Commentary | The hell with “compassionate conservatism”: In 2023, expect all MAGA sadism, all the time – By Amanda Marcotte (Salon) / Dec 30, 2022
Moderation to win swing voters? Forget it. Today’s GOP is all about vengeance against anyone who’s not like them
Here are some snapshots of what the luminaries of the GOP, the cream of the Republican crop, have been up to since the predicted “red wave” of the 2022 midterms failed to materialize:
On Tuesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed Chaya Raichik, who runs the vicious anti-LGBTQ Twitter acccount Libs of TikTok. Despite Raichik’s routine online pronouncements that she doesn’t hate anyone, she revealed herself to be an unreconstructed bigot in the Anita Bryant vein. “The LGTBQ community has become this cult,” she said, claiming that queer people are “just evil people, and they want to groom kids,” and that the only reason people are gay or trans is because they’ve been brainwashed. Carlson’s response to all this was simple: “Yeah.”
The Republican-controlled Supreme Court, which struck down nearly every emergency measure to slow the spread of COVID, finally found a pandemic rule they like: One that kills people, rather than saving lives. This week, the court forced the Biden adminstration to keep enforcing Title 42, which uses the pandemic as a pretext to expel refugees seeking political asylum, even though health experts say it’s not necessary to prevent viral transmission. This decision was in such obvious bad faith that even Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, took issue with it. Migrants who are turned away based on Title 42 are in danger of kidnapping, sex trafficking and murder.
