'We need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.'
Source: CNN
The texts, which have not been previously reported, were sent by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The text exchanges show that both members of Congress initially supported legal challenges to the election but ultimately came to sour on the effort and the tactics deployed by Trump and his team.
"We're driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic," Roy texted Meadows on January 1. That text was first released in December by the House select committee and described as being written by a House Freedom Caucus member. Roy's authorship has not been previously reported.
When situated in the overall timeline of events between the election and January 6, the series of texts from Lee and Roy provide new details about how two Trump allies went from fierce advocates of the former President's push to overturn Joe Biden's win to disheartened bystanders. By January 3, Lee was texting Meadows that the effort "could all backfire badly."
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/mike-lee-chip-roy-text-messages-jan-6-mark-meadows-overturn-election/index.html
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who started the teabagger "primary them out" avalanche by torpedoing a stunned Bob Bennett in UT a decade ago.
This article is more than 11 years old
Andrew Clark in New York
Sun 9 May 2010 10.54 EDT
The conservative grassroots Tea Party movement claimed its first major scalp in the US political establishment yesterday as the veteran Republican senator Bob Bennett was deselected by delegates in his home state of Utah for being too moderate. Bennett, 76, has been in office since 1992 and is an ally of the Republican senate leader, Mitch McConnell. His defeat at the hands of two political newcomers was partly due to anger over his support for the White House's $700bn bailout of the banking system at the height of the global financial crisis. Tea Party activists argue for a smaller government with less economic intervention and for conservative positions on guns, abortion and immigration in order to "take back" America.
Their rise in influence is causing consternation for mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike. Bennett was turfed out of office by coming a distant third in a ballot of 3,500 delegates in Salt Lake City. He got just under 27% of the vote, while challengers Mike Lee, a local businessman, and Tim Bridgewater, a lawyer, got 36% and 37% respectively. Fighting back tears, Bennett said afterwards: "The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic, and it's very clear that some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment."
His defeat came despite a ringing endorsement from Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate who is a popular figure in Utah for his Mormon roots and his role in turning around the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Romney had urged delegates to stick with the veteran senator, praising his "skill and loyalty and power" to battle the "sweep and arrogance of the liberal onslaught" in Washington. Although considered a conservative by most national standards, Bennett fell victim to a mood of dissatisfaction with incumbents and to a coalescence around core values in his ultra-Republican home state. His vote for the government's injection of funds into banks proved contentious, as did his involvement in attempts to forge a bipartisan compromise on healthcare reform.
A free market pressure group, the Club for Growth, spent $200,000 (£135,000) campaigning to unseat Bennett. It criticised him for missing 30 votes in Washington this year, saying he had one of the worst attendance records in the senate. Delegates waved yellow flags, hugged each other and shouted "he's gone, he's gone" when Bennett's fate was sealed, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, which reported that a huge ovation swept through the convention hall. Bennett's two challengers will fight for the safe Republican seat in a state-wide primary contest, before facing a Democratic opponent.
(snip)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/09/tea-party-ousts-republican-bennett-utah
Bunch of loons.
I think Chainfire helps explain the "establishment" RW leaders' part. A giant second component. After all, they were in process of their own, more careful authoritarian takeover when tRump's RW populist movement grabbed power.
Subversive establishment powers, including leaders from the religious right, GOP, and wealthy, adjusted strategy to support the "unstable idiot." We watched them use him to great success to put more of their operators in positions to subvert the state from within, including the judiciary, and to further draw and inflame populist support.
So I believe they would have continued -- as they had right up to January 6 -- to use the populist takeover with plans to regain power after. IF they believed it would succeed. And IF they believed they would end up in control.
My take is that this is the reason they didn't. These mostly white men are already very powerful and comfortable in various spheres. They're not the populist outsiders trying to storm their power. 2016 worked very well for them and they intend to win this. But safely, without risking hanging together or separately, and certainly not of being stood against basement walls and shot by a new RW extremist regime, with or without tRump's orders.
Only social scientists can explain the peoples' parts, the biggest component of all, and I still can't take it in and believe it. Except that none are new, only the development into a dangerously "perfect" storm.
Interesting times. 
Republicans had been working toward such a moment for many years. I can see how they took advantage of Trump as a useful idiot, but I don't think most of them anticipated how dangerous and uncontrollable he would be. With Trump, they got far more than they had bargained for and their unstable monster could easily destroy them on a whim.
I'm sure initially that they thought they could manipulate and control him, but they learned the hard way what so many people learned over the years - Trump cannot be leashed, unless you are Putin of course. We may never know why Putin had such power over him.
Good to see you Hortensis! 
have started with some nothing like an old video of him embarrassing himself.
I think there are two types of people in positions of power who say they didn't realize what he was -- those who knew full well and are lying (those with any competence at all) and the genuine self-deluded incompetents who didn't -- of course that's almost a requirement for those the GOP's stuffing lower level offices with these days.
After all, tRump had an intensively documented, very public, 30+-year history of being himself. Mental disfunction of some type(s) was always obvious, and 30 minutes spent learning about personality disorders alone enlightened and alarmed any who did. 
Undoubtedly some still hoped they could control tRump more, but I think we could substitute tRump followers for him in what you're saying and be just as valid. The religious right was able to influence/control a great deal of tRump behavior because he has to have their RR voters. He wasn't too crazy to toe their line while he had to, even while he used his power to corrupt their followers' beliefs. I've wondered how well some of those leaders slept as they wondered what their monster'd do if he got the power he's after and he and his trumpists broke their frayed leash...! The fakes among them wouldn't be able to trust in god to make it all right.
up the kind of people who need a charismatic strongman to follow. He chose RW because there are many more of them, and no doubt it suited him better. He'd have pitched class warfare populism to LW authoritarians if there were more of them, though, and as it is he picked up some of them anyway. Apparently tRump had been interested in "how to become a dictator" for decades, but I also suspect Putin/GRU was probably giving him valuable advice.
Must have seemed like a no-lose to Putin. Maybe, like Senator Lee, he's becoming aware of belated but possibly very big backfire.
Out gardening today, now out to the patio for drinks with neighbors we haven't seen for a while. My snack dishes seem to have disappeared some time in the past two years.
but yesterday was warm and sunny, so I can't complain.
with pulling off a coup? How did they think this would work? Did they think they'd succeed in one of their crazy schemes -- alternate slates of electors, redo voting, endless fauxdits until they got the result they wanted, convince Pence to mess up the certification process, or even burn the Capitol down -- and the rest of us would just go, "You're right -- we really wanted Trump to stay in office. Thank you for showing us the error of our ways."
