Paul Krugman: The G.O.P. Goes Full Authoritarian

[dlk]

In a recent op-ed posting, Paul Krugman succinctly states how the GOP has undermined voting rights, co-opted the mainstream media and rigged elections to ensure they don't lose and retain a supermajority even when they do. It's shocking to see how the party of Lincoln has morphed into the party of authoritarianism. They have become an enormous threat to the future of our democracy.



[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/opinion/trump-gop-authoritarian-states-power-grab.html|

[JHB]

1. Not all that shocking, really

They've been at it for a couple of decades now, pretending they were just "playing hardball".

Gingrich. Rove. Bush. Cheney. How long have they just bulldozed norms and got away with it by simply brazening out the ensuing uproar?

When that became their SOP, all this became inevitable.

[Jarqui]

3. I agree except maybe it has been longer than a couple decades

Look at Nixon working behind the scenes to scuttle Vietnam peace in 1968

[Hassin Bin Sober]

6. Yep, people forget about their Thousand Year Reich, err I mean "permanent majority" schemes.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/what-karl-rove-really-had_b_60947.html

What Karl Rove REALLY Had in Mind for a “Permanent Republican Majority”

Most of us, myself included, tend to take our democratic institutions for granted. They were there when we were born. They were there for 200+ years. The idea that the US could somehow no longer be a representative democracy does not resonate at the gut-level, even when events should demonstrate the vulnerability of our system.

Yet, twice in the last 4 decades, the US Constitution has come very close to extinction. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, each occurred in the setting of a war begun with a series of lies, and continued beyond the point when everyone knew the ultimate outcome would be unaffected, but was pursued just for the vanity of those in power.

.......

Rove’s vision for a permanent Republican majority had little to do with winning properly run elections for the simple reason that there IS no Republican majority in free elections, and Rove knows that. To get a Republican majority and make it permanent, therefore, he had to 1) gain power; and 2) destroy the vitality of democratic institutions. He accomplished (1). It did not matter to him whether he used “Republican” policies to do that or not: just consider, Bush’s only positive legacy will be the prescription drug law that, while terribly flawed, added an entitlement. True, he also lined pockets of his supporters, and that helped Rove’s cause. Bush also tried to gain Latino votes by siding with Ted Kennedy, John McCain and others on immigration reform, while dissing his entire rightwing base.



They pushed the Iraq War in the fall of an election cycle to squeeze Democrats by providing as little time as possible to parry their lies [not that they may have acted differently if given more time], and then invaded Iraq while the inspectors were still doing their work fearing that no WMD might be found. The idea was to have a spectacular display of US military power (if you recall, Afghanistan, according to the greatest Sec’y of Defense in interplanetary history, did not have enough “high quality targets”) to develop the popular support so the President could push through his domestic programs and grow executive power. The domestic agenda was to de-link financially people from government, so they would be weak and even easier prey for corporate manipulation.



Even that, however, would have been insufficient, Rove knew it, and had a comprehensive approach to a true takeover. As Judge Sirica showed, and as dictators such as Hitler, Chavez, Khomenei, Saddam, and others knew, the last bastion of democracy is a truly independent judiciary where an individual can take on the entire power of the government. So, Rove et al. planned to destroy that independence by appointing truly pedestrian people, who grew up in the “movement”, to interpret the law against individuals, and in favor of the government and big corporations.

[Botany]

2. The G.O.P. Goes Full Authoritarian

The classic example is Hungary, where Fidesz, the white nationalist governing party, has effectively taken over the bulk of the media; destroyed the independence of the judiciary; rigged voting to enfranchise supporters and disenfranchise opponents; gerrymandered electoral districts in its favor; and altered the rules so that a minority in the popular vote translates into a supermajority in the legislature.

Does a lot of this sound familiar? It should. You see, Republicans have been adopting similar tactics — not at the federal level (yet), but in states they control.

snip

What has gotten less emphasis is the fact that G.O.P. legislative control is also undemocratic. Last month Democratic candidates received 54 percent of the votes in State Assembly elections — but they ended up with only 37 percent of the seats.

In other words, Wisconsin is turning into Hungary on the Great Lakes, a state that may hold elections, but where elections don’t matter, because the ruling party retains control no matter what voters do.

[RAB910]

4. More like they go full on dictatorship

They are the biggest threat to our democracy and freedom that our nation has ever faced

[budkin]

5. There is literally no other way they can win, I'm not surprised

I'm only surprised they have been allowed to get away with it. Democrats have been bringing punching balloons to a meat cleaver fight for years.

[watoos]

7. Don't just blame Democrats,

the right wing corporate controlled M$M controls the right wing narrative. Democrats have to fight against their opponents and the media. The biggest lie out there is that the media is liberal.

[onit2day]

8. Duh

[Perseus]

9. "Yet none of them have had classic military coups, with tanks in the street."

They have not had the need to have the tanks in the street because the deal is like this:
1. They corrupt the military, is not as difficult as many people think (Petreus, Flynn, Kelley, etc.)
2. The military starts enjoying the fruits of their support for the regime, all they need to do is casual shows of strength to keep the citizens at bay.
3. They get rid of the few real patriotic men/women in the military, remember how GW got rid of those people in the military who opposed him during the Iraq invasion?
4. The lower ranks are so brain-washed that all they do is follow orders, by this time the country's economy is in shambles, people are straggling to get food because one of the things dictators do is maintain a food shortage to make sure people think on surviving and not opposing them.
5. By then the military has been corrupted to a level where actual Russian intelligence are accepted into the ranks and they start controlling everything, they even have a hold on intelligence and other institutions that can no longer protect the country.
6. People are making lines in front of the supermarket to buy whatever they can.
7. Those who oppose the regime are either killed or put in jail for torture because as we know, dictators love torture.
8. Lots of blood running everywhere, many of the citizens are getting together to try to fight the regime, but as it usually happens, they started late thinking "It can't Happen Here", and now it is an uphill struggle to get rid of the swamp which has grabbed every department in government, and every institution.
9. Those who helped the regime are now sorry, because many of them have been disposed of their businesses, they have been put in jail because the government can make up accusations and because the entire supreme court is there just for show because they will rule as they are told to do, nothing the enablers can do now.
10. Political opponents are all in jail, many executed.
etc., etc.

It may sound like fiction what I wrote above, but that is exactly what has happened in countries like Venezuela, Russia, and many more...This is no fiction, what happened in Wisconsin must be reversed, if not the implications will be tremendous, once they know they can do it, it will just be a chain reaction and suddenly you will find state after state being nulled out from the power of the oppressors. That is where republicans want to go, make no mistake about it.

The military is very corruptible, thw fact they have fought and "defended" the country doesn't mean they are real patriots, many of them are, but those in power are very corruptable, to believe otherwise is to open the doors for them...think Flynn, Kelley, Petreus...The case of Petreus is the best to use as an example, a vagina corrupted him, although I think he was corrupt before that, but that is how weak these people are.