Madison Cawthorn Is Not An Outlier

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Charlie Sykes
@SykesCharlie
Until about five minutes ago, Cawthorn’s remarks were more or less basic talking points among the MAGA right; and not just talking points but holy script.

His attitude toward Ukraine is deeply embedded in the right’s DNA.

morningshots.thebulwark.com
Madison Cawthorn Is Not An Outlier
A Cascade of Lies
7:50 AM · Mar 11, 2022

https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/madison-cawthorn-is-not-an-outlier


*snip*

Liz Cheney calls him a member of the Putin wing of the GOP, but it is important to remember that the leader of that wing is Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president.

This is also important to remember:

Until about five minutes ago, Cawthorn’s remarks were more or less basic talking points among the MAGA right; and not just talking points but holy script. His attitude is deeply embedded in the right’s DNA.

So, it’s easy to imagine Cawthorn today, looking around at his GOP critics and asking Dude, what do you mean “outlier”? I’m just saying what we’ve all been saying for years now!

He’d have a point.

For years, the right-wing media — lead by Donald Trump himself — has been obsessed with the alleged vileness of Ukraine, first in the wake of the 2016 election, and then with the whole Hunter-Biden-Burisma-I-would-like-you-to-do-us-a-favor-thing.

Lest we forget, during Russiagate, Rudy Giuliani and Sean Hannity peddled insane conspiracy theories that tried to blame Ukraine for the election interference committed by Russia.

*snip*

[uponit7771]

1. K&R, GZP and Putrid have this one thing in common; both of them are trying to stop democracy

[Traildogbob]

18. Sure, outLIAR

And Kevin says he will promote all the outLIARS, Marginal Trailer Queen, Bang Bang Bimbo Boebert, Kosar and Matty Cawthorn when they Fix the 2022 elections. They ARE the face and Mouths of the Putin Caucus, paid to destroy democracy for Pooty, and make American oligarchs on equal playing field with Russian ones. District 11 NC gave the world Meadows’s and Cawthorn. Can’t wait for Russian guns laws to apply here in WNC. Half the business here will have to close, so those buildings will remodel and add to the 100’s of churches and dollar stores already in each county. Never in my life hated anyone in a wheel chair but this treasonous prick needs his chair breaks adjusted. Throw his ass off SSDI, he wants to end it for all others. That whole KKKlan needs OUT, liars that they are.

[uponit7771]

27. +1, that guy is being enabled and emboldened. If he is saying that out in the open

... just think with these treasonous bastards are saying when there are no cameras

[Samrob]

24. And they all hate "good guys" which Zelensky seems to be. nt

[uponit7771]

26. THIS !!! We need to call GZP out far and wide for this bullshit

[Paladin]

2. Madison Cawthorn, human participation trophy.

Tip of the hat to Evan Hurst at wonkette.com for that priceless, dead-bang description.

[Blue Owl]

3. He's an outright liar, and useful a tool for Vladdy and Red Don, that's for sure

[whopis01]

11. I was going to say he is a liar, and with luck will be out next election

so that makes him some kind of an out-liar

[SleeplessinSoCal]

29. Didn't know anything about him, other than being a jerk.

Really weird liar it turns out.

Madison Cawthorn Wasn't Left 'to Die' in Fiery Crash, Says Friend Who Was Driving
Brad Ledford says he's still close with Madison Cawthorn, the country's youngest congressman and his childhood friend — but Ledford is speaking out to correct a story Cawthorn told about the accident that paralyzed him seven years ago

https://people.com/politics/madison-cawthorn-not-left-to-die-in-crash-friend-says/

WTF??? These people are clinically insane. And that's why they get elected?

[sop]

4. I suspect the "Putin wing of the GOP" doesn't really support Putin like Trump does,

they just want to create as much confusion and division as possible with all their lies and propaganda. In our democratic system unified public will is necessary to take action on important things. The confusion and division Republicans constantly sow means there’s no unified public will to accomplish anything.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

30. Schmucker Carlson sure loves the autocrats.

He Is clearly anti-democracy. Cons cannot win the popular vote. The last time they have was 2004, with a war raging. Before that it was 1988. 32 years of losing, yet they have a strange hold on our courts. They are authoritarian by nature. And play very dirty.

