The grift goes on.
You can’t whine about weaponizing of the Doj while simultaneously claiming that you’ll do the same thing when you take over the House in 2022. And now death threats against those GOP who voted for the infrastructure bill, because the Big Lie persists.
Investing in the nation’s roads and bridges was once considered one of the last realms of bipartisanship in Congress, and President Biden’s infrastructure bill drew ample support over the summer from Republicans in the Senate. But in the days since 13 House Republicans broke with their party leaders and voted for the $1 trillion legislation last week, they have been flooded by menacing messages from voters — and even some of their own colleagues — who regard their votes as a betrayal.
The vicious reaction to the passage of the bill, which was negotiated by a group of Republicans and Democrats determined to deliver on a bipartisan priority, reflects how deeply polarization has seeped into the political discourse within the Republican Party, making even the most uncontroversial legislation a potentially toxic vote.
The dynamic is a natural outgrowth of the slash-and-burn politics of former President Donald J. Trump, who savaged those in his party who backed the infrastructure bill as “RINOs” — Republicans in name only — who should be “ashamed of themselves.”
Mr. Trump’s frequent threats and insults directed at Republicans whom he considers insufficiently loyal have created powerful incentives for the party’s lawmakers to issue similarly bellicose statements. The former president’s approach has also encouraged an expectation among Republican base voters that their representatives will hew unswervingly to the party line.
www.nytimes.com/...
THE BIG PICTURE — A full 30% of Americans say our system of government is not sound at all and needs significant changes in a new Monmouth poll. That’s up from 24% just four years ago, and from 10% in 1980. By comparison, over the last four decades, the share of Americans who say it’s basically sound but could use some improvements has plummeted from 56% to 35%.
2022 WATCH — Forget bad polls and historical precedent: Democrats may lose the House next year before the campaigning even really begins, “thanks to redrawn district maps that are more distorted, more disjointed and more gerrymandered than any since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965,” write NYT’s Reid Epstein and Nick Corasaniti. Republicans in the states have already carved up enough districts to net the five seats they need to take back the chamber, cementing their advantage not just in these midterms but for the foreseeable future. The bigger picture: All the gerrymandering “is likely to leave the country ever more divided by further eroding competitive elections and making representatives more beholden to their party’s base.”
www.politico.com/...