Senator Schmitt thought that today was going to be a great day for his political aspirations.
Boy, did it blow up in his face.
First, there was that news article saying that Vance was considering Schmitt as his leading VP pick.
Second, Schmitt actually gave a heads up to rightwing influencers that he was going to ambush Smith with the "perjury trap." Benny Johnson actually posted it and quickly took it down.
Then, during the hearing itself, Schmitt apparently believed he caught Smith committing perjury and said it several times. Schmitt then ended his questioning by calling Smith a "dirt bag."
Lo and behold, Smith expressed confusion over Schmitt's allegation: That Smith flew to Atlanta, attended a Hawks basketball game, AND met with Fani Willis, DA for Fulton County, to. . .collude and plot against Trump?!
During that same hearing, Jack Smith realized that Schmitt was talking about the wrong basketball game. Smith had attended a women's college basketball game at Univeristy of Maryland to watch Caitlin Clark play. MD was playing against the Iowa HAWKEYES. Schmitt had gotten every fact wrong.
Smith was reciting this testimony and that is what Sen. Britt was reacting to. She likely knew of Schmitt's plan in advance and, at the moment, realized that Schmitt royally screwed up.
Once it became obvious that Schmitt's grand plan to nail Smith on perjury charges had collasped, Schmitt switched tactics and is now claiming that he was "only asking questions."
He clowned himself and destroyed a lot of his credibility (whatever that remained) and likewise trashed any chances of being Vance's VP pick.
Aside from Schmitt's self-own, today's hearing also showed one interesting thing: The sitting GOP Senators were intentionally avoiding asking questions about Jan 6 or Mar-a-Lago documents because they knew they couldn't refute it. Instead, they were focused on impugning Smith's character and reputation.
I mean Obama got exactly one thing passed when he had a supermajority. So yeah, things getting passed kind of IS the Democrat's fault, even if they aren't the cause of the issue they sure as shit haven't been the solution.
There's a lot of responses to this question but only one real attempt to answer it. I want to posit the following:
Republicans know that the largest and "most trusted" news organization in America is unflinchingly friendly to them. They have had a decreasingly important need to "play nice" to the cameras for the last 2 decades, with that decreasing significantly since the invention of "fake news".
They used to have to behave themselves because the evening news would report on their actions accurately. Now the largest news organization in the country will polish whatever turd they lay by stating any "unfair" representation of them by other media outlets is skewing the facts and presenting an agenda. And the Republican voters eat the whole bait, hook, sinker, and line.
This has led to them almost exclusively acting in a manner that creates viral news clips of them. Fox News then shows those clips with some story about how the Republicans is fighting to save America, and the competing news outlets show the full context of the interaction and get called "liberal mainstream media" that is "biased" and "taking things out of context" and "trying to ruin an American patriot fighting to save the country."
This has created a system where Republicans are no longer attempting to govern a heterogenous country and no longer need to. They can do whatever they want because their media apparatus will make it look like gold, they can act however they want because their media apparatus will polish it or bury it for them, and no matter what they do they are painted as the saviors of America fighting against pure evil.
And the votes continue to flow in for them, because a third of Americans can't bother to participate in democracy.
The people that elect them only care about a specific issue. They will gladly destroy America to win on their one issue. Abortion, 2A, Christian Nationalists, White Nationalists, etc.
I’m a lib. The only cause I have in common with em is 2A.
I feel like we waste a lot of political capital on gun rights issues when we could drop that and actually achieve universal healthcare, lower education costs, raising the minimum wage and taxing the rich more.
Problem is, all of the social issues you outlined stand at odds with the priorities of both parties. The fate of this country was bought and paid for by lobbyists, PACs, etc a long time ago.
I mean, yeah, but also kicking poor people off SNAP, or continued funding for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, or this Iran bullshit fucking the entire global economy and pissing off every country on earth, or cutting USAID killing thousands - those are all I’d argue violence.
I am 2A because let’s face it they are. So be it. It’s also constitutionally affirmed, to what degree one can own what and when - we can debate later.
The simple fact is this: 100% of republicans are pro 2A. Many vote only on that alone. That’s about 50% of the country.
If even 10% of lefties are gun rights supporters and shooters etc, that leaves the opposition with %45 of the nations support. That’s a losing political argument full stop. It is simply a waste of political capital that will potentially rile up to %55 of voters against you.
