The Republican Utopia

[Danny Bateman]

Nice.

 

 

And here's the kicker.

 

 

[RedDenver]

 

[Danny Bateman]

JFC McConnell is a sanctimonious liar.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[RedDenver]

 

[Danny Bateman]

Finally, a post I can feel good about in the Republican Utopia.

 

Patrick Frey, on Donald Trump, Mark Twain and Mugwumps. An excellent essay. The meat of it:

 

Quote

The movement of Republicans who dared to commit this crime—not only to withhold their vote for the Republican, but actively vote for the Democrat—gained a name: Mugwumps. Twain was a proud Mugwump.

 

An aside: When I was a small child, my dad used to tease my siblings and me by raising his arms in front of him, palms facing outward, and curling his fingers in the faux-menacing fashion of a cartoon monster, as he announced: “I’M GOING TO TURN YOU INTO A MUGWUMP!” The way it came out, in his mild Oklahoma drawl, was “MUGWAMP.” Dad never explained the term to us. I thought he had made it up. It wasn’t until a high school history class that I learned otherwise. Even then, I thought of “Mugwumps” as an obscure political movement from the 1800s, nothing more. It wasn’t until I read Twain’s autobiography in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election that the significance of the Mugwumps knocked me over the head.

In this election, I have decided to adopt the strategy of the Mugwumps.

 

Many of my fellow travelers who share my free-market, small-government, classical liberal views have decided to simply sit this one out. I do not criticize them for this. As a general rule, I do not like to criticize anyone for their vote. I don’t criticize those who will stay at home, or even those who will vote for Donald Trump because they dislike Joe Biden’s policies. (Hell, I don’t like most of Biden’s policies. I see this election as Rule of Law vs. No Rule of Law. But not everyone sees it the same way, and that’s fine.) Voting is a personal matter, and people vote (or refuse to vote) for all kinds of reasons. That’s their business.

 

But I am persuaded by the Mugwump logic. To parallel Twain’s argument above, I must ask myself: Why am I keeping back my vote for Donald Trump? Plainly the answer is, to do what I can to defeat Donald Trump. I consider him to be a criminal, an illiterate doofus, a danger on the world stage, and a person who is completely nuts with his finger on the nuclear trigger. Very well then, refusing to vote for Trump is a vote against Trump. The common-sense procedure would be to cast two votes against him, by turning in my vote for Joe Biden. After all, Trump has told his supporters to vote twice: once by mail and again at the polling booth. That’s not legal, of course—but if there is a legal way to cast the equivalent of two votes against Trump, I might as well take it.

 

Dad, although I remember your attempts with fondness, you never really turned me into a Mugwump.

 

It took Donald J. Trump to do that.

 

 

[RedDenver]

 

[RedDenver]

 

[knapplc]

6 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

 

 

 

And trump supporters blocking a bridge in New York.

 

You know what was weird about all that? In the instances where the trumpists were up to shenanigans, there were no armored cops, no helicopters circling overhead, no pepper spray. 

 

Weird.

 

[RedDenver]

1 minute ago, knapplc said:

 

 

And trump supporters blocking a bridge in New York.

 

You know what was weird about all that? In the instances where the trumpists were up to shenanigans, there were no armored cops, no helicopters circling overhead, no pepper spray. 

 

Weird.

 

 

[TGHusker]

On 10/30/2020 at 11:52 AM, Danny Bateman said:

Finally, a post I can feel good about in the Republican Utopia.

 

Patrick Frey, on Donald Trump, Mark Twain and Mugwumps. An excellent essay. The meat of it:

 

 

 

I guess I'm a Mugwump also!

[DevoHusker]

27 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

 

 

It is ridiculous, dangerous and stupid regardless of who does it. I hope some of the vociferous folks from the right condemn this, just as they did when the BLM protestors chose to do the same dangerous stunt.  

[RedDenver]

 

[Mike Mcdee]

29 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

 

Do you ever read a tweet thread like this and just want to yell "F-word" really lout? The way that Trump whips these type of people into a frenzy is ridiculous. There are no attempts to bring people together. No attempts to bring down the temperature of this country, covid fever or otherwise. No attempts to encourage people to be better people. He just tries to trigger that more basic part of the human brain; these primitive instincts where each response is only an escalation of the one that came before. It's exhausting. Be well Huskerboard, these next few days could be trying in everyway imaginable. 

[RedDenver]

This is just so bizarre: