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Javier E

In Israel, Christie Says Trump Ducked Mideast Progress and Fueled Bigotry - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ris-christie-israel-hamas.html

trump mideast israel evaluation progress bigotry

shared by Javier E on 13 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who is challenging Donald J. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said Mr. Trump’s rhetoric of intolerance — as evident today as it was during his presidency — had fueled the surge of bigotry confronting Jews and Muslims after Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the fierce Israeli response in Gaza.
  • And Mr. Trump’s lopsided adherence to the wishes of Israel’s right-wing government, while widely praised in Republican circles, secured only the “low-hanging fruit” of Middle Eastern diplomacy during his presidency, Mr. Christie said, denigrating one of Mr. Trump’s chief foreign policy accomplishments.
  • He argued that Mr. Trump’s lack of “intellectual curiosity” and foreign policy ambition had led his administration to give up the pursuit of a more elusive peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Mr. Christie’s criticism of the former president’s Middle East record is significant. The peace agreements struck by Israel with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, collectively known as the Abraham Accords, are widely seen as perhaps Mr. Trump’s most important diplomatic accomplishment. And Republicans have offered high praise for decisions like moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
  • Mr. Christie offered higher praise for Mr. Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza crisis, including his Oct. 18 visit to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • He accused Mr. Trump of cynicism in his handling of the once broadly bipartisan U.S.-Israel relationship and held him responsible for fractures over Israel within the Democratic Party.
  • Mr. Christie was quick to say that he did not blame Mr. Trump for the bloody hostilities in Israel. The timing of Hamas’s attack reflected larger geopolitical dynamics with Iran, Russia and China, he said.
  • He wholeheartedly embraced every policy pressed by Israel’s conservative government, including moving the embassy, recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, withdrawing from Mr. Obama’s deal with Iran to temper its nuclear ambitions and pursuing regional peace agreements between Israel and the Persian Gulf states that isolated Palestinians and marginalized their demands for political autonomy.
  • Mr. Christie argued that Democratic voters, in turn, had reflexively opposed anything embraced so wholeheartedly by Mr. Trump, including by electing representatives to Congress like Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, whom they saw as fierce opponents of Mr. Trump. Those new lawmakers on the Democratic left then opened an anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party that is straining the U.S.-Israel alliance.
  • Meanwhile, he said, the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace, once considered the holy grail of presidential diplomacy, was all but forgotten.
  • Mr. Christie said that President Barack Obama’s policies had been perceived as favoring Israel’s enemies and that Mr. Trump had seized the political opening that presented:
  • “I don’t think he was equipped to deal in a foreign policy way with a very difficult, if not impossible, issue, right? And I don’t think he has any ambition,” Mr. Christie said. “I think he was looking for what would be relatively direct and easy scores because his view always was political.”
  • Before arriving in Israel, he spoke of the difficult balancing act between the vital need for Israel to defend its territory and its people and concerns about the growing backlash around the globe.
  • “We’ve been there after 9/11,” he said. “We understand the visceral need and the practical need to retaliate and degrade Hamas.
  • “But don’t have exclusively a near-term view,” he advised. “And that’s tricky for somebody like Netanyahu and the political position he’s in at the moment, because, you know, there’s certainly going to be a reckoning whenever the war is considered concluded, as to how Israel got there in the first place.”
  • “Ultimately, it’s in Israel’s best interest and the world’s best interest. But I think the actions that Hamas took on Oct. 7 has made that resolution significantly more difficult and more long-term. And I think that’s one of the real shames of their actions,”
  • “I don’t think Trump’s an antisemite,” even though he has routinely espoused stereotypes of Jews, Mr. Christie said. But, he added, Mr. Trump’s “intolerance of everybody” is “what’s contributed to” the surging bigotry.
  • “He says what he says, without regard to the fact that he’s perceived as a leader and that his words matter,” Mr. Christie said. The bigots “think you’re giving them permission be a bigot,” he added, “and that’s even worse than them thinking you are one.”
  • “I think he’s a guy of the 1960s from Queens, New York, with certain attitudes that he probably learned from his parents,” Mr. Christie said.
  • But he was less sympathetic about the bigotries that he said Mr. Trump had unleashed.“His rhetoric contributes to it,” he said. “By his rhetoric, I mean, his intolerance of everybody. Everybody hears that dog whistle a different way.”
B Mannke

BBC News - Chris Christie 'humiliated' by bridge-gridlock scandal - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-us-canada-25671970

shared by B Mannke on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 9 January 2014 Last updated at 14:25 ET Share this page Email Print Share this pageShareFacebookTwitter Chris Christie 'humiliated' by bridge-gridlock scandal Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "I am responsible for what happened" Continue reading the main story Related Stories Twitter drips with Christie snark Chris Christie's bridge-sized headache Christie: Republicans' best hope New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has fired an aide who allegedly orchestrated traffic mayhem to pursue a petty political vendetta. Mr Christie, seen as a potential Republican White House candidate, apologised for the scandal, which he said "embarrassed and humiliated" him.
  • Mr Christie, seen as a potential Republican White House candidate, apologised for the scandal, which he said "embarrassed and humiliated" him. The gridlock was allegedly engineered to punish a Democratic mayor who did not endorse the governor's re-election. Mr Christie denied any involvement, blaming "deceitful" staff.
  • "I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or execution," he said, "and I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Asked about a 91-year-old woman who reportedly died after ambulance services were caught up in the gridlock, Mr Christie said that was "awful", though he added it was unclear whether the delay had contributed to her death.
  • "An apology today might be a bit premature. "I think this is a story that has not yet experienced its final chapter."
grayton downing

Chris Christie-Susana Martinez: Is This Your 2016 Republican Ticket? - David A. Graham ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...281360

chris republican politics US

shared by grayton downing on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • three years, one long and bitterly contested GOP primary, and a running-mate-selection process away, but it's fun to speculate. Plus there's already some evidence of their chemistry between Chris Christie and Susana Martinez.
  • “I love his authenticity, I love who he is,” she told the New York Times. “I will support Governor Christie in anything he decides to do in life.”
  • Christie spent the final weeks of the race trying to run up his margin of victory in order to reinforce his case for a 2016 presidential run. Martinez's job was to show up in heavily Hispanic areas like Union City and help turn out the Latino vote.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • They're young (for politicians), moderate, blue-state Republicans who have worked with Democratic legislators on some issues (while clashing on others). They're both former prosecutors, too. Whether that makes Martinez good vice-presidential material is a somewhat different question.
  • New Mexico press hasn't failed to notice Martinez's rising star. In fact, the Democrats with whom the governor has supposedly had such a good working relationship unloaded to the Santa Fe New Mexican in a piece Sunday. Their message: She's not the reasonable, pragmatic, moderate figure you might imagine. Now where have we heard that before?
katherineharron

Chris Christie pushes to reopen country despite dire Covid-19 projections: 'There are g... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis politics

shared by katherineharron on 05 May 20 - No Cached
  • Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that the country needs to reopen, despite separate key coronavirus models forecasting that thousands may die daily in the United States from Covid-19 and that more than 100,000 may die in total.
  • When Bash pressed Christie on whether people would be able to accept reopening in light of news of a Trump administration model projecting a rise up to about 3,000 daily US deaths from coronavirus by June 1, Christie responded, "They're gonna have to."
  • "We're in the midst of a pandemic that we haven't seen in over 100 years," he