John Tsitrian says the Trumpist insurrectionists who berated Senator Mike Rounds in Spearfish last week for stating the fact that Trump lost in 2020 threaten the existence of the Republican Party (not to mention the free American republic):
…The differences between election denialists and the conventional, rational wing of the party which has surveyed the evidence and decided that the election was valid, will never be reconciled.
And that’s a huge problem for the GOP.
When a pillar of conventional, conservative Republican values like Mike Rounds gets jeered by those who share Donald Trump’s worldview, you have to wonder how many traditional Republicans, especially the hardheaded business types who have to deal with the realities of commerce and understand the value of facts, will support, or even remain, in their party [John Tsitrian, “Sen. Rounds’ Gathering in Spearfish Last Week Calls the Viability of the Republican Party into Question,” South Dakota Standard, 2022.08.22].
While Senator Rounds persists in his apparently audacious statement of facts about the 2020 election—
In an exclusive interview with Dakota News Now on Monday, Rounds once again mentioned the 62 failed state and federal lawsuits — out of 62 — challenging Joe Biden’s victory over former president Donald Trump.
“We have a duty to tell people we did not win that election,” Rounds said [John Gaskins, “Rounds on Voters Who Berated Him: They Truly Care About Their Country,” KSFY, 2022.08.22].
—Rounds is still smooching the insurrectionists backsides, praying them to stick with the GOP:
But he understands a group of people that thought the nation was headed in the right direction under Trump and were “shocked” when he lost.
“You try to empathize and you try to put yourself in their position,” Rounds said. ”These folks truly care about their country. They really care. They’re just frustrated, because they really don’t see the path forward to fixing it.”
Some election deniers have said boycotting the upcoming 2022 mid-terms is that path, which is why Rounds wants to have more forums to spread his message to do the exact opposite.
”We want the folks in 2022 to get out and to vote, so that we do have the opportunity to bring back positive conservative policies in Washington, D.C., and we’ve got a long way to go,” Rounds said [Gaskins, 2022.08.22].
Mike, you misread your monsters. They don’t want positive conservative policies or politicians (ask Liz Cheney) any more than Donald Trump did. They want a cult of personality, a dictator who gives them permission to attack Congress, mow down protestors, kill cops, and wage race war. Your brownnosing will not overcome their irrational faith in Trump the Savior. You must bow down to their God and their every article of faith, including their Big Lie about the 2020 election or you will lose them and your next election.
Or you must call them the liars and traitors they are. You must tell them that love of country requires love of facts and law. You must tell them that if they can’t admit that they lost the last election fair and square and that if they cannot accept those facts and the laws that properly govern our elections, there is no place for them in the Republican Party. Rally to your side the rational members of your party to restore the grip of reason to your conservative movement. Accept the fact that affirming moonbats to preserve dwindling electoral margins leads to harmful extremism that will only end in violence and chaos.
The monsters you created, Mike, don’t see a path forward because they want to go backward, to a straight white past that exists mostly in their stunted imaginations. They don’t really care about their country, or their neighbors (not all of us, not the brown ones, the gay ones, the non-Christian ones, the big-city ones), and they don’t care about you. If they’d had the chance, they’d have hung you right alongside Mike Pence for refusing to overturn the law and the election to keep their guy in power.
Save your party, Mike, and save the country: save the butt-kissing and tell your party’s radicals they need to shape up or ship out.
Cory advises Sen. Rounds: “Save your party, Mike, and save the country: save the butt-kissing and tell your party’s radicals they need to shape up or ship out.”
Democrats had a similar problem with the segregationist element in their party in the 1950s through the early 1960s. They had to re-educate them or let them go. The segregationists constituted about 30-40% of the party. It took about ten years, but the Democrats got rid of the racists who wouldn’t change. Republicans need to go through a similar period of truth-telling and sanitation. Let’s not pretend that Donald Trump is the only problem. As Rounds found out, it is a delusional sickness that infects a good chunk of the Republican base, and, as you point out, it can’t be addressed with “empathy” for the delusional.
Your horse breaks a leg, you shoot it between the eyes to alleviate its suffering. You have to destroy it to save it. Magats aren’;t worth the powder it would take to blow them to hell. Na na hey hey goodbye!
ps John Tsitrian for Governor!.
Mike Rounds: ”We want the folks in 2022 to get out and to vote, so that we do have the opportunity to bring back positive conservative policies in Washington, D.C.” In other words, what Rounds REALLY means by: “positive conservative policies” is more power to the wealthy, big banks and corporations while working against the interests of most of us in the working class.
“Positive conservative policies”:
1) End Social Security
2) End Medicare
3) Privatize or eliminate the Veterans Administration
4) Reduce women’s reproductive rights nation-wide
5) Promote more endless war mongering – Go back to the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney foreign policy
There is more I could add to this list. I do not want to go back on Round’s “path forward” to the “positive conservative policies” that were an disaster for working class people under George W. Bush. His policies led to the destruction of the Middle East, which we and Europe have never fully recovered from since his wars. Please do not promote Rounds, Thune and Bush style policies. We now have the opportunity with President Biden to build a more progressive and social coalition in government to combat the BS “positive conservative values” that have always been code for wealthy and corporate control of our nation and planet with endless wars for the military industrial complex.
Boy oh boy, does Mike have his work cut out for him.
I just returned from the West coast.
Drove for almost a month. South Dakota
Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California
Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska…..
The Trump flags are flying…..
Let’s go Brandon stickers…..
If you elect a clown, expect a circus..
FJB…
Trump WON !….
Trump Country….
We are not in a Political war.
We are in a culture war.
