Pretzels

 Josh Marshall examines Kari Lake's response to the Arizona ruling on the 1864 abortion law. It's pretty funny (except not), because Lake and other anti-abortion zealots are realizing just how toxic their anti-abortion positions are. Despite some pushback from certain Talibangelicals, most conservatives are waking up to the reality that Dobbs is killing them. So you wind up with the bizarre statements like Lake's that basically retreat from their own positions on abortion while embracing their own positions while denying that that's what they're doing. 

I found this column from 1941 about "who becomes a Nazi". It's a fascinating historical document, but what the author does is note that there are a handful of "born Nazis" and then a bunch of people who will acquiesce to Nazism out of self-interest or even indifference. So many Republican politicians simply don't care about the things their voters care for. We know in our bones that Trump has paid for abortions; apparently he wanted to abort Tiffany. Yet he also knows he needs the Talibangelicals. We see a similar dynamic with normie Republicans who have embraced America's Worst Person ever since 2016, even though they all know that he's a criminal, an authoritarian, a narcissist, a moral sewer and a con artist. 

There's an old adage that it's so much simpler to tell the truth, because you only need to remember one story, whereas if you lie you have to retain multiple versions of events. Republicans are like those liars who have to keep so many contradictory versions of the world straight in their head that they wind up speaking gibberish.