January 6, 2021

We'd better "pray to whatever we believe in" that Republicans never get their actual chance to pretend to overthrow a Democratic presidency. Keith Olbermann is right: what makes today a charade is the 40 seats we won in the House in 2018. If Republicans held both houses of Congress right now there goes the Republic.

KEITH OLBERMANN: This is Olbermann versus Trump, and I'm not Trump. As you watch, 10 to 20 senators and 120 or more representatives from the Republican fascist party make a last desperate stand against the Constitution and to try to make the world safe for kleptocracy... As you hear them stay silent on Trump's lie that the Vice President can reject electors and Trump's conspiracy to blackmail the Secretary of State to alter the vote count in Georgia...

As you hear the learned pundits explain that this anti-American coup is just symbolic, just a political ploy, just an appeal to the base, ask yourself: is this what would be happening right now, what these men and women unburdened by morals or patriotism or allegiance to the Constitution would be doing, what would be unfolding this week, if the Republicans had won the house two months ago?

Where would we be if the Republicans had the majority in the House and the Senate and could actually win a vote against the electoral college results?

Do you think they would suddenly choose democracy over self-interest?

Do you think they would choose truth over treason?

When amoral grasping corrupt villains like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy and Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan opened Pandora's box and let loose the hounds of hell, when they had no power to overthrow the government and stop a Biden presidency, do you really think they would hesitate if they had that power?

We would be in a dictatorship right now.

Today with a dictator who could then, with the help of these Republican fascists, corrupt the elections of 2022 and 2024 and stay in power until he died.

Steve Schmidt, once john McCain's senior campaign advisor and now of the Lincoln Project, predicts that this choice, democracy or Trump, will destroy the Republican party: that those who are loyal to Trump will devour or expel those who are loyal to the constitution. That the GOP will split into two new parties.

So watch what the world is calling "a charade" and "a stunt" and pray to whatever you believe in that Schmidt is right, and the Republicans actually are committing suicide.

Because if Schmidt is wrong, what they are doing now is not a stunt but a preview.

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