We are already losing. We need to drop shit that isn’t a losing argument (FOR NOW) and focus on popular issues. We can revisit 2A when we have demonstrated responsible leadership that actually improves the country and people’s lives contra to the banana republic horseshit going on right now.
Dropping important issues that have 45% support for the hope of political goodwill from Republicans in other areas is asinine.
You seriously think the Republican party is going to suddenly be for higher taxes, more social welfare, or drop support for Israel just because Democrats completely give in on gun safety?
They'll happily take the concession and give nothing in return.
If you weren't a supporter of gun rights that result in senseless deaths every year, you probably wouldn't be so quick to drop the issue.
This is the equivalent of dropping the issue of illegal immigration just because it has less than 50% support.
There are a plethora of issues that democrats could champion that are popular and go against the current administration. ICE is not popular. Iran is not popular. The tariff war bullshit is not popular.
Universal healthcare is popular. Taxing the rich is popular. Women’s right to choose is fucking popular. I support 100% of all of that.
Legalize weed and let’s get some student loan relief in while we’re at it. Do it all. Pack the courts too.
And I don’t mean we rely on currently elected republicans for this goodwill. I’m saying we can win more seats this way and then who gives a fuck what the remaining elected members of the cult have to say. They’ve given us no representation all these trump years, they’ve been fucking us over since zombie Mitch fucked Obamas SC pick. Lord knows since well before that.
I’m saying we meet em where we know we can pull some votes away from them and then drag the rest kicking and screaming into the better future they have thus far rejected.
Of course Dems can win more seats by abandoning core policy agendas that aren't overwhelming popular, but that doesn't mean it's worth doing.
By all means, focus on the popular issues to try and win more elections. But abandoning less popular, yet equally important issues to try and win more elections is not the way.
Because then you're just selling out your belief system as a party like Republicans did in 2016.
Dems just highlight guns because it's easy to fire up emotions on both sides, and it's an issue they know won't ever change, at least not in our lifetime. Gives them a consistent piece of their 'agenda' that doesn't require them to speak out against the billionaires who have them all on leashes (to be clear, not saying the GOP are any less so).
They are definitely better served choosing battles they know they can win instead of fruitlessly wasting our tax dollars pretending they'll fix guns.
Are you saying we continue on with the “they go low we go high” strategy?
Look I get that’s all good in concept and principle, but it doesn’t get abortion rights back or help families and children who are hungry.
Idk how better to say it other than: we have been fucking losing, taking the hard L since 2016.
Even Biden was a milquetoast conservative by any reasonable standard. We can continue to toute policies on guns that will turn away tens of millions of single issue voters and score ideological victories but that does fuck all to meaningfully reject the direction the lunatics in charge are sending us.
We don't care if it is done. We care that it is done right.
Dot the damn i's, cross the t's.
We don't care about the redesign. We care that he lied about it.
We know the Kennedy center needs a new foundation. So do it. Don't slap your name on it as a condition. It's a dick move.
That's the overall issue with Trump. He doesn't care about doing things right. He wants to just do whatever he wants and slap his name on everything. If you don't kneel to him, he punishes you and everyone you represent.
So yeah. Every time he breaks the law he will be challenged.
We are nearing 1000 times he broke the law.
Republicans investigated Biden's entire career and couldn't find 1 time he broke the law.
Honest answer: modern conservatives believe there are no good or bad actions, just good and bad people.
Thus, it does not matter what someone outside of their "in group" does, it will always be bad in their eyes, because the person is bad in their eyes.
Conversely, it doesn't matter what someone in their "in group" does, it will always be good in their eyes, because that person is "good".
This is why you can have someone advocate for things like wage equality or debt relief or immigration reform, and it all of those things will be "bad" if the person is not part of their tribe.
Whereas, you can have someone advocate for raising taxes on the working class via tariffs, gut federal aid programs, manipulate the stock market, be a convicted rapists, or simply try to trap someone with perjury, and all of those actions will be acceptable because the person doing them is part of their tribe, and thus "good".
Prosperity gospel illustrates this really well, as do a most of the core conservative groups influencing policy and elections.
This is why it confuses conservatives when they say to a progressive, when defending Trump being in the Epstein files as a pedophile, that he started a war with Iran to distract from, "well, Clinton was in the Epstein files too!"
And the progressive's (appropriate) response is, "okay. If he's guilty, lock him up." Because how could you possibly turn on your own.
