CBS News Poll Reveals GOP Just Anti-Democratic Cult Now. Yay!

This is some scary shit.

The GOP is a post-democracy party. It's centered around a cult of personality, and the personality isn't even that fabulous, like Madonna in 1991. As you might've noticed from all the voter suppression bills the GOP has passed since the November election, Republicans aren't interested in winning fairly, just so long as they win.

A CBS News poll of people shameless enough to still identify as Republicans revealed that a slim majority (53 percent) believes the party's strategy for future electoral success should involve winning over more voters with “policies and ideas," like suckers. The remaining 47 percent are shiftless deadbeats who Mitt Romney will "never convince to take personal responsibility and care for their lives." Just kidding, this is actually much worse than Romney's contempt for the poor.

Forty-seven percent of Republicans today believe they have enough voters already and just need to “push for changes to state voting rules." That's not a “big tent" strategy. This is a “Make America Antebellum Again" movement.

Republicans obviously don't have enough voters to fairly win national elections, but they've grown accustomed to that not mattering much. The existing rules already greatly favor them. They've lost the presidential popular vote all but once in the past 25 years but the Electoral College gifted them three White House terms. Democrats currently hold just a Manchin-thin Senate majority despite representing 41,549,808 more people than the Republican senators.

This is why congressional Republicans can easily oppose voting rights legislation, because their base is roughly split on the question of whether they should even bother with democracy.

Some moderate Democrats and former Republicans who appear on MSNBC talk shows hoped that once the twice-impeached thug was out of office, the “polite" Republicans who just want to deny poor people healthcare would take control again. This remains a fantasy. The CBS News poll asked Republicans what they thought of Rep. Liz Cheney's purge from leadership because she wouldn't promote the Big Lie, and they were all for it.

Eighty percent of Republicans who'd heard about the vote agree with Cheney's removal — they feel she was off-message, unsupportive of Mr. Trump, and that she's wrong about the 2020 presidential election. To a third of them, and most particularly for those who place the highest importance on loyalty, Cheney's removal also shows "disloyalty will be punished."

Holy shit! “Disloyalty will be punished" is a scary ass motto. If you see that on someone's bumper sticker, you should change lanes immediately. Republican voters sound like "Star Trek" villains now, and not even the Borg but the aliens who made the Borg piss their pants. 

Cheney has stated on both the House floor and on Fox News that the 2020 election wasn't rigged or a so-called “crime of the century" just because former President Sore Loser got his ass beat. She'salso admitted that she regrets voting for the former guy last year. Yes, we know: The insurrectionist-in-chief was always terrible and Republicans suck for enabling him over the past five years. But Cheney at least withdrew her support and voted to impeach the one-term loser after he sicced a violent mob on her. It's deeply disturbing that she's an outlier among the GOP caucus.

Barely a fifth of Republicans surveyed opposed Cheney's ouster, and their impact is even more limited because "this group is also less likely to report voting in Republican primaries." Republicans only ever look to their next primary race, and fealty to the mad MAGA king is necessary for survival.

Almost 90 percent of Republicans believe the party should take the former guy's lead on economic and immigration issues, which are mostly indistinguishable from the establishment GOP's own crappy positions. However, about 80 percent of Republicans think the party should follow the twice-impeached thug's example when it comes to “leadership" and “how to treat the media." The asshole incited a violent attack against the seat of government. He refused to concede an election he obviously lost and spread democracy-shredding lies about the results. He used the power of his office to pressure officials into overturning the election. He frequently called the press the "enemy of the people."

This is what Republicans are advised to emulate and with polls like this, we can only expect more Marjorie Taylor Greenes. As Wonkette declared last week, the GOP is no longer "an American political party" and is now "a full-blown anti-American domestic insurgency." This isn't poetic hyperbole. It's our undeniable reality.

[ CBS News ]

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