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There are worse ways to take the pulse of conservatives in North Texas than listening to Mark Davis. The veteran AM talker, who used to fill in for Rush Limbaugh, has been a fixture of drive-time right-wing radio, mostly in Dallas, for forty years. He also writes an occasional column for the Dallas Morning News and maintains a lively Twitter account. But perhaps his most influential role is interviewer and enforcer. The Mark Davis Show on 660 AM/The Answer is a frequent forum for Texas Republican elected officials; they go on his chummy show to commiserate, to celebrate, to break newsand occasionally to be scolded by Davis for various transgressions.

The latter was the order of the day for Congressman Van Taylor last May. Taylors transgression? The day before, hed been one of two Texas Republicans in the U.S. House to vote for a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Davis had come loaded for bear. Everybody that voted for you is pissed off today, Van, they dont get this!

Taylor told Davis that his interest was in getting to the bottom of what happened, including any security failures that Nancy Pelosi might be responsible for.

My dog knows what happened on January sixth, Davis shot back. I dont want to say I dont care, but this is five-hundredth on my list of stuff right and Ill be damned if Im going to hand this to the malicious, weaponized hands of the Democratic party.

Taylor, serving his second term in Congress after eight years in the Texas Legislature, responded evenly. He explained that the bipartisan body would be modeled on the 9/11 commission and would be equallyweighted between Republican and Democratic appointees, none of them members of Congress. The alternative, he said, would be a partisan committee dominated by Democrats. Davis, with his resonant timbre, countered Taylors procedural explanation with a symphony of fecund metaphors (the commission would lead to a ridiculous orgy of Trump-bashing, a savagery of Trump, and a bludgeoning) followed by six seconds of painful silence. I know where you are coming from, Taylor finally said in a meek tone. It was, to use a Limbaugh term, a drive-by.

In late January, a little more than a month before the March 1 primaries, Taylor went back on Daviss show. In eight months, a lot had happened. The January 6 commission had been approved by the House, but voted down in the Senate. As predicted, the Democrats had instead created a special committee, comprising seven Democrats and two Trump-skeptical Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kitzinger. Meanwhile, four challengers had lined up to take down Taylor, who voted with Trump 89 percent of the time and earned a reputation for a smug brand of tea party politics during his stint at the Legislature. No matter: his vote for the January 6 commission and his vote to certify the 2020 presidential election had riled many in the grassroots of Collin County, the affluent and traditionally Republican patch of suburbia north of Dallas. Here in Texas, he said he was a conservativebut when he went to Washington, he went Washington, announced the website of Keith Self, one of the challengers.

Would Davis help Taylors opponents land a death blow? Davis argued with Taylor about his January 6 vote, but the host seemed to have mellowed on the issue. After the interview, Davis told his listeners that Taylor was a great congressman who has been right on virtually everything. As far as his opponents booting him out of office, I just dont see it, Davis said.

Davis could be wrong, but with just weeks to go the congressmans challengers dont seem to be catching fire. The two opponents with the best shot at unseating him, or forcing him into a runoff, are Suzanne Harp, a bombastic homeschooling mom and businesswoman, and Self, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served as county judge in Collin from 2007 to 2018. Both Harp and Self have struggled to raise funds, with Taylor out-raising the two combined almost eight-to-one. And despite Taylors Trump-defying votes, the former president has so far stayed out of the race. Taylor is largely running with a Rose Garden strategy, skipping forums where the other candidates are present and selectively appearing at other public functions. (Taylor did not respond to messages requesting an interview.)

Hes counting on the low-information voter to pull him across the finish line, Harp told me. Maybe people are so busy trying to make ends meet and live life that they arent able to dig deep into his votes. Zach Barrett, the leader of Collin County Conservative Republicans, agreed, saying that only the activists are fired up about Taylors two election-related votes. Not everybody is like me, in the sense of being very informed, going to so many different grassroots events almost every day of the week, said Barrett, whose group has endorsed Self. I study this stuff. Most people dont have that opportunity for various reasons.

The Third Congressional District race is one of the few in Texas to feature candidates running primarily on the Big Liethe baseless notion that widespread election fraud deprived Trump of his rightful victory. The only other Texas representative to vote for the January 6 commissionfreshman Tony Gonzales, who represents a formerly purple piece of West Texas real estate that stretches from El Paso to San Antoniois facing two primary challengers. The most active of them, Alma Arredondo-Lynch, is a dentist and rancher who was questioned about her alleged involvement in the January 6 attacks. But Arredondo-Lynch has run unsuccessfully two times in the district and there are few signs shes gained traction this cycle.

Aside from Gonzales and Taylor, three other Republican representatives from TexasDan Crenshaw, Michael McCaul, and Chip Royvoted against objections to certifying the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. (A sixth Republican, Beth Van Duyne, split her votevoting to certify Arizonas results, but not Pennsylvanias.) McCaul doesnt have a primary challenger, and Van Duyne faces only token opposition. Potential challengers may have been scared off by the incumbents mountains of cash, or by their otherwise hard-right voting records. Even Trump has seemed to have forgiven, or forgotten, some dallianceshe has endorsed both Van Duyne and Michael McCaul. On the other hand, Crenshaw, the eyepatch-wearing Navy SEAL who burst on the national scene after winning a Houston-area seat in Congress in 2018, has gotten crosswise with elements of the activist base in his district. Hes drawn three primary challengers who accuse him of being a RINO, in part because he has repeatedly said Biden legitimately won the election. Nonetheless, hes expected to avoid a runoff.

But its in Taylors district that 2020 election confusion has fully flourished. And to add to the races salience, North Texas is also home to about two dozen of the alleged January 6 rioters, including one of the most notorious plotters.

In mid-January, just as the primary season in Texas was getting fully underway, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled a consequential new indictment. According to the DOJ, Stewart Rhodes, a North Texas man who leads the far-right Oath Keepers militia, and ten others were part of a seditious conspiracy to use violence to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. Rhodes began organizing soon after Bidens victory in November, telling supporters on encrypted platforms that it was torches and pitchforks time and promising a bloody and desperate fight if Biden were to assume the presidency.

Rhodes put together heavily armed quick reaction force teams that stockpiled weapons and ammo at a hotel four miles from the Capitol in Arlington, Virginia. On the big dayJanuary 6Rhodes stayed outside the Capitol but directed his soldiers to meet him on the Capitol grounds and get organized into stacks, military-style formations where each man would put his hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. One of those men was Roberto Minuta, a 37-year-old tattoo studio owner who had recently moved from New York to Prosper, a city in Texass Third Congressional District. Minuta raced to the Capitol on a golf cart to join the action. He was dressed in paramilitary gear and carried bear spray as he roamed the Capitol confronting police and yelling, Get these cops out! Its our fing building! Get em out, get out!

When I spoke with Harp and Self in early February, neither seemed familiar with the indictments, though they both said anyone engaged in illegal activity should be charged and get their day in court. Throughout the campaign, however, Harp and Self have talked darkly about conspiracies and betrayals and the death of America. America is being fundamentally dismantled, Harp says in a campaign video. We will not sit by and let the establishment thrust our country down the ash heaps of history while our children inherit nothing. Self talked to me about the moral insanity that is happening in our nation. To wit: Gender modification of our children, weaponization of the federal government against our citizens, the destruction, the total destruction of Title Ninewomens sportsthat weve seen in, what, a year. It goes on . ..

Harp has staked out a maximalist position on January 6 and the election. She calls the events of January 6 a protest. She worries about the potential legal problems that her son, who is chief of staff to 25-year-old North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn, may face because he attended the Trump rally that preceded the riots. She demands the release of the January 6 political prisoners, a term also used by Cawthorn, who is accused of insurrection in a citizen lawsuit to disqualify him for running for reelection. Harp points to reports from Tyler congressman Louie Gohmert and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene that the defendants have suffered rights abuses behind bars. To me this is all about politics, Harp said. If theyve done something wrong, they need to be charged. (Some defendants have complained about the conditions of their imprisonments, including being held in isolation for 23 hours a day, a form of punishment that has been condemned by human rights groups. No one connected to the January 6 riots is being held without charges.) Harp also rejects the need for any congressional investigation into January 6 because Democrats wouldnt speak out about the summer of love. (The summer of love is her term for the Black Lives Matter protests and riots of 2020.)

