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“Russiagate does not fit neatly into leftist ideological frameworks, which is surely part of why there has been so much skepticism. It’s a much better fit for conservatives and cruise missile liberals who want to punish Putin on nationalist grounds. But that is not a necessary conclusion — on the contrary, the most important culprits are all Republicans, who eagerly welcomed foreign assistance. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell successfully stopped President Obama from attacking the electoral espionage by threatening to make it a partisan issue (though to be fair, that was also a massive failure on Obama’s part).”

“The rest of the GOP congressional leadership knew as well, and were “happy to enjoy the benefits of Russian interference and said so openly among themselves,” as David Klion writes. Even now the GOP is swatting down attempts from congressional Democrats to secure American electoral machinery from outside interference. In a domestic American context, the main story of Russiagate is that the Republican Party is so corrupt that they will sacrifice democracy to get tax cuts for the rich and reactionary union-busting judges.”

“So one does not have to support starting nuclear war to be concerned about Russiagate.”

No, in fact this is one of Putin’s own canards amplified through RT. No one is talking about nuclear war except RT and the Trump folks.

“Indeed, given the rotten state of American democracy, attempting to go really hard at Putin might be a game not worth the candle. Instead the main objective ought to be securing American institutions — purging them of the corruption that allows someone like Putin to waltz in and get what he wants. The American government should be responsible to the American people.:”

I agree with most of this. I don’t entirely agree that there’s nothing to be gained from, no reason to, punish Russia. One way to look at what our attitude towards Russia vs. towards the Republican party ought to be is like a cuckholded wife: is she madder at her cheating husband or the other woman? Logically it should be the louse of a husband but, of course, in reality often she remains in denial by treating her husband as a bystander to what happened. To be sure, it can get complicated-if the other woman is a close friend or her sister; then moral culpability again changes-while he deserves scorn the other woman might deserve just as much.

Regarding Russia vs. the GOP, I agree the big story here is that the modern Republican is so  intellectually and morally decadent that it’s now willing to defend colluding with Russia if it defeats ‘Crooked Hillary.’ This is not hyperbole-there are now Trump deplorbles actually saying collusion is fine if it’s the only way we can win.

In Trumpland we’ve gone from ‘no collusion’ to ‘collusion is not a crime’ to collusion with a foreign government is justified if that’s what it took to beat Crooked Hillary

There won’t be Democratic collusion with Russia because the Democratic party has a sense of decency. It’s a party with it’s own share of problems but it’s not the deviant outlier the modern GOP has become. In a very telling tweet just before the election Joy Reid expressed the sense that the Democrats are the mother not willing to split the baby. Indeed, and the modern GOP is very much willing to do so.

But how did we get here? If you follow me that the GOP has now retrogressed to the level of fervid sociopathy the question which begs is how did this happen? For that, we need to look at the bigger picture. We need a sense of history. One thing that is not commonly understood is that in a way what the Trump campaign and Russia very well may have done in 2016 was not an aberration.

It is most certainly not the first time a Republican Presidential candidate-I should add a successful POTUS candidate-has been credibly accused of having colluded with a hostile foreign power in order to win.

If you can believe it-it’s scarcely believable-in the last 50 years, Trump-Russia is the third time of such a credible accusation. In 1968 Nixon colluded with South Vietnam in order to scuttle LBJ’s Vietnam peace talks.

When discussing such ‘conspiracies’ it’s important to understand:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

For Nixon’s treachery happened in 1968 but it took almost 50 years for clear, unimpeachable evidence of this to surface

LBJ knew it at the time and had the cables to prove it but decided that the country was better off not knowing about it-which is somewhat like Obama in 2016 who did think the country should know but was too timid to push it once Mitch McConnell accused him of being a partisan; for Obama that’s the worst thing you can call him-a partisan. For many years it was suspected but it could never be proven-until Halderman’s diaries showed up.

As for coincidences-like Malcolm Nance says ‘coincidences take a lot of planning.’

The story of Nixon’s sabotage of LBJ’s peace talks has become more widely known since Halderman’s diary showed up.

But few today remember the credible accusation that the Reagan campaign colluded with the Iranian Ayatoallah to delay release of the hostages until after the election to deny Carter ‘an October Surprise.’

What could be treason if not delaying the release of 50 Americans from captivity in Iran just to secure Reagan’s election?

