Republicans Are Bad Faith Political Actors On An Institutional Level

Republicans are bad faith political actors.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m growing more confident in my view that Trump will ultimately be acquitted by the Senate. The “what he did was bad but not THAT bad” line will begin to take traction and the rest will take care of itself. We’ll be lucky to get a 50-50 tie.

Now, there are different reactions to this almost near-inevitability.

MAGA: They will see it as final confirmation that they are above the law. They are finally free of any political constraints. Trump will grow extremely brazen in his authoritarian actions. We won’t have a free-and-fair election in 2020. At some point in Trump’s second term, he begins to demand a Constitutional Convention to pass a balance budget amendment, and it goes rouge. American Carnage is codified in the Constitution, the Thousand Year Trump is founded and sometime about 2023 people like me are “vanished.” I am sent to a ICE camp and shot dead at some point. Luz?

Biden Democrats: They will somehow continue to fool themselves that everything is still normal. They will want to reach across the aisle to get things done. Republicans will laugh in their face. The macro problems in the country that impeachment accelerated will come to a head. In the end, the Biden Democrats will likely suffer the most when ICE camps are weaponized.

The point is, I would rather go down fighting and on a politically honest level than meekly give up and let Trump do what he’s going to do anyway. The only thing to date that has stopped use from becoming a Russia-style “managed democracy” has been that Trump is criminally incompetent. He will remain so, but he’s finally getting to the point that he understands how to abuse power more effectively.

Republicans are bad faith political actors, full stop. They’re little more than old school fascists. They see democracy as nothing more than a means to an end — obtaining and keeping power and obtaining as much money as possible as quickly as possible. They’re willing to say any lie, break any law and ultimately hurt anyone they have to hurt to do this. In hindsight, the Republicans are pretty obvious marks for the Russians — they are so blinded by absolute greed that they don’t even think about how accepting money from Russians is a betrayal of their country. It doesn’t even enter their minds.

As I keep saying, there are two “known unknowns.”

Trump’s mental state
If he finally snaps in a really public manner, then his acquittal in the Senate grows more debatable. I’m beginning to think this is just my own liberal fever dream in the midterm. He may go nuts, but I think he’ll be able to survive until his second term. House Trump will be so brazen by that point that Don Jr. may be the Crown Prince Veep. When Trump finally goes bonkers, Don Jr. becomes Emperor, er…President, and away we go.

Anti-Impeachment Violence
This is another thing I simply don’t know what to expect. We’ve reached enough of a stabilization in the situation that I’m beginning to think — thankfully — that such violence is unlikely. There may be some “false flag” attempts at violence on MAGA’s part, but overall I think we’re reasonably safe on that front.

So, I would say the real issue is to what extent does House Trump alienate progressive-liberals in Hollywood that they begin to leave the country en mass. Silicon Valley is probably much safer on that front. But a lot of very productive people are center-Left, so it’s possible that when ICE starts to shoot us in the back of the head, the people who can leave, will leave.