Harp thinks Donald Trump handily won the 2020 election. She believes that a ten-day forensic audit of the vote in contested states, as Ted Cruz proposed, would have proved that Trump won and then everyone could feel really good about where we were as a country. And Harp lays the blame for the demise of Trumps presidency at Taylors feet. Congress did not lead, our guy did not lead. In the hour and the moment that we needed [Taylor], he failed us. The right thing to do wouldve been to reject certain states, send them back, have them redo it, recount it, re-audit it, whatever. They had many options.

Self is a little less comfortable fully committing to the Big Lie. He calls the breach at the Capitol a riot that got out of hand with a few people, but worries were also denigrating the hundreds of thousands of people who were protesting peacefully.

When asked who won the election, Biden or Trump, Self calls it a gotcha question before explaining that the jury is still out on the winner. We frankly dont know yet, but Wisconsin is really making progress. I think one of the chambers in the Wisconsin Legislature has decertified their electors and it has gone to the other house. Georgia is making progress. People are just now coming to grips with their analysis of what happened. (Neither chamber of the Wisconsin Legislature has voted to decertify their electors, despite persistent and baseless rumors on social media.) Self went on: One of the things that we hear is that the courts did not hear any of the evidence. The courts all said there was a moot point. Well, of the twenty-five cases that have been heard on the merits, and only twenty-five have been heard on the merits, eighteen I think were won by the GOP. (Self appeared to be referencing a story in the Epoch Times, a publication founded by the Falun Gong spiritual movement, with the headline Trump Won Two-Thirds of Election Lawsuits Where Merits Considered. The author of the article has conceded that his tally consists mostly of lawsuits that had nothing to do with election fraud. In reality, Trump lost all but one of the 65 suits filed after the election.)

As to the January 6 commission, Self is more unequivocal. That is a red line for many of the Republican voters here and certainly a red line for Mark Davis. But when I pressed him about what, if anything, Congress should have done to look into January 6, he suggested a bipartisan body modeled on the 9/11 commission. I think they should have an independent commission to look at it. Both parties would get to nominate or appoint or assign members to it. It wouldve been more balanced. Because right now its got Democrats and two non-Trumpers on it.

I pointed out that this is exactly what Taylor voted for in May 2021one of the very votes that has so riled Mark Davis, Harp, and Self. The alternative, a Democrat-controlled committee, was the inevitable result of Senate Republicans tanking the commission proposal. In response, Self balked at the idea that an independent commission wouldve worked with Nancy Pelosi in control of the Congress. He added: The system is so corrupted in so many ways that the lack of trust that we see in the political realm today wouldve carried over regardless.

Davis, during his January make-up call with Taylor, said he hoped the congressman had learned his lesson now that he could see what a detriment the congressional investigation has been. If Taylor survives his primary, the real question is whether he will have the same courage the next time a majority in his party tries to throw a monkey wrench, or a Molotov cocktail, into the machinery of democracy. Or whether hell instead learn the lesson that so many on the right have: its easier to run with the mob.

Original post:
Some of Texass Big Lie Candidates Are Looking Like Big Flops - Texas Monthly

They'll hit store shelves later this year.

Funko Games, the company behind games like Disney Mad Tea Party and Fast & Furious Highway Heist, revealed four new tabletop games designed for preschoolers and players as young as three. Two of the four games are inspired by Dr. Seuss characters, while the other two are inspired by the childrens series CoComelon.

All four of these childrens games are part of Funko Games Babysitter Approved line, which means theyre designed to be simple to get out and put away, as well as simple to learn.

Heres a look at the four new games that will be released later this year.

Inspired by the Dr. Seuss characters Thing One and Thing Two, the Dr. Seuss Thing One and Thing Two Where Are You? Game is a hide-and-seek game fortwo or more players aged 3+. The game includes a foam plush doll of Thing One and Thing Two that one of the players will hide somewhere around the house or play area. Once the plush doll has been hidden, the other players will take turns flipping tiles and asking questions to uncover clues about where the doll has been hidden. When someone flips over a card that says Go Look!, theyll have a limited amount of time to search for the plush doll.

The Dr. Seuss Thing One and Thing Two Where Are You? Game will be released in spring 2022 for $17.49. Each game will have an expected play time of 15 minutes.

The Dr. Seuss Pattern Party Game will allow 2-4 players aged 3+towork to be the first to fill four spaces on their goal card, which contains Dr. Seuss-inspired artwork.

The game will allow each player to control one of the games spinners, and when someone lands on the Swap space on their spinner, all of the players will exchange spinners.

The Dr. Seuss Pattern Party Game has a play time of 20 minutes. The game will be released in spring 2022 for $15.99.

Funko Games will release multiple "Pattern Party" games in 2022, which each have a different theme but the same basic gameplay. These Pattern Party games are designed to help kids practice their color, shape, and pattern recognition.

Similar to the Dr. Seuss Pattern Party Game, the CoComelon Pattern Party Game will allow 2-4 players aged 3+ to practice their colors, patterns, and shapes as they try to cover spaces on their goal cards.

The CoComelon Pattern Party Game will be released in summer 2022 for $15.99. The game has an expected play time of 20 minutes.

Designed for 2-4 players aged 3+, the CoComelon Picture Pairing Game is the latest title in Funko Games Picture Pairing series, which is inspired by the traditional Memory game. (Previously released Picture Pairing games were inspired by things like Dr. Seuss characters and The Crocodile Hunter.)

The CoComelon Picture Pairing Game has a play time of 10 minutes. It will be released in summer 2022 for $9.99.

Funko Games has had a big week for game reveals. Over the past few days, the company has revealed two new party games inspired by popular television shows, as well as lots of new games inspired by Disney characters and theme park attractions. You can learn more about all of Funko Games upcoming titles in our previous coverage.

Is your family excited to try any of these new tabletop games? Let us know on Twitter at @superparenthq.

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Funko Games Revealed New Games for Littles Inspired by Dr. Seuss and CoComelon - SuperParent

ELYRIA, Ohio -- The Lorain County Historical Society held a Valentines tea party entitled Glamour and Grudges Saturday (Feb. 12) at the Hickories Museum, a beloved historical home in Elyria now used for tours and events.

The turn-of-the-20th-century home set the tone for the performance.

Several seatings were available (all sold out), so dozens of people attended each seating and filled up the Hickories to watch the Women In History performance of Hollywood Gossip Queens: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

Attendees were asked to dress in your finest frocks and wearing feathers, furs, jewels and fancy hats in honor of our Hollywood ladies.

Quite a few women did just that, with special emphasis on the hats.

In their day, primarily the 1930s and 1940s, Parsons and Hopper wielded enormous power in Hollywoods Golden Age through their gossip columns, literally making and breaking acting careers. But the two were also known for being bitter rivals.

The two actresses portraying the characters (Linda Witkowski and Ruth Pangrace) did so with amazingly detailed knowledge. They argued often with each other under the guise of a radio program. They attacked each other as being ill-informed and having no ability to succeed in Hollywood.

They also told stories of the Hollywood elites, and much of it was very funny even though they were throwing verbal daggers at one another throughout the performance.

Margaret Hnat, a community theater actress herself from Bay Village, was a guest at the tea. She said: The presentation was amazing. It was like a one-woman show. It was hilarious, and the women really took on their characters.

Her friend, Teri Saltis, also a community theater actress, went all out on dressing for the tea.

Loud applause at the end showed how much the interpretations were appreciated. The obvious research and preparation for the womens long performances were clearly evident.

The tea served was delicious, as were the tea sandwiches and the delicate desserts. A raffle followed the luncheon, putting a period on the end of a fun and very informational afternoon.

According to its information, Women In History is a non-profit group dedicated to the education of all people through the dramatic re-creation of lives of notable women in history. With a passion for history and the women who are responsible for at least half of it, Women in History gives voice to some of the most stirring and inspiring stories that have gone untold for far too long. Through careful research and thorough study, the group has recreated riveting and entertaining life stories of some of Americas most remarkable ladies.

For more information on Women In History, visit http://www.womeninhistoryohio.com/.