Income doesn’t matter. I saw these
signs and flags on $300,000 motor homes and rows of Trump flags in front on million dollar homes.
I also saw them on run down trailer homes and junky pickup trucks
I believe that these people have no ability
for empathy or inclusion.
They are afraid of an invisible boogeyman invented by people that like to see them jump when they say jump.
Circus fleas one and all..
Dangerous Circus fleas because when their beady little brains see some thing or someone that fits the boogeyman description (LBGTQ or non white) the Pavlov’s Dog scenario kicks in and they grab their guns.
One tooth. 2 Bullets. Good to go.
America….We have a problem.
Nix: “America….We have a problem.” Well, Nix that is where President Biden and the Democrats come in. While the Republicans destroy themselves, NOW is the time to build that strong progressive coalition that will better serve the interests of working Americans.
Guy is right. He points out the problem with the stands of that part of the Republican Party that still deals with policy rather than conspiracy theory. It might be a bit less delusional, but it is still extreme, and maybe more deadly than the Trump extremists. Trump, after all, put the brakes on some of the Republican nonsense. Trump didn’t care how much he ran up the debt building his wall to nowhere and cutting taxes on the super rich. The guy spent like the billionaire he wasn’t, and the Republicans went along with it, giving lie to their “concern” about deficits and debt.
Yep, Donald. That is exactly what I am saying. We must tread very carefully. Trump is on his way out eventually, but, that does NOT we then we fall hook, line, and sinker for Rounds’s code talk of “positive conservative policies” – aka Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”. Now is the time for President Biden and his party to take this grand opportunity and build on it. Build a coalition while the Republicans are in such a disarray they may never fully recover from.
Sorry, let me rephrase this to make better sense: Trump is on his way out eventually, but, that does NOT mean we should fall hook, line, and sinker for Rounds’s code talk of “positive conservative policies” – aka Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”. The “we” being working Americans – most of the population.
Maybe Sen. Rounds should try holding a forum not at 9:30 on a Thursday morning at a relatively fancy coffee shop…
Ah yes, Mike Rounds’ world view from Neltom Drive and Woodriver Drive neighborhood, along the shoreline of the Missouri River, north of that ugly, disgusting bridge that mere mortals use to cross from Pierre to Fort Pierre for their guv’mint jobs. Beautiful mornings and glorious sunsets everyday. Long, green lawns watered and manicured through droughts. Long docks extend into the river to accommodate the luxury boats for fishing, waterskiing and delightful cruises along the shoreline to see how the other elites are doing. Gosh, the new developments on the west side sure have dressed up Ft. Pierre. Oh, what a hole in the ground it used to be!
Mike, no doubt, takes a lot of pride in the upgrades to this exquisitely elite slice of South Dakota as a lifelong Realtor and insurance salesman. Oh yeah, and as a state senator and governor. The good life. I got mine, now go get your own. And to think daddy was a guv’mint bureaucrat who found a way to turn oil money into a family empire without actually getting any family member’s fingernails dirty.
Ah, yes. good ol’ fashioned positive conservative values. The myth has served Smilin’ Mike quite well.
What a shock and what a body blow it must’ve been to discover there’s a deep, dark, scary and dangerous side to those ol’ fashioned positive conservative values. A dark underside that yearns and rages for the destruction of our nation. And that includes Mikey’s comfortable world too.
“You try to empathize and you try to put yourself in their position,” Rounds said.
Yes, Mike. If they were to empathize and put themselves in your position in your quiet, sunshiny whites-only world, they’d be in their dirty pickups with their nasty bumper stickers, NRA logos and Trump flags and heading to sweet little Neltom to rock your world. They are your monster, buddy. Fix the problem or they will eat you.
Yes, it’s hard. Very hard. Thoughts and prayers.
‘truly care about their country’ What the hell? So they have the only say in defining our country? No negotiating with terrorists.
I do not understand how Sen Rounds can have so much political clarity in his criticism of these people’s blindness when he did the EXACT same thing with his votes on impeachment of President Trump. He set aside abject reality for a political reality he wanted to create in defiance of what was in front of his face. I did not have empathy for him then; he should not have empathy for them now.
Senator Rounds has tied himself into a knot. He needs to desist from placating those South Dakotans who would overthrow the Constitution and defend this country. He has taken an oath to “protect and defend” the Constitution of the United States as a State Senator, Governor, Senator, Army officer, and National Guard officer. He has failed to do so.
I’ll never admit that George W. won fair and square because his brother Jeb absolutely fixed votes in Florida to overturn the Gore victory.
Also, I’ll never say that George W wasn’t legally elected President.
We went on and ended up with the favorite Prez of my lifetime.
“Bronco” ‘Bama.
MAGA’s don’t want Trump. MAGA’s NEED Trump. He’s their only salve for their miserable lives. Now they’re not losers. Now they’re victims of someone else’s decisions. It’s a self-esteem thing.
Heck of resume builder, Senator (GQP- Moscow) Thune, and Senator Rounds — voting TWICE to not impeach the greatest traitor in US history.
Here’s the known timeline:
1. 7/31/2019: trump spoke with putin (NYT)
2. 8/3/2019: trump issued a request for a list of top US spies (Daily Beast)
3. 10/7/2021: “CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants” (NYT)
4. 8/26/2022: Documents at Mar-a-Largo Could Compromise Human Intel (NYT)
@highbrow_nobrow
add 2a. 11/2020: trump appointed Kash Patel to DOD (formerly worked for Devin Nunes, former deputy to acting DNI ‘overseeing the ops of all 17 intelligence agencies’
see the thread for more . . .