(Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick-Pool/Getty Images)
Over the weekend, this happened:
Sen. Mitt Romney was lustily booed by the more than 2,100 Republican delegates who packed into the Maverik Center on Saturday for the party’s state convention.
“Accusations that Romney was a ‘traitor’ or ‘communist’ flew from the crowd like so many poison darts.”
Romney is, of course, a lifelong Republican. His father was the GOP governor of Michigan. Mitt was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, and is Utah’s junior United States Senator.
As the boos intensified, Romney asked the crowd:
“Aren’t you embarrassed?”
That question seems to hang in the air. How is the GOP not thoroughly humiliated by what it is becoming?
ICYMI, take a moment to watch this video from a recent open mic night at Mar-a-Lago:
Here’s what he said:
“Watch Arizona, some very interesting things are happening in Arizona, and we just had a great ruling, or actually the Senate, the State Senate of Arizona. Let’s see what they find, I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes. So we’re going to watch that very close to the end after that we’ll watch Pennsylvania and you watch Georgia and you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin and you’re watching New Hampshire, they found a lot of votes up in New Hampshire, a lot of votes up in New Hampshire just now, you saw that? Because this was a rigged election, everybody knows it and we’re going to be watching it very closely but start off by you just take a look, it’s on closed circuit…”
Imagine watching this and saying: Yes, that is our leader. We believe him. We follow him. Let’s put him back in the Oval Office.
Aren’t you embarassed?
The GOP very obviously isn’t. It listens to this deluded and absurd rant and thinks:
In fact, as the Wapo reported yesterday, believing Trump’s Big Lie has become “a defining loyalty test.” (But, if you’ve been reading the Bulwark you knew that.) The key quote in the story from Debra Ell, “a Republican organizer in Michigan and fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump.”
“I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified,” she said, referring to Trump’s baseless claims that widespread electoral fraud caused his loss to President Biden in November.
The vast majority of Republican voters have bought into the buncombe.
Aren’t you embarassed?
The House GOP evidently is not. Axios reports that GOP leaders are threatening to strip Liz Cheney of her leadership position for her disloyalty to Trump’s lie. During an interview with Axios on Friday, Rep. Steve Scalise laid down a marker of fealty: "This idea that you just disregard President Trump is not where we are, and, frankly, he has a lot to offer still.”
GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio (who also voted to impeach Trump in January) is one of the few Republicans to defend Cheney:
"If a prerequisite for leading our conference is continuing to lie to our voters, then Liz is not the best fit," he told The Hill. "Liz isn't going to lie to people. Liz is going to say what she believes. She's going to stand on principle. If that's going to be distracting for folks, she's not the best fit. I wish that weren't the case."
If the GOP is not embarrassed about this, how about this?
In today’s Bulwark, Tim Miller reports on Lin Wood’s bid to become the next chairman of the South Carolina GOP. “Over the past week of campaign stops in South Carolina,” Miller writes, “Wood has suggested that Donald Trump is still secretly in charge of the military and that a day of reckoning is coming for those who are perpetrators of the pedo pandemic.”
In other clips he has:
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Claimed Trump was still the president, which he dismissed as humor to Lovegrove. Even though, in a separate video that he described on his Telegram as a “special moment,” he said that Trump still has the nuclear codes.
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Argued that Mike Pence and the deep state let in Antifa rioters on January 6, making them “traitors” who should die by firing squad.
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Offered a counter-NWO-type theory based on symbolism from Trump’s first inaugural address that might mean that the military is actually in charge of the country right now.
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Said it’s common sense that Joe Biden didn’t even get 2 percent of the vote in 2020.
"This is not standard conspiracy-mongering,” writes Miller. “It is the creation of a warped alternate universe meant to convince people their leaders are actually enemies committing the most debased crimes imaginable... And a quarter of the Republican party is signing up."
Aren’t you embarassed?
Aaron Rupar @atrupar
Mystery Solvent @MysterySolvent
Donie O'Sullivan @donie