Read more from the Sun Sentinel.

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Women In History spill all the Valentines Day tea - cleveland.com

Joe Walsh was elected to Congress as a Republican in the "Tea Party wave" of 2010 and served one term in the House, where he was a vocal and harsh critic of Barack Obama. After losing his re-election campaign in a redrawn district in 2012 (to future U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth), Walsh became a nationally syndicated right-wing radio host and, a few years later, a leading supporter of Donald Trump.

When Trump was elected president in 2016, Walsh already had doubts: He didn't love Trump and didn't hate him, as Walsh told me in the first part of our recent interview. But he was rewarded for his loyalty with access to the highest levels of power in the Trump White House and the MAGAverse, before ultimately deciding that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to American democracy and the future of the country. At significant personal and professional risk, Walsh turned against Trump and his movement, even running against Trump (albeit very briefly) as a 2020 Republican presidential candidate.

In the first part of his conversation with Salon, Walsh warned that Donald Trump and his followers would "happily burn this country down to get the country they want. They would happily do it. And they tell me that. I don't think the folks who watch CNN and MSNBC every night really understand that fact." I may not agree with Walsh on many political or ideological issues, but he's correct about that. Democratic leaders, and too many liberals and progressives at large, remain in denial about the level of threat despite years of evidence and a mountain of proof that speaks to the true intentions of Trump's neofascist movement.

RELATED:Joe Walsh on what the left doesn't get: TrumpWorld "would happily burn this country down"

Walsh also explained how Donald Trump maintains control over the Republican Party and most of its elected officials and voters, and argued that the coup attempt of January 2021 was just one battle in a longer struggle to overthrow American democracy. Speaking of the Trump movement, Walsh said:

They're dead-set on what they want to do. Their country, they believe, their 1953 America, has been taken away from them. In the form of Donald Trump, they have somebody who is going to bring it back, step by step. These Trump followers are taking the long view. The MSNBC crowd does not understand that fact at all.

In this second part of our conversation, Walsh warns that Trump is willing to start a "race war" in America in order to return to power and punish his enemies and says that Republican voters would largely support such white supremacist violence. Walsh also talks about what Republicans know about winning and keeping political power and what Democrats do not. He says thelikelihood of right-wing political violence will only increase as the 2022 midterms approach.

At the end of this conversation, Walsh reflects on what it means to be a patriot in America today. This is a recurring question at the heart of his podcast, "White Flag with Joe Walsh."

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You have said that the Republican base needs an intervention so they can be brought back to reality and out of the delusions of TrumpWorld. What would that look like?

Here's how you teach them: This country that you love, my friends, is never going to be 80% or 90% white again. America is never going to make 90% of the automobiles in the world again. It's a big, competitive world and America's going to get browner by the year. There's nothing wrong with that, and here's why. But instead of having those conversations, the [Republican] establishment just turned the other way and the base grew angrier and angrier.

What do you do about those Republicans and members of that cult movement who would rather destroy America, through violence if need be, than share power with Black and brown Americans?

I think at this point, it's too late. I think at this point, all we can do is outvote them. I remember being in Congress eight years ago. Then I said that America was more divided than we'd been at any time since right before the Civil War. That was five or six years before Trump. I think it's too late. That is a hard thing for me to say, because I spent a lot of my time trying to save people from the cult. The situation is not hopeless. Every day and every week, I save a few of them but the vast majority are lost.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

What was your moment of realization about the Trump cult? Why did you decide to leave it?

The first moment was when Trump got elected. This may sound strange to some, but when Trump got elected I was on 200 radio station around the country, I'm right in that world and I'm moving up. But even in that position, I've got to be honest and I said this publicly, when I primaried Trump I messed up, because I didn't pay attention to him. I never paid attention enough to what a bad person he was. So I voted for him. But the minute Trump won, I started to pay attention to him.

The minute we found out conclusively that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him win, and Trump turned around after learning this and rejected the evidence and facts. Trump did not want his victory tarnished. Trump does not give a damn about the country. Then I realized that every time Trump opens his mouth he lies. I can't stand that in any politician.

