Lin Wood, the Trump lawyer who hasn’t yet been fired, is calling for Georgia Republicans to sit out the upcoming run-off election if the legislature and Governor don’t override the vote on behalf of the Dear Leader:
Lin Wood — the attorney currently filing lawsuits on behalf of President Donald Trump over the results of the 2020 presidential election — called on Georgians to withhold their votes to Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) in the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs if they don’t help overturn the election results in the state.
On Saturday, Wood tweeted, “Let’s speak truth about @SenLoeffler & @sendavidperdue. Why are they doing little or nothing to support efforts by GA citizens to address unlawful election & need for @BrianKempGA to order special session of legislature?”
“If not fixed, I will NOT vote in GA runoff,” he warned. “Will you?
This follows Sidney “never heard of her” Powell saying the Senate election was rigged so Kelly Loeffler would beat the Trumpier Doug Collins. According to NBC, the President is angry that his crack team of legal assassins is making him look bad:
President Donald Trump is sweating over his campaign lawyers’ dismal and often outlandish efforts to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s projected electoral victory.
Trump is worried that his campaign’s legal team, which is being led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is composed of “fools that are making him look bad,” NBC News reported Monday.
That group, which has unironically called itself an “elite strike force team,” to date has failed to win any legal victories that would invalidate votes for Biden, the former Democratic vice president, even as they tout wildly broad claims of fraud for which they have offered no convincing evidence.
[…]
Trump has complained to White House aides and outside allies about how Giuliani and Powell conducted themselves at that event, NBC reported.
On Sunday before Powell got the axe, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a close Trump ally and former top federal prosecutor, called the president’s legal team a “national embarrassment.”
But when asked why Trump doesn’t fire Giuliani and other attorneys who remain on the team, a person familiar with the president’s thinking gave a profane shoulder shrug of an answer.
“Who the f--- knows?” that person said to NBC News.
My in-depth political and legal analysis follows:
Now that we’ve gotten that hearty robot laugh out of the way…yeah, it’s still pretty horrifying how many Americans - not a majority, Thank God, but still over seventy million people - endorsed Trump’s first term in office or, at the very least, didn’t see his shocking behavior as a deal-breaker. And many of them still support his half-assed coup attempt.
Jonah Goldberg takes a flamethrower to the political party he once supported:
I know I’m a broken record about how the weakness of our political parties is poisoning our politics. But look, political parties are supposed to be patriotic institutions. Unlike the Boy Scouts or Major League Baseball, however, they have a deep interest in protecting the sanctity of our electoral system. Their interest in preserving the legitimacy of our political system is total, in the same way the New York Yankees’ interest in the health of baseball is total. And yet, the RNC hosted that hate crime against democratic legitimacy yesterday. The GOP’s social media account spewed soundbites from Powell and Giuliani out into the country like a firehose attached to a sewage tank.
A serious party that cared about its long-term credibility, never mind the long-term credibility of our political system, would walk away from this burning septic tank en masse. Instead it spends its days lobbing Molotov cocktails of flaming B.S. from its windows.
And I don’t care if “the Republican base” believes this bilge or wants to believe it. The party has a higher obligation to the country, to future Republicans, and—as quaint as it sounds—to its principles than to a lame duck president.
None of these hacks are getting Wales out of this, and it wouldn’t be worth it if they were.
While we're at it, spare me the hosannas for the newfound courage of people like Joni Ernst. When the Trump campaign was merely claiming that the presidency was stolen, she stayed quiet. It was only when Powell claimed that other Republican politicians stole their races, too, that she suddenly took offense.
As for the conservative “leaders” who think it’s their job to tell their readers, viewers, and listeners what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear for the good of the country, my contempt is total. In a system with weak parties, it is incumbent on the ideological allies of the party to explain to the rank-and-file what is true and right. Pandering to them is not only wrong, it’s dangerous. The whole point of the conservative movement is to protect and preserve the legitimacy of the constitutional order and the blessings of liberty such an order was intended to secure. Indulging feelings—no matter how sincerely felt—when they don’t align with the actual facts undermines that project.
As I’ve said over and over, Trump is Trump. He’s damaged goods. And some of his followers really are thoroughly brainwashed Flavor-Aid drinkers who believe Hugo Chavez rigged the election from beyond the grave. These people are who they are.
It’s the ones who know better - and have known better since 2016 - who should never be allowed to live this down.
Feast your eyes on the Aznom Palladium, an Italian luxury SUV based on a Ram pickup truck chassis:
“Man, this thing is ugly,” says Hagerty.com, and, well, they’re right. It looks like the offspring of a Laforza and a Mohs SafariKar.
And yet…I feel like it’s so ugly that it circles around and becomes beautiful, kind of like how a Neil Breen movie is so bad it’s a masterful work of art. There truly is nothing else like it. The last time I had this reaction to a custom-built Italian car was when I saw the infamous Alfa Romeo SZ - “Il Monstro” - in 1989:
Given the choice between an anonymous lookalike crossover and something like this, I know what I’d rather drive. (Keep in mind that I’m also obsessed with old AMC products and even have soft spot for the PT Cruiser.)
The infighting does nothing to improve the image of the Republican party. But who knows? Many voters aren’t interested in facts. A QAnon believer is now an elected official. It will be interesting to see how it all develops.
The approach of pandering to feelings instead of educating people is reflected elsewhere in society, my lasting favourite (?) being UBC vs. its antifa student demonstrators. Throw a tantrum, get what you want. Every parent knows this is a backwards approach. It works briefly, but makes things worse in the long run.
Good old Bender has it right: it’s important not to take it all too hard right now. Otherwise, it might drive a person around the bend. :-o
The Italians have style, say what you want. I’d pick the Palladium over the Cruiser, though. :)