Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project did an epic Twitter thread yesterday with his vision of what's really at stake in the next two elections. He started by commenting on Newt Gingrich's threats that Democrats face jail for the Jan. 6th investigation if Republicans take control:
"He's right. He's just saying the quiet part out loud. We've been warning you all along that this election isn't about BBB or prescription drugs or guns or climate or anything else in the policy domain. It's about the emergent authoritarian state shambling its way toward the end of small-d democratic politics.
"Speaker Jordan (and no, Kevin, he didn't take your deal and he is going to shank you) and the MAGAe will comprise a clear majority of the GOP caucus in 2022 and they are Trump's political vergeltungswaffe. They don't care about policy. They care about power.
"On the first day of the new GOP's reign, the impeachment of Joe Biden begins. The endless Benghazi 2.0 investigations begin. Expect weeks to TV on Hunter Biden's laptop. Expect endless hearings on the BLM and the imaginary Antifa threat.
"You know why.
"They're doing a few things. First, the purpose of terror is to terrorize. They want the Democrats on defense and the Democrats, being Democrats, will fall into the trap, day one. They'll try the shame the GOP out of it and we know how well that'll work.
"Next, pleasing their god-king. He demands they 'investigate' the Big Lie and they will create a wave of scandals where none exists because the purpose of the Big Lie is corrode and undermine faith in elections.
"Undermining faith in elections is central. Because if the election of 2020 is illegitimate to their base, anything goes.
"I warned in 2019 that they'd mainstream political violence because the acquisition and retention of political power is the only ideological underpinning.
"They've kept the old GOP brand -- low taxes, individual liberty, blah blah blah -- but the new GOP is nationalist, populist, and increasingly fascist.
"McCarthy and McConnell are still playing the old game of Washington and their corporate donors are flooding them with cash. Little do those corporations understand that in the New Order, they'll either toe the line politically or they'll be punished for it. Bannon came right out and said, "We're going to nationalize the social media companies."
"Hawley, Marco, JD, Cruz, et al are pushing that Overton window hard. They'll turn the power of the state into regulating business and enterprise to serve their ideological vision...and it'll work.
"Why is Facebook a fetid hellhole? Because Zuck didn't want Trump to regulate him. Iterate, widely.
"And yes, they'll try to put their opponents in jail. Yes, they'll use the full power of the state to do what they can't do at the ballot box. Stop thinking this is about anything else but alloyed fascism.
"And they'll be abetted by the "conservative" media apparat desperately trying to fit grand and petit authoritarianism into a Burkean frame -- and a mainstream media caught up in access to power and Washington's dumb old game.
"End."
