The Big Question
by digby
David Frum asks the question I think we should all be asking at this point:
To what extent does President Trump—to what extent do congressional Republicans—look to Russian interference to help their party in the 2018 cycle?
Most observers predict a grim year for the GOP in 2018. But the economy is strong, and selective tax cuts are strategically redistributing money from blue-state professionals to red-state parents. The Republican national committee commands a huge financial advantage over its Democratic counterpart. (Thing look more even at the level of the individual candidates.) A little extra help could make a big difference to Republican hopes—and to Trump’s political survival.
Nothing has been done in the past 15 months to prevent that help from flowing. You have to wonder whether the president does not privately welcome that help, as he publicly welcomed help from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016.
Trump’s own tweets reveal that among the things he most fears is the prospect of Representative Adam Schiff gaining the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee from the clownish present chairman, Devin Nunes. How far would Trump go to stop a dreaded political opponent, inside the law and outside? How far has Donald Trump gone in the past?
Trump continues to insist that he and his campaign team did not collude with Russia in the 2016 election. We know that they were ready and eager to collude—that’s on the public record. (“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”) The public does not yet know whether the collusion actually occurred, and if so, in what form and to what extent.
But in front of our very eyes we can observe that they are leaving the door open to Russian intervention on their behalf in the next election. You might call it collusion in advance—a dereliction of duty as grave as any since President Buchanan looked the other way as Southern state governments pillaged federal arsenals on the eve of the Civil War.
Yes they are. All of them. And I guess that a whole lot of Americans are fine with that.
This strikes me as one of the most astonishing developments in this whole story. I get that Trump is an imbecile who has no idea how politics are supposed to work. He learned everything he knows from watching TV. But other Republicans must know that it would have been so much better if they had at last pretended to be alarmed by this election interference and had put on a show to indicate that they were on top of the matter. But it really doesn't seem so. They're all obviously more than willing to fight any attempts to stop another round of interference because they seem to be very sure that they are the ones who will benefit. And they have recognized that they can literally say anything and deny everything and their voters will not challenge them.
They already cheat with their vote suppression efforts and lies about voter fraud. If foreigners want to help them win elections by pushing out propaganda and stealing their opponents' proprietary documents and private correspondence, what's the problem? It's all for a good cause, amirite?
.