The final straw for me was what happened in Helsinki in the summer of 2018. When he stood in front of the world with Putin and said, "I believe Putin and not my own people," I went on the radio that night and I said, "This is the greatest act of disloyalty I've ever seen in an American president. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure he doesn't get re-elected." I began to lose my radio show. I began to lose everything at that moment.

RELATED:Guilty: Donald Trump betrayed his country in Helsinki. It wasn't the first time

How do we locate Barack Obama's presidency, relative to the rise of Trumpism and neofascism?

I say this as a white guy: Right now in America we are going through a big old course correction in how we look at and talk about our history. I say this as a white guy: I believe that white people need to feel uncomfortable. That does not work with the Republican Party base.

When it comes to Obama, it's a combination of a lot of things. The Tea Party began before Obama. The Tea Party formally began with George W. Bush and all the bailouts and the government spending. But I'm telling you what, Chauncey, because I was right there. This was when I ran for office and I was talking to thousands of those people every day: The election of Barack Obama was pouring gas on the fire that was already there. It was like their final straw. A guy named "Barack Obama" became president. A Black man became president. A guy who seems to love Muslim countries more than America became president. A guy who is a socialist became president. A guy who wants to take over our entire health care system became president. So his election inflamed my base.

To clarify, none of what you are saying about Obama is true. You are repeating what others said and believed.

One hundred percent. I've had to apologize for how I inflamed those fears, instead of trying to ease some of these fears.

What does it mean for you to apologize?

It means that I'm still young enough that I want to do something about it. There isn't anything more humbling than going on with George Stephanopoulos, on national television, and apologizing for things you said about Obama or things you said about Democrats or apologizing for helping to elect Trump, that bigoted, authoritarian traitor. To go on national TV, as I did night after night, and apologize for my role in all this is very humbling. An apology does not mean a thing unless you do something about it. Whenever I apologize and I apologize a lot, by the way it's a call to action. I helped divide the country, now I want to do something to try to bring people together.

What does that look like on the day-to-day?

It means a number of things. For example, I started a podcast called "White Flag." We're so tribal in this country right now. Every week I sit down with somebody who does not think like me. We try to figure out if we can find common ground. I'm trying to model how to sit down with people who don't think like you. The other thing I do every day is I get in the faces of the members of the Trump cult and I try to save them. If I can only save four or five members of the Trump cult each week, then I'm going to do it because that's my penance. I will do that until I drop.

RELATED:The psychological reason that so many fall for the "Big Lie"

I want no compromise with the Republicans, the Trumpists, the neofascists and their followers. There can be no compromise. They are the enemy. They are a danger to American democracy and society. I want nothing to do with these people, and I have suggested that other people of conscience make the same decision. They are a cult.

I'm still a proud libertarian Tea Party conservative. This is a unique moment in American history where you and I are going to lock arms to try to save democracy. I have no interest in working legislatively with the other side or trying to compromise with the other side. But I think what's important is that you have to understand the other side. To defeat them, you have to know what they are thinking.

What do the Republican Party's leaders understand about politics and power that the Democrats do not?

Mitch McConnell, who I respect immensely for how capable he is and not for what he does is fully prepared to burn everything down to get the things he wants. The Republican base, the grassroots Republicans, they will burn down America to get their Judeo-Christian white America. But at the elite decision-maker level, Republicans are prepared to do that too.

I do not believe that the Democrats are. Republicans in state after state this cycle are gerrymandering the hell out of every district they can. What are Democrats doing? Complaining about it. You're at war. The control of the House is at stake. Republicans will play hardball and Democrats will not.

What is so compelling about Donald Trump? How does he get people to be so loyal to him?

There are two things that make Donald Trump an incredible cult leader. Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, most of these guys are cowards. They are just typical politicians who hold their finger up to the wind and then do what they think they have to do to continue to win.

Trump says, "Screw it! I'm going to do whatever I want to do and I'm going to only look out for myself." To Trump's credit, he recognized early on how weak these Republican politicians are. How did he take over the party so easily? He was right. These establishment people and elected officials are weak. Trump gave them permission and license to be horrible people just like him. It was alluring to them. Trump is a bully, and he gets away with it. Now you see how many of these Republicans ape him. They imitate him, they emulate him.

