facilitating the swift development of the vaccines now wage campaigns of vaccine misinformation, sowing doubts about safety and effectiveness from the Capitol. And this week, Republican state lawmakers in Tennessee successfully pressured health officials to stop outreach to children for all vaccines. The guidance prohibits sending reminders about the second dose of a Covid vaccine to adolescents who had received one shot and communicating about routine inoculations, like the flu shot. A wave of opposition to Covid vaccines has risen within the Republican Party, as conservative news outlets produce a steady diet of misinformation about vaccines and some G.O.P. lawmakers invite anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists to testify in statehouses and Congress. With very little resistance from party leaders, these Republican efforts have elevated falsehoods and doubts about vaccinations from the fringes of American life to the center of our political conversation."
It’s a pattern that was seen throughout the Trump administration: Rather than rebuke conspiratorial thinking and inaccuracies when they begin spreading among their party’s base, many Republicans tolerate extremist misinformation.
Some conservatives promulgate the falsehoods as a way to rally their political base, embracing ideas like a stolen election, rampant voter fraud and revisionist history about the deadly siege at the Capitol. Many others say very little at all, preferring to dodge questions from the news media.
...[O]over the past few months, the shift within the party has accelerated, as some supporters of Trump embrace the belief that the national effort to promote Covid vaccinations is harmful, unconstitutional or perhaps even a sign of a nefarious government plot.
“Think about what those mechanisms could be used for,” Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina [admittedly one of the two dumbest members of Congress] said of the Biden administration’s plan to go door-to-door to reach millions of unvaccinated Americans, going on to claim without evidence: “They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”
In a report this month, the Kaiser Family Foundation found a growing vaccination divide between Republican and Democratic areas, with nearly 47 percent of people in counties won by President Biden fully vaccinated, compared with 35 percent of people in Trump counties. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 47 percent of Republicans said they weren’t likely to get vaccinated, compared with just 6 percent of Democrats.
Sustained consideration of Trump's Big Lie has increased the desire to secede among Republicans in The South and the Mountain States. I certainly hope there will be strict border controls to keep them out once the new boundaries are formalized. And if they want too build a war between us and them, we should pay for half.
The polling took place among the general public and among political scientists. Some of the finding besides the desire of most Southern Republicans for their own, well-deserved in my opinion, country.
Constitutional hardball politics like gerrymandering, packing the Supreme Court or blocking Court nominees, voter suppression, abolishing the filibuster, adding new states to the union, or refusing to certify election results enjoy little support among the public and, with few exceptions, among experts. However, these strategies appear to go unpunished by voters when used by elites.
Experts expect these tactics to be used more frequently in the years ahead, rating extreme partisan gerrymandering a near certainty; obstruction of Supreme Court nominations highly likely; and refusal to certify popular vote totals as a likely outcome as well. By contrast, the experts place low probability on hardball tactics that are more favored by Democrats, such as adding states to the union, abolishing the filibuster, or packing the Supreme Court.
Among the electoral reform proposals recently adopted or currently under consideration in the states, experts perceive grave threats from bills that encroach on the political independence of local election officials and that restrict mail voting.
The legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump’s actions afterward remain central to how Americans assess political candidates. In the past six months, Democrats and Republicans have not budged in how they reward or punish prospective candidates for voting to certify the election and for Trump’s impeachment. Independents did shift in favor of candidates who supported the certification of the 2020 vote and who supported transportation infrastructure spending.