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"Republicans have chosen to oppose Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former Vice President Mike Pence than to drop their support for Donald Trump. This is the one fact that’s keeping Republicans in office scared. They don’t want to tap into that root of Trumpism and lose their own elections."

Let's be a bit clearer here: They don’t want to tap into that root of Trumpism and lose their own PRIMARY elections.

Perhaps the path out of this thicket is for principled Republicans to run against Trumpism, anticipate the primary loss, and let the Trumpist candidate get shellacked in the general election, so that the principled loser can return next cycle with a message to the Party that they tried it Trump's way last time and lost, so maybe it's time again to start fielding competitive candidates for general elections again. Fortunately for the Republicans, Democrats haven't internalized this message as quickly as they should have either, so we're left picking between sets of two crazy people.

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Bingo ... polarization is the enemy, but the cure is a difficult and elusive medicine. Feels like we have been drifting towards the polarization iceberg for 60 years at least.

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Jan 7, 2022Liked by Chris J. Karr

"34 percent of Americans now believe that violence against the government can be justified under certain circumstances"

You're correct. The percentage should be close to zero. There are always a few radical dissidents and anarchists to contend with. If one component of that 34% is 40% of Republicans, there are a lot of independents and various leftist organizations who believe that political violence might be justified.

I think the problem is distrust of the government. There is no consistency of policy. Executive actions, agency regulation, prosecutorial discretion and other governance factors experience wild swings every two or three election cycles. Strictly adhere to the Constitution. Consistency and trust will return.

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