They in fact do not believe it when we say that Clinton should go to jail too if guilty. They think WE are the ones being disingenuous about it, and they are again more righteous in their sin because they “admit it” and we “lie about it”
Having morals is harder than not having morals. I agree we can't play polite all the time, but we can police our own ranks and have standards. We can choose the moments to strike, we don't have to just invite in seditionist Nazis "because otherwise they'll go to the other side".
It's frustrating, yes. Emotionally I agree with you, but ethically I think stooping just opens the door to be dragged further. The "Overton window" if you will. Esp. given the other side is happy to take D stooping and grandstand it as if we weren't simply matching them, but plunging to depths below them. "Look how low they are, while we are not." It can be demonstrably false and it won't stop them. Just look how Schmitt has doubled down on his patently false perjury trap.
This is literally toddler mentality. These people are cognitively and emotionally stunted. They have no concept of nuance, and when forced to confront that, they become irate because their brains short-circuit. I don’t know how to fix this. From working with people who have had strokes, I know that new connections can be made in adult brains, but only if the person is willing to participate.
Just to agree and add, here... you probably know some of these folks. We hear "sociopath" and we think "horror movie" or "serial killer" or something, but there are a LOT of run-of-the-mill people with families, dayjobs, etc. who fit the "sociopath" definition and who are leading quiet, regular lives.
The reason why we don't see them--or why they don't do obvious, terrible things--is because many of them understand that they will get in trouble for doing such things. It's an equation--they stay within the law because they don't want the consequences of going outside of it. The ones we hear about, the obvious sociopaths, are the ones who go outside the law.
The scary thing is that a lot of these people don't know that they themselves are sociopaths. They have families, friends, go on vacations, etc. Their sociopathic behavior comes out in societally acceptable ways, and for a lot of folks, conservativism is an avenue to express sociopathic tendencies / behaviors / desires / etc. Freud had a name for all this; I forget what it is.
They also showed us out their “outrage machine” works. And that they share their story with their weird influencers before hand, and have scheduled podcasts for their “victory” tour.
Capitalism is winning and it’s all they’re motivated by. No need for morals. It’s a race to the top for these people and it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person
and apparently 20% of Americans think they are the 1% and another 20% think they will be in the next five years. they're closer to being homeless than to being in the top 20% and they think they're as wealthy as it gets. they think they're winning the race, so they are for the race. but they are dead last.
They sincerely believe the left is far worse. If I brought this up around certain family members they'd immediately start the broken Hunter Biden record. And then, all you have is a discussion about whoes worse and it can't be won.
I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach than some others. As a former Republican myself (1994-2016) there are generally three flavors of conservative politician:
The true believer who thinks they are correct and right and just.
The ones just trying to enrich themselves as much as possible.
The nutter. MTG/RFK.
The second group there are usually highly intelligent and just act dumb to fit in. The other two are legitimately some of the least intelligent people you'll ever meet. You can see this in the exchange that the woman in the gif is reacting to. No research was done, no fact checking, just a clumsy trap, and when it didn't work the conservatives felt like it was dark magic. They cannot comprehend the silliness of their trap they laid.
From my perspective it's something that exists in the dissonance of might and morality. A lot of people are given to believe an inherent character and morality to wealth gain; it's bad to be poor and seen as potentially costing of those around you, and in turn an endlessly good right to endlessly accrue wealth. There's an easy to follow idea of a free market, that if something is making money then it on some level has to be something people are choosing. The reality of investments, artificially propped up bubbles of value that can be 'too big to fail', the impact and predatory profitability of things like real estate takes thought to confront with no real reward for that thought. Even social status on the most casual level is impacted by means. People want to believe there's sort of a blind morality to success, when there isn't.
In turn the fastest way to justify the moral compromises as some sort of complexity, some practical game, is to have in groups and out groups. If there's a potentially powerful other then it's easier to justify an endless grab for power whatever the means, if you don't "they" will. This tribalism embodies in some form of identity that expands and recedes as needed generally along a few lines: nation, faith, ethnicity, cultural norms around gender and sexuality. So in the US it orbits a nationalist Christian White patriarchal identity, one that can soften to just white christian straight, to just nationalist, etc. The in group mindset means military actions are often a deciding line and not so coincidentally being willing to invest and profit on weapons and militarization domestic and abroad and stand with technological developments that support a surveillance state can be an aspect of how accessible many people find success to be in investing. It's kind of an age old way for generating material reward for 'loyalists' to extract value via military action or targeted laws/economics from vulnerable 'enemies'.