WE MUST DEFEND DEMOCRACY BY EXPOSING THEIR CROOKED WAYS AND ALIGNMENT WITH TYRANTS.

[LonePirate]

5. Most of the people on the right are incredibly stupid. They simply parrot views held by others.

Those few on the right who do express an opinion - bloggers, radio and TV personalities, think tanks - find their ideas adopted quickly by the rank and file who simply do not know any better. The elected idiots like Cawthorn, Boebert, Greene and others are simply riding popularity among the idiots into an elected position. They couldn't explain their way out of a paper bag as they are little more than mouthpieces for the base. They would not hold office if the base did not share those same beliefs, regardless of how repugnant those views are.

[PatrickforB]

7. Ah, but this is the real point, isn't it. We must ask the proverbial cui bono -

who acted for years and years to create this kind of chest pounding ignorant-and-proud-of-it anti-intellectualism among our people?

Who benefits from this ignorance? What is the purpose of rendering so many Americans so ignorant they cannot even find Ukraine on a map? What is the desire behind having groups of people embrace creationism at the expense of science? War and the removal of social safety nets but making abortion illegal? Who benefits from having many on the right equate Putin's authoritarian government with 'Christian nationalism?'

The enemy isn't really the GOP. They are shills, well-paid ones.

So here's a nice little rant for you:

The real enemy is and has always been the uber-wealthy parasites - those people who buy politicians who then systematically route monies from the public treasury into the pockets of a few. This is why we have a Military Industrial Complex, a Prison-Industrial Complex brought into being by the War on Drugs, private-'christian' schools that want to suck up public dollars, and tax breaks for billionaires. This is why Wall Street has drooled over the Social Security Trust Fund since it was born in the New Deal.

They attack on a thousand different fronts day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. And every time regular working people, or minorities get a step up and seem to be improving their conditions, we have a nice little war. Like the one the oligarch Putin has launched. And did you note that Congress passed this year's whopping $770 billion war bill with barely a batted eyelash, but that we still 'cannot' seem to afford healthcare, childcare, infrastructure improvements?

I'm not saying there is some conspiracy, but I am saying the world's oligarchs are a fairly small club. Do they think alike? Do they communicate? Do they cooperate from time to time?

The billionaires are picking our pockets. The GOP is just their foil. They pound wedges between us, and hit us with a hundred different attacks so we will be divided and forget that they are the enemy of whomever they can divide against each other so they can meet their objective of amassing even more wealth.

Greed is the enemy.

Ah, rant over...

[llashram]

13. ++

so true

[czarjak]

14. Righteous Rants allowed. G.H.W.B's "thousand points of light" indeed.

[Martin Eden]

15. Most importantly: Divide and Conquer

The oligarchs need to keep the common folk bitterly divided and at each other's throats instead of turning their attention on the fat cats who are raking in the lion's share of the great wealth generated by all the workers and consumers.

Their biggest fear is that the vast majority of voters will realize our common interests then come after them with the proverbial pitchforks and torches.

[Tommymac]

20. Solidarity. Hopefully Unions in their best form will make a US comeback soon.

Not the corrupt unions of the 1960's and 1970's.

I'm talking the Unions of 1880-1960 which actually helped build The Middle Class and allow the US to become The World's Premier Democracy and Nation.

The 1% own Movement Conservatism and have been working towards the goal of owning and running everything since at least the 1950's and arguably since 1776.

The reTHUGlican Party is their willing tool.

[slightlv]

25. You're right about the oligarchs

I've got no quarrel with you on that front. It's about time people woke up and realized just who has been knocking them down every time they get a step ahead. But we've got other agendas working against us as well. We've got those who have been working and are close to succeeding in taking this nation towards a theocracy. They're almost there. You can see their success in the war against women. We're close to having them move from restricting and overseeing our reproductive "rights" to taking away our rights to own property, have credit in our name, have our own separate bank accounts, be able to travel on our own without male oversight, etc. At one point, these were the laws in this land. They want them back and enforced. Worse, they want to bring on their Armageddon. You, personally, may not believe in their biblical belief of the end of the world, but they don't care. They'll bring it on and take you down with them. And the GOP is not only willingly enabling them, they're part and parcel of them. Look how many "deacons" and preachers, etc., have "practiced" laying on of hands to their presidents and would-be presidents. I'm thinking in particular of pictures of it happening to the Wasilla wannabe, as well as Trump. And reports of the same to GW. Look up the HBO special (I think it was HBO) "The Family." These people also have the oligarchs backing them every step of the way.

