How House Republicans Fought Ukraine Like They Fight The Social Safety Net - TPM – Talking Points Memo

Chaos inflicted on the House over the past several weeks by a small cohort of MAGA Republicans may claim one main victim besides Kevin McCarthy’s dignity: aid to Ukraine.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1470521
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MAGAts like autocratic strongmen like Putin and wannabe autocratic strongmen like DJT.

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Why do Republicans hate democracy?

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I’m pretty sure Putin told trump to tell the republican boot lickers to defund Ukraine. Is there really any doubt about this? The real question for me is what dirt does Putin have on the GOP in general that they just do as he wants them to do.

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I don’t get this “money that goes to Ukraine is money that doesn’t go to Americans” when Republicans also always oppose spending money for services to Americans.

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“We just can’t afford it right now,” say the billionaires.

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Have fun squaring that with the state of things in Israel right now.

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Republicans hate democracy because democracy hates Republicans.

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Moreover, McCarthy was convinced that the cutoff of aid to Ukraine was a poison pill that the Dems would reject in the CR, and the CR itself. He had a number of his allies convinced too, but when the Dems accepted that and the CR passed, things fell apart for him and here we are. Aid to Ukraine has only ever been a bit of isolationist theater for the rubes down home.

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Shouldn’t the Ds start to float a discharge petition?

ETA. Helping Ukraine has strong support even among republicans.

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The weapons we send are produced by our defense industry. My spending is your income your spending is my income.

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But hostage-taking in the House over aid to Kyiv found success in recent weeks as isolationist members of Congress, largely coalescing around Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), spent months casting Ukraine as undeserving of a shrinking pool of American largesse, denied to American citizens while lavished on Kyiv.

That motherfucker wants to wage war on Mexico. He is no isolationist. He’s a Putin lickspittle.

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Bin-f*$&-go. These walking POS all voted against the infrastructure bill and routinely vote against all kinds of programs that help the Americans they carry on about so much. They also never met a military budget outlay they didn’t like, but now are all suddenly “butter before guns.” This is all about MAGA fascism being in bed with Putin’s genocidal regime, plain and simple. Dear God, these people are evil. Democrats should not vote for any overall funding bill that cuts off Ukraine, and Biden should veto anything similar that might pass both wings of Congress. Throw the R’s some bones on border funding if necessary, but get it done—democracy is on the line everywhere, and Ukraine is facing the attack in its most brutal form.

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It’s an insultingly transparent argument from the party that spend most of their time finding ways to dismantle welfare, SS, Medicare and every other corner of the social safety net innit? The truth is they’re all Putin-assets now and are pursuing this grievance as Trump proxies - nothing more.

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It should be money “that doesn’t go to American billionaires.”

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Is there not one good idea that the Republicans don’t hate and want to get rid of?

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OT

The incongruous spectacle was proof, if any more were needed, that Trump’s court appearances and White House campaign woes have essentially merged. The legal woes that would distract or destroy most candidacies have now become a defining feature of his 2024 presidential run.

“Every time he’s in a courtroom, he’s campaigning,” said Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary. “The courtroom has replaced his rallies and that’s what the next 14 months are going to look like. He’s a showman; he loves this shit. This will be his campaign and it could work.”

“I blame the US mainstream media partially for that because they have normalised this, with the OJ Simpson, Bronco-style camera angles of him driving to the courthouses four times, from when he leaves his golf course to when he arrives at the courthouse.

“This is our democracy on the line and we should not be covering it as if it is some third-rate reality show … that’s where Trump thrives the most, because it desensitises people to how extraordinarily detrimental to our democracy this actually is.”

Baron, author of a new book, Collision of Power, added: “He controls the conversation, and more and more what we ought to be doing is saying, ‘What would this second Trump administration actually look like? Who would he appoint to be members of his cabinet? What kinds of policies would he implement at the beginning?’ [But we know that the spectacle addicted Legacy News Media won’t take this approach]

Clearly, it would be a vengeance tour. He would be targeting the Department of Justice, the FBI, the press, courts, you name it.”

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OT. Did anyone else read the WaPo story about the evil Ds in Illinois who have caused rethugs to go further right? Apparently, when our legislature drew the 2022 map the gerrymandering (I’m so proud of our gals and guys) created a district where a moderate rethug (?) was forced into a primary fight against a MAGA. MAGA won, consequently, helping to create the current mess in the House.
In its finest example of both siderism the Post prints a map rating states’ level of gerrymandering grading A thru F. Illinois is the only D state rated F (again, I’m so proud) with at least eight rethugs at this grade. Yet the whole article ( at least I think it’s the whole article, at about half way my stomach couldn’t take any more ) is about how Illinois is helping create the mess in the House.
WTF?

ETA. Went back to check. Oregon and Nevada are Ds that also scored F. There are ten rethug states scoring F, including biggies Texas and Florida.

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A Trump second term is way more dangerous than his single term. If one believes in God, then the pandemic was a test and a barrier for curbing Donnie’s insane world view.

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The most important part of all of that, is asking the question frequently, loudly, visibly and annoyingly. The Republicans have pulled that crap on anyone not them for years and gotten away with it. Time they should have it put to them. Plenty of evidence they do hate Democracy. And America.Get that idea into the wind to our benefit for once.

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