Liz Cheney

It's such a relief when the opposing party can call out their own assholes, it kind of lends a air of objectivity to a fairly subjective process. Liz Cheney's politics are rancid from my perspective, but she's potentially carving out a presidential run, after being voted out of office for breaking ranks and getting ahead of the curve. Oh and holding Trump accountable for his criminal behaviors. No small thing.

Just like I can say Biden is doing amazing for American standards and criticize him for not doing more from a progressive viewpoint. Politics is about having ideas about how things should be, and then kludging something anyway. I can hate Cheney's voting record but also applaud her American decency. 

(Did you read about the Florida candidate who got his twitter account suspended for saying he will make a law that it's okay to shoot FBI, IRS or other government officials? (source))

I've always thought the first female president would come from the right. For the left to put a woman forward and not whip up the right into a frenzy just doesn't seem possible. As Trump demonstrated, you can really get the right into a froth about things. She will have to from the right. And like it or not, a strategist to get am much good done as possible has to take the right into account somehow to get elected. A bland white male hetrosexual Christian is the best way to appeal to all of America. Of course they don't whip up the left's base. Beto is their man. He needs to win the governor's race first. That's his rocketship to the presidency. If you can come out of succession wanting Texas, you can hold America together. I'd love it if Texas succeeded from the union, things would swing left for quite a while in the USA with 49 states. We could finally make Puerto Rico a state, to keep it at 50. That would really drive the right wing nuts. Their threats are hollow.

I feel like Mitt Romney's Mormonism doesn't fit with mainstream America, no matter how many PBS documentaries you fund to create tolerance space. That creates space on the left, not the right. The right is proud of their prejudices, are not interested in being educated out of them, except through life experience when they change every position as it personally effects them. 

I know there are minimalist conservatives who don't participate in culture war shenanigans, but they don't whip up the vote in the base. They tend to abandon the party when things get frothy. George Will stepped away from the Republican party. He's too intelligent, he will like Chaney's common sense and decency. As far right as the right has gone, a tiny step towards the center will get a lot of centerists, but there are not that many of those as we'd wish. It's more about whipping up the base, than snatching a few people from the center. 

There are 3 women in my life, old high school friend, my ex, and a new friend, the mother of girls my daughter like to play with, who don't want to know anything about politics. They find it too stressful and spiritually sapping. I told my ex about predicting Gina Carano getting a movie financed by dark right money, with far right themes, where a Biden character sniffs her hair. I got the whole story in before she could get away from me.

The disaffected and alienated America is where these bozos come out. Ron Johnson might be having a battle in Wisconsin though (I hope). 

Got a book review copy of a political science book blaming the leaders in democracy for the decline in democracy: Democracy Erodes from the Top by Larry M. Bartels. "Electoral support for right-wing populist parties has increased only modestly, reflecting idiosyncratic successes of populist entrepreneurs, the failures of mainstream parties, and media hype. Europe’s most sobering examples of democratic backsliding—in Hungary and Poland—occurred not because voters wanted authoritarianism but because conventional conservative parties, once elected, seized opportunities to entrench themselves in power."

I can't but think about my friend from Ivory Coast who loved Trump and moved to Hungary. One small problem with the far right wing, they're against miscegenation.

Headline: Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have made themselves unfit for office, Liz Cheney says (Independent). “Yet both of whom took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order and structure in the aftermath of the last election,” she continued. “In my view, they both have made themselves unfit for future office.”

The success is going to the far right's head, the far right wing has a real wingnut problem. Every group has that problem, to be honest. Humans are deeply flawed and traumatized. 

I was thinking we could give a "you're not a total asshole" prize to people who don't assume we can always lower expectations. Like the tin foil guy who said you can reuse it. He's thinking about his grandchildren not bottom line profits. Liz Cheney.

The far right, white supremacists, greed is good Gordon Gecko types, anti-woke people, don't take my taxes even if the tax money would save lives, and ChristoFascists have taken a page out of the book of identity politics. I have a right to exist the way I am, even if it's a selfish asshole viewpoint. Donald Trump, whom I will never forgive, gave permission to these types to slither out from under the rocks they felt more comfortable under, and they loudly proclaim their rights. It's a real dick move, they're assholes. The rise of the asshole.