This isn't CT, it's happening and it's been happening since at least the days of Nixon. Reagan embraced it completely, which is strange if you consider how into Astrology Nancy was. I guess if you're rich enough, anything can be overlooked, tho...

[PatrickforB]

28. Agreed. As a person with three daughters and two granddaughters,

I absolutely agree with you about women's rights. No doubt about that.

Yes, the billionaires are behind the theocrats, because they were seen as a wedge. And, yes, I have read the book, 'The Family.' Effing scary. Really, really scary. The ideological label these days is Christian nationalists or Dominionists.

The thing that gets me is the oligarchs think they can control these people if they get in power, but look at this historical parallel here with Hitler and the Nazis.

Nazism had a very weak pro-worker socialist stance prior to Hitler taking control, and he did pay lip service to it in early days. But when he began courting German oligarchs and industrialists, he quashed it in favor of the 'master-race' ideology that caused the deaths of god knows how many people in those concentration camps.

Basically, in the 1930s when Germany rearmed, we had the oligarchs making lots of money, while the populace was controlled increasingly by a secular nationalist religion based on race - essentially a theocracy.

What we have is oligarchs making lots of money, with the Dominionists you speak of working feverishly to impose a theocracy upon us. We cannot confine your point merely to the war on women, either. There are concurrent 'wars' being waged here against African Americans, Jews, Muslims, Hispanic immigrants - basically dark-skinned people, the LGBTQ+ community, not to mention nominal Democrats - we have been dehumanized as a group to the point where 'owning the lib-ruls' is held to be more important to these GOP ideologues than policies that benefit them.

I wonder if you have read the book "Dying of Whiteness." Very interesting take on the conservative rank and file and their views on healthcare - many would, apparently, rather die of some god-awful disease than allow an African American, Hispanic, Muslim, immigrant, or poor person have access to the same care.

Well, I'm banging on about all this as the Brits would say - don't mean to be windy, but you are so right about the war on women and these 'christian' dominionists.

[ymetca]

31. Mass murder for fun and profit!

We're getting closer and closer to nearly a billion people on this planet for whom the "system" simply has no need. Rather than give up some of their ill-gotten gains, and spread it around a little better, the obscenely rich and powerful seek to preserve their status by any means necessary.

"If power asks why, then power is weakness" - Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed Great Beast 666

There is something evil percolating up from our collective unconscious again, after sleeping it off since the last great spasm of war.

Cthulhu rises once again from the deep!

Our storytellers have been warning us for quite some time now. Maybe this time we can sublimate the urge? I do not know.

[PatrickforB]

32. A thoughtful and spiritual post, indeed. Yes, Cthulhu.

The forces of chaos.

In the West we feel, have felt for centuries, that if we cannot measure it, see it, touch it, then it cannot exist. A philosopher/counseler friend of many years tells me that Aristotle won the debate over Plato.

Many say there is no Divine force. Yet I believe that this life-force is all things, transcends all things and is within all things. It is the great awareness in which all things exist.

It is conscious but passive.

Yet it does move, and we are its parts.

Your post makes me mindful of a conversation between Frodo and Gandalf in Bag End before Frodo had to set out on his perilous hero-journey. Gandalf was telling Frodo about how the Ring came to Bilbo after it decided to leave Gollum because its master, Sauron, was reaching out for it.

Why, Frodo quips, did the Ring go to Bilbo when an orc would have suited it better? Gandalf answers, "‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker."

As in Tolkien's imaginary world, in our real one, there may well be forces beyond our ken, not explainable by our current science or world view. So many little mistakes in time. Coincidences. What ifs. What if Montezuma had not mistaken Hernan Cortez for Quetzalqoatl, the Feathered Serpent? What if the Spanish Armada had not been decimated by a great storm and had conquered England? What if Stalin hadn't had his stroke in 1953, and had precipitated a nuclear war with the West? What if Khrushchev hadn't blinked over the missiles in Cuba? What if Trump's coup January 6 had worked?

The list is endless.