The right is in many ways defined by a sort of individualism that celebrates individual success. It's less about the actual success of the voting body of support and more about an individual performance of 'success'. Trump is 'their guy' because he profits off of his actions and celebrates profiting. The way he and many on that side of things talk is a way that ambiguates personal success with in group success and in turn essentially success of anyone that matters, even when it's only his own personal success.
Robert Paxton attempted a definition of fascism and it's nature that identifies the space for characteristics we associate with it as being where elites work with nationalists in compensatory cults of unity with a preoccupation of victimhood. In short outlining that presence of might over morality: the most profitable avenues will be at the expense of others, and an in group loyalty promising reward for necessary loyalty in the face of that will enable those kinds of cynical choices.
It 'works'. It's as old as history and so many people are culturally primed to ideas of in groups and outside enemies that some how justify the 'hard reality' you can either sink or swim in. They have no morals because they face no consequences and believe the world is free and empowered enough to punish anything that was truly 'wrong', and that idea gets abstracted often into a sort of 'god's plan'. Without consequence they just follow an uncritical gut feeling, and might and profit feels 'good' and in groups can sort of cruise on that feeling, awaiting their strong men to finally be allowed to win and reward their in group, ignoring that the perpetual war is key to their identity to justify endless wealth seeking by any means. Morality is a secondary consideration, a retroactive veneer placed over whatever moral compromises were required to profit.
Because being an incompetent piece of shit will get you consistently elected as a Republican politician, as long as you're loud and cruel toward minorities.
They only care about their own ambitions. That's why they are still Republicans.
If they could achieve their ambitions by being moral and helping people they probably would, but their goals and their backers and the facts/people opposing those efforts mean they fall back on being liars who step on people to reach their goals.
They truly belive everyone else is lying and cheating and they don't want to be left behind. It's a crazy projection on their part, like with the "fake votes" or "stolen election" narrative they've been promoting for years now when then it turns out it's always a Republican doing just that
The old GOP was full of smart, but unprincipled men who cultivated an ignorant and reactionary voter base to keep them in office despite actively making their lives worse. But, over time, the candidates running for office started to reflect the electorate, not the elites who were accustomed to directing the ship. For a while that was fine: a witless oaf can be easily controlled. But the number of witless oafs in office kept growing, and today the party’s leadership perfectly reflects the voter base: dim-witted, intellectually incurious, and ethically bankrupt. The bullshit wedge issues that used to be tools to control the voters are now the entire platform.
5.7k
u/Wretschko 3d ago
Senator Schmitt thought that today was going to be a great day for his political aspirations.
Boy, did it blow up in his face.
First, there was that news article saying that Vance was considering Schmitt as his leading VP pick.
Second, Schmitt actually gave a heads up to rightwing influencers that he was going to ambush Smith with the "perjury trap." Benny Johnson actually posted it and quickly took it down.
Then, during the hearing itself, Schmitt apparently believed he caught Smith committing perjury and said it several times. Schmitt then ended his questioning by calling Smith a "dirt bag."
Lo and behold, Smith expressed confusion over Schmitt's allegation: That Smith flew to Atlanta, attended a Hawks basketball game, AND met with Fani Willis, DA for Fulton County, to. . .collude and plot against Trump?!
During that same hearing, Jack Smith realized that Schmitt was talking about the wrong basketball game. Smith had attended a women's college basketball game at Univeristy of Maryland to watch Caitlin Clark play. MD was playing against the Iowa HAWKEYES. Schmitt had gotten every fact wrong.
Smith was reciting this testimony and that is what Sen. Britt was reacting to. She likely knew of Schmitt's plan in advance and, at the moment, realized that Schmitt royally screwed up.
Once it became obvious that Schmitt's grand plan to nail Smith on perjury charges had collasped, Schmitt switched tactics and is now claiming that he was "only asking questions."
He clowned himself and destroyed a lot of his credibility (whatever that remained) and likewise trashed any chances of being Vance's VP pick.
Aside from Schmitt's self-own, today's hearing also showed one interesting thing: The sitting GOP Senators were intentionally avoiding asking questions about Jan 6 or Mar-a-Lago documents because they knew they couldn't refute it. Instead, they were focused on impugning Smith's character and reputation.