The Conspiracy to End America

This clip is worth your time:  former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens on The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.

Near the end, Claire McCaskill makes the point that all 8 of yesterday’s Republican candidates for Speaker were white males who had voted against re-authorizing the Violence Against Women Act, against women’s right to birth control, and against codifying equal pay for equal work.

Stevens thinks this is one of the reasons the Republican Party is drawn to Putin – “How many women in power do you see in Russia?”

But watch the whole thing.

And surely you’ve seen some version of Trump’s favorite chief of staff flipping on him.

I’m guessing Trump will no longer be calling Meadows his “great chief of staff — as good as it gets.”

Could sanity be on the edge of the verge of beginning to return?

Now that Tucker Carlson is known to hate Trump?

To have called him “the world champion of destroying things“?

That may be too much to hope for — cults are not called cults for nothing — but if any of our Trumpist friends or relatives show signs of wavering, I hope we can find ways to show that we share their concerns — the border crisis is serious; the price of gas and groceries does sting; crime (though higher in many “red” states than blue and lower than it was in many decades past) is a very real concern — but then make the case that, all things considered, it may make sense to give the Biden team four more years to address these problems and to build on their very real successes. 

And to preserve the dignity of the office. 

And a calm, steady, pro-democratic approach to governing.  

My two cents.