We might be ok, after all. But we are not excused from doing all we can to oppose evil. And ultimately, our species is not excused from growing up.

[ymetca]

34. Right

That was the great debate between Freud and Jung, with Freud being inclined to believe people are driven by personal urges, while Jung insisting there were larger, deeper levels of "urges" that incline large numbers toward mass hysteria, mass violence, and war. The "Archons of the Deep", for lack of better terminology. "The Old Gods".

A festering of societal oppressions, even small ones, eventually stack up until something awakens, something we thought we had suppressed, and then suddenly large numbers of people begin indulging in unspeakable violence against each other.

Unscrupulous, mostly sheltered, ruling classes try to take advantage of this phenomenon for personal gain, not realizing at first just what they are unleashing. Religious zealots then impose more oppression. Then all hell breaks loose.

It's a cycle, and we forget that we once collectively swore an oath: "never again".

We have seen it before
In times of great sorrow
That human compassion will flow from a well
That has long run dry

- James Taylor

[es466]

12. Good summation of what they are all about /n

[panader0]

6. Like the luthier I mentioned in an OP a coupla days ago,

many people here in the US get their news from many questionable sources and end up
with wild ideas that support the Russian propaganda. The post was about fake biochemical
plants in Ukraine.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

8. This is when we really miss John McCain.

Are there none to replace his courage in that rat pack of fascists?

[peppertree]

10. The few there still are, are either out or on their way

Like all fascist parties, today's GOPee brooks no dissent - and no matter what your last name may be.

Probably the only thing in which they're egalitarian.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

9. on the flip side...

MAGA loyalists run into trouble

March 10 at 7:00 AM PST
In three different states, the MAGA forces suffered recent setbacks. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Democrats will be the beneficiaries of their stumbles, but it does show that the most dutiful cultists of defeated former president Donald Trump have less than an ironclad hold on their party and face some general-election challenges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/10/maga-republicans-setbacks/

[2Gingersnaps]

16. People have a Contitutional Right to freedom of religion, and freedom from religion;

But let us not forget Madison hails from the Charlie Kirk, Josh Hawley, Ben Shapiro school of "Don't go to college, get married young, have lots of children, homeschool, teach from the Bible."

Religious homeschoolers were the ones who took their children out of public schools so they would not be "indoctrinated" by real history and real science. From Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in the 70's they fought to put "right minded" people in every local and state office from School Board, Dog Catcher, Sherrif, Prosecutor, Judges, to Congress and Senate, then Presidents. This did not happen over night, and Trump was not anything new and different, he was the end result.

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” Barry Goldwater, quoted in John Dean's book "Conservatives Without Conscience," 1994

[Jetheels]

21. Sounds like they are members of "the Family" a documentary I think on Netflix.

More frightening than any horror movie ever.

[gab13by13]

17. Please do not miss the point that Nevilledog is making.

Putin = Trump = every member of the GQP, the Putin Party.

CPAC just confirmed that Trump, Putin's puppet, is still the leader of the Putin Party.

Members of the Putin Party are flipping their praise of Putin. Mike Pence wanted to abolish NATO, now he wants to support it.

The Putin party was all against NATO and now they are for it.

The Putin party's campaign slogan is going to be that president Biden should have done more. We can't let them get away with this, we must bind them to Trump to Putin.

[Dr. T]

19. I live in southeastern Wisconsin.

For well over 10 years, Charlie Sykes spewed the conservative right wing bullsh*t as if it were Gospel on WTMJ radio. He regurgitated the lies like a mother bird mouth feeding worms to her brood. Then came Trump. He will be the first to say that he will go back to his hijacked Repuglican party as soon as the idiocrasy has been purged. Here's a big, fat f**k you, Charlie. You are a huge contributor to the sad state of American discourse. You own this.

[Tommymac]

22. No he is not. But we need to make him an 'outofoffice' in Nov 2022

#GOTV2022

[BaronChocula]

23. When I saw the post title, I was thinking something else.

I thought the gist was that he wasn't an outlier as a privileged cheating scofflaw who doesn't think he needs a valid license to drive and that he can participate in an insurrection against the government who signs his paychecks and then act like nothing happened. But yeah, this other stuff about Ukraine makes total sense.

[Boomerproud]

33. He's a very angry , bitter man.

😡