The other power that Trump has is that Republican politicians are afraid of him because of how he connects with the base of the party. In private, most of them do not fear Trump. They tell me they fear his symbiotic connection to the base, to the cult, and they don't want to lose that. Republican politicians fear Republican voters.

Why are Trump's followers, the base of the Republican Party, so loyal to him? Trump and his regime made decisions about the coronavirus pandemic that are literally killing them by the many tens of thousands. Yet they stay loyal to him and the party even while they are dying.

They don't believe that. They'll deny it. They deny that to me. I'm in line at Iowa the night before the Iowa caucuses, where I'm campaigning against Trump. I walk the line of people going into his rally in Des Moines and I ask 40 people in line a simple question: Has Donald Trump ever told a lie? All 40 of them told me, no, Donald Trump has never, ever uttered a lie. Now do all 40 believe that? No. But 34 or 35 believe that.

RELATED:The GOP's Ayn Rand death cult: Trump's party is literally killing the American people

Again, it is a cult. Most do not blame him for COVID. Most of them support everything he did with COVID. The vast majority of them don't even believe that Biden won the election. They believe Trump won. They don't believe Jan. 6 was a big deal.

They believe everything Trump says. If I had to narrow it down to one thing that Trump's cult members have said to me every day over the years, they love him because he just fights. They tell me that they know he is a horrible person. They know he may be bad. They say that maybe he cheated on his wife. But they tell me that Trump fights for them. He goes after CNN. He goes after Pelosi. They say things like, "He fights for me." For these people, that is a hard thing to let go of.

Almost every day there are new "revelations" about Trump and his cabal's coup plot and how serious it was and how close it came to succeeding. Yet this reality does not seem to be sinking in. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, has really failed here.

The country does not understand the threat we're facing. Democrats and everyone outside of the GOP base are asleep at the switch. "It's our democracy, stupid" needs to be their rallying cry. Republicans are counting on the fact that most Americans can't fathom that our democracy is actually in real trouble.

To that point, Donald Trump now seems to be threatening a race war, white-on-Black violence on a massive scale, if he is punished for his crimes or otherwise held accountable. Again, the mainstream media is not reporting on that either. It is treated as a curiosity or as hyperbole, when the threats are very serious.

Again, there is a general disbelief in the media that Trump is actually doing what he's doing. Yes, sowing a race war is and always has been part of his strategy. It's of great appeal to the GOP base. I know, because I hear that every day. The media has done an absolutely horrible job of making clear how unique Trump is. How dangerous Trump is. Trump's method has always been to throw a bunch of bad shit against the wall every day, to overwhelm and numb people. The goal of that is so that eventually the American people and the media normalize what he is.

RELATED:Trump's race-war fantasies continue to escalate while the media pretends not to notice

What do you want to prepare the American people for, as the midterms approach and then the 2024 election?

The GOP has become anti-democratic. The threat of violence is always there. People need to wake up. As we get closer to the 2022 elections, the threat of real violence will continue to increase. But I will say, from what I hear every day, the GOP base feels really confident about winning in 2022. If they sensed a loss, the threat of violence would be even greater.

There are people who want to trust you and other former Trumpers, or never-Trumpers, the so-called principled conservatives. But they are understandably suspicious. What would you tell liberals and progressives who doubt your sincerity?

I love you Democrats, but I'm not trying to win you over. I really don't give a damn if you don't trust me, because I'm going to do the same thing this year and next year that I did last year. I'm going to work my butt off as a Tea Party conservative to help Democrats win.

I don't care if I do it with you. I don't care if you do it with me. I don't care if you put me on MSNBC or you don't, because I'm crazy Joe Walsh Tea Party guy. I could care less. I'm going to do the same thing regardless of whether I've won you over. And by the way, that's what I tell them. A lot of people didn't trust me at the beginning of last year after I ended my hopeless campaign against Trump, but a lot more of them trusted me after the 2020 election, when they saw me work my ass off all year to try to help Biden and other Democrats win. Actions, not words. And I'm going to do what I do no matter what.

What does it mean to be a good American right now? To be a patriot?

I love this country. I love our founders. I do think we're going through an important correction right now. Again, white America needs to feel uncomfortable. I think that's important. I think of myself as a founder. I taught American history, I taught American government. I think the country is probably irrevocably divided. I don't believe the pieces can be put back together. Because of that, I feel like a founding father right now. That's what it means to me to be a patriotic American. No matter how this thing shakes out in the next 10 to 60 years, I want some semblance of democracy to be reborn.

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Joe Walsh on Trump's looming "race war" and why his followers love it - Salon

It is with great regret that I announce the passing of a once great institution: the National Republican Party. The party passed away on Feb. 4, 2022, with no true believers in the foundations and ideals of the party at its bedside.

The party had lingered ill for some time. But it took a turn for the worse when it censured two Republican members of Congress for sitting on a committee whose mission is to determine what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U. S. Capitol.

The actions by current party leadership all but condoned the attack on the Capitol and gave its seal of approval of an attempt to overturn a proven legitimate presidential election and, with it, the will of the people and our democracy.

Born on March 20, 1854, the Grand Old Party informally known by friend and foe alike as The GOP was the child of factions of the Whig Party that differed on the issue of slavery. As the GOP grew, it became a formidable opponent to the well- established Democratic Party.

Following the Civil War, the young GOP led the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments that, collectively, were some of the greatest civil rights initiatives in the nations history. The three amendments prohibited slavery, granted citizenship rights to all people born or naturalized in the United States regardless of race, and prohibited governments from infringing on voting rights based on race or past servitude.

The party continued to serve the nation well until the late 1920s and the Great Depression. By 1932, the Democratic Party had regained its strength and controlled presidential politics for the next 40 years.

During the 1980s, the Republican Party, under the leadership of one of its heroes, Ronald Reagan, cemented itself as the party of small government, lower taxes, free trade, balanced budgets and little, if any, government intrusion in the lives of individuals.

These principles stood for the next 30 years. One could always count on the Republican Party and knew where it stood. But as time passed, many saw a change in the GOP. Yes, it was older, but it took on an element around 2010 that made it look less attractive, even ugly.

A cousin of the GOP, the tea party, began to convince its older and wiser relative that things needed to change, that people who looked different needed to be viewed differently, that people who worshiped differently needed to be questioned, that everyone really did not need to vote anymore.

Over the next several years, these changes continued to grow and even appeared to overtake the GOP. Those most familiar with this type of ailment saw the GOPs body breaking down. By 2017, it was clear the party was not doing well.

The ideals upon which it was founded and grew began to disappear. The disease metastasized to all parts of the party, to the point that it was unrecognizable.

Those close to the patient knew by 2020 there was no hope, that even basic democratic values such as voting rights for all citizens were being stripped away by the partys cousins in many states.

Then, after the partys presumed leader promoted, if not planned, an insurrection of the U.S. Capitol by thousands of his cult-like followers because he simply did not win an election, the transformation was complete.

To many, this faux obituary may seem a bit humorous, and it would be if it were not true. But sadly, the Republican Party that I once knew, respected and on occasion admired, is dead.

On Feb. 4, the party leadership passed a resolution censuring U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their participation on the House of Representatives Jan. 6 Committee by saying the two were participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes

Ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse? Are you serious? Anyone who witnessed the riotous actions in the Capitol that day knows we came as close as ever to losing our democracy. They would never describe what occurred as legitimate political discourse. It is scary to think that party leaders and those who sit in high level government positions believe that verbiage.

Regretfully, this abhorrent rhetoric has existed for quite a while now.

We have seen rioters who smashed their way into the Capitol referred to as tourists, or those charged with a multitude of crimes caught on camera as political prisoners, and conditions they have faced in jail for their crimes as inhumane.

But when the Republican National Party censures two of its own? Both of whom have long practiced and adhered to tried-and-true Republican values? For attempting to learn the truth about what happened on one of the worst days in our nations history? It demonstrates the rottenness to the core of this once great political party.

Jim Hart, of Pinehurst, spent 38 years in Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist and chief of staff to four U.S. congressmen.

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Column: What Once Was Grand Old Party Now Is Shadow of Its Former Self - Southern Pines Pilot