Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi rebuffed criticism from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and other leaders Wednesday over her government's treatment of its ethnic Rohingya Muslims.

I would like to talk about this:



I think Rothkopf is assigning negatives to the GOP on a lot of subjects that I think they are, frankly, agnostic on. Republicans don’t actually have any considered opinion on science or scientific advancement, other than when it gets in the way of the things they want. They aren’t “anti-environment,” whatever that means. They just don’t see it as their problem to solve. They aren’t pro-autocrat. They just don’t care. If the tax cuts show anything, it’s that the GOP will never let long term problems or greater moral consideration distract from immediate personal gain.

I also think he misses the boat on why Republicans remain loyal to a man who is dissolving their party faster than the corpse of a freshly murdered journalist in acid. It’s been a journey...one which started as “we can survive this, and maybe even use him as cover to do some unpopular things that he will take the blame for,” became “ok, its bad, but having our side’s president impeached is worse,” and is now “all we have left is the base.” It was a billion incremental follies, which never let up until finally the party leaders turned around and realized they could no longer see the way back. Realistically, you cannot expect that they will turn away from the only group of people they can expect to turn out to vote for them in two years. They don’t humor the Steve Kings because they secretly agree with his racism; they humor them because they don’t care one way or the other, and they need them. The Bible thumping preacher party is, at the end of the day, made up of the ultimate agnostics.

So they need the base, Donald owns the base, and they probably figure that they will hold on in deep red states and rebuild at a later time. The last thing they want to have happen is for the people who can make that journey possible to see them as weak, compromising, or in any way willing to abandon them.

Since the election, Trump has tweeted zero times about the caravan

I feel like there are a lot of moderate Republicans who want to do more of this "work together" stuff but they are far outnumbered by the rabid base that are currently in charge.

Since the election, Trump has tweeted zero times about the caravan

chuck todd mentioned something the other day that the 2 days following the election, fox news did not mention the caravan once on any of their daily shows compared
to an average of 12 times per show prior..

Pretty literally all of them went along with the partisan steamroller while power was entirely in their pockets. One problem Republicans are going to have going forward is that no one believes them when they speak of bipartisan compromise, and as a result for the first time Democrats aren’t facing pressure to try and get along with them.

.....and what that end game looks like.

Oof