politicians always do the politically convenient thing pretty much...1

people in general act out of self interest and in line with their community expectations. Republicans are horrible because they're collectively horrible, and their political incentives are all to be horrible. 2
individuals are accountable for their evil, obviously. but Republican incentives and communities actively encourage people to embrace their absolute cruelest and worst impulses, sometimes even over actual self preservation. 3
all of which is to say—the goal of our politics right now is to change those incentives, as much as we can.

the best way to do that is by defeating republicans over and over again until they have to stop being so horrible to win votes.4
but—Cheney and other republicans seeing their incentives shifting is good, and we should encourage that if we can. 5
framing it as "oh their incentives shifted, so it doesn't count if they do good things" seems fundamentally sort of backwards to me? like, we want to shift the incentives so they're less horrible! that's the goal! (or one goal, anyway.) 6
like, Republicans realizing playing footsie with fascism may get them and their loved ones killed and readjusting accordingly to stop fucking with fascists would be really good. 7
or having GOP terrified that their donors will abandon them if they keep fucking with fascism is good. 8

More from Politics

My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:
Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.

You May Also Like