So, back in 2012, there was quite an effort to revamp and re-brand the GOP. They realized they were perceived as not being down with the good folks of the "Real America" - that the Romney campaign had boomeranged away from McCain's "Just folks and Straight Talk" bullshit, and had shown the party as catering to the elite, with Willard's dumbass "gaffe" of the 47% being the perfect illustration of how badly out of touch Republicans had become.
So they embarked on the project to re-connect with the good people - the workin' guy - the common clay of the heartland. You know - the rubes.
It's not turning out quite the way they said they wanted it to turn out. Which is not to say it's not turning out the way somebody intended it, but that's another foil hat rant for another time.
Let's just say they're -
G.utless
O.bsequious
P.honies
- and let that suffice for now.
Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:
When listening to President Trump and fellow Republicans throw around accusations against Democrats and the media or advance defenses for Trump’s impeachable conduct, there is a better than even chance they are misleading if not downright lying. In some cases, we discover the lies because other individuals are caught lying.
Roger Stone was convicted, among other things, of lying to Congress about his conversations with WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange. He falsely claimed: He had no emails, documents or texts relating to WikiLeaks; he never sought damaging information (i.e., emails) about Hillary Clinton; never contacted WikiLeaks through intermediaries; and never contacted the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks. The last lie — denying contacts with the Trump campaign — raises the question as to whether President Trump lied in responses to Robert S. Mueller II.
At the trial we learned about Stone’s numerous contacts with the campaign:
Rick Gates, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, testified Tuesday that Stone began discussing Clinton leaks with the campaign in April 2016 and that from May onward Gates understood Stone to be the campaign’s intermediary with WikiLeaks. By July 2016, Gates testified, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said he was updating Trump and others regularly and directed Gates to keep following up with Stone. After Trump ended one phone call from Stone at the end of that month, Gates testified, the future president said to Gates that “more information would be coming.”In his written answers, however, Trump claimed he had “no recollection” of conversations with Stone about WikiLeaks nor did he recall knowing Stone had discussed WikiLeaks’s email drops with the campaign. Perhaps Trump’s memory is addled; if not, it appears he lied to Mueller.
For most of us, it's not hard to see the truth about the GOP's long slide into the shit pile of distilled concentrated hatred.
But it's also pretty easy to see how, for some, it seems like it all happened suddenly.
It didn't.
I'll say this again: Trump has not remade the GOP in his own image. He's the near-perfect reflection of what the Republican Party has been morphing into for at least 30 years.
Ms Rubin is pointing out just one of the main aspects of a political party that's been trying so hard to hang onto the fantasy of some glorious past that it's lost touch with reality altogether.
And it's gotten to the point where it seems like they have to lie about everything. As if all they can do now is try to reinforce one lie with another - to cover up, or to compensate for one lie with the next.
Likewise, in the Ukraine matter multiple witnesses gave testimony that suggests that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been telling falsehoods under oath. Some he has remedied, such as his initial statement that he had not communicated to the Ukrainians that military aid was dependent upon their opening an investigation into the Bidens. However, we now know from at least one other witness that Sondland’s denial that he spoke to the president or to the State Department was false. (He spoke to both.) One wonders if he’ll share a similar fate as Stone, the former Trump confidant who this week was found guilty on charges of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
The Trump lies relating to Ukraine are numerous and serious, although not delivered under oath. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has documented 45 Trump lies concerning Ukraine including:
Trump did not ask [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky for anything on the call. (Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden, look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic computer servers, and speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.)
Zelensky criticized former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch “out of the blue” on the call. (Trump brought up Yovanovitch first.) . . . .
The whistleblower was “sooo wrong.” (The rough transcript and witness testimony have proven the whistleblower to have been highly accurate.) . . .
Schiff might have been the whistleblower’s source. (This is nonsense. The whistleblower said in the complaint that information about the call came from “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.”)Other Trump lies include his denial that United States military aid was held up, his bizarre accusations that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) was the whistleblower’s source and his unfounded allegations that former vice president Joe Biden “stole” millions of dollars from foreign countries and pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor when Hunter Biden was still under investigation.
House Republicans continually traffic in lies — e.g., Ukraine interfered with our election, Joe Biden’s conduct pressuring removal of a delinquent prosecutor was illegal or corrupt, Trump was concerned about Ukraine’s corruption in general.
The bad news is that lots of Repubs are still in charge of some very important places, and they continue to ramp up their attempts to scotch the elections.
And I think it's a very safe bet that they're still getting plenty of help from the Russians.
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