Ok, so the GOP has been doing this a long time-how did they get this way?

Because they are what Nietzsche would call the party of the bad conscience. 

But what gives them a ‘bad conscience?’ For this you have to go back to a little something called the New Deal.

One way to conceive of American political history is as a morality tale. Party’s that commit acts of great treachery get put in the penalty box.

1. After John Adams the Federalist party simply disappeared: in this case it was more than simply being in the penalty box it was the ultimate penalty-euthanasia, dissolution. The Federalists ‘sin’ was to be on the wrong side of history regarding democracy; the party still had remnants of the neo-monarchichal  impulses that the country had moved on from.

After that the Democratic party-of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson-came to dominate the country. The Federalists had won the first three elections-though, two with George Washington and the third with his VP-were not hard to do. Starting in 1800 through to 1860, the Democratic party was totally ascendant with the party holding the WH 56 out of 60 years.

However, then the Democrats perpetuated a great ‘sin’ that left them in the penalty box of American politics for close to the next three quarters of a century.

2. By siding with the slave holding South and Secession, the Democrats get the blame for the Civil War and spend the next 72 years in the penalty box: the GOP holds the WH for the next 56 out of 72 years, the Dems manage to win a second term only once with Woodrow Wilson in 1916.; altogether, the GOP held the WH and both Houses of Congress for 42 of 72 years between 1860-1932.

Much of this analysis comes from the same place as Kevin Phillips in his 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority. 

What I agree with Phillips is not necessarily all the specifics and particulars but the sense in which American history is composed of partisan, political cycles.

However, in 1932 came the GOP’s time in the barrel. 

3. If the Democrats can be seen-in the morality tale version of US political history-as being ‘blamed for the Civil War’ the GOP would come to be ‘blamed for the Great Depression.’

It was GOP rule that precipitated the GD, and the country under FDR repudiated the GOP’s plutocratic economic agenda. But the Republican party simply refused to adjust.

An interesting read regarding this is: Aint You Glad You Joined the Republicansthat documents how the GOP during the 1930s knew that most Americans disagreed with them on the New Deal but continued to oppose it.

And this is the modern GOP’s ‘original sin.’ They know that the public disagrees with their agenda but rather than adjusting it they attempt to win by trickery, stealth, and chicanery.

In 1952 they must have worried they’d never win another POTUS election again then Ike surfaced and it turns out he was a loyal Republican-his image had been so nonpartisan the Democrats had reached out to him on running for them. With Ike they were able to end their 20 year losing streak with two landslide wins over Adlai Stevenson. So there was life after FDR but finding a war hero loved across or ideologies and party lines wasn’t something that happens everyday.

In the end the modern GOP-that is post FDR GOP-became not the party of Ike but of his VP, Richard Milhous Nixon.

Nixon won his House election over Jerry Voorhis in 1946 and his Senate election over Helen Douglas Callahan-aka the Pink Lady- in 1950 via red baiting and dirty tricks-lying about their record, etc. Nixon later said he knew perfectly well his attacks on Voorhis as a socialist were false but then he added but you have to win. 

The vicious campaign he ran for Congress in 1946, which Mr. Ambrose describes as ”McCarthyism” before the term existed, revealed his ruthless single-mindedness. ”Of course I knew Jerry Voorhis wasn’t a Communist,” Mr. Nixon later replied to accusations that he had lied during the campaign. ”But . . . I had to win. . . . The important thing is to win.”

No doubt Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes and all the Trump supporters saying thank you to Russia for colluding un Trump’s behalf would agree.

P.S. I should explain why I prefer Watergate 2.0 to Russiagate. Part of it is for the reason Ryan Cooper gave-the real issue in the American context is not that Russia would interfere-this is hardly surprising though the scope-and success-of it was surely unprecedented-but the an American party like the GOP that has always wrapped itself in the flag would be willing to be complicit in such an interference effort.

In a sense it’s less Russiagate than GOPgate. But I prefer Watergate 2.0 in that Russia is only one half of it-the other less discussed Watergate 2.0 scandal is Comeygate-how a bunch of GOP rogue agents-quite possibly acting in collusion with the Trump campaign-via Rudy Giuliani and Eric Prince-in the FBI forced the hand of the leadership into interfering in and picking the winner of an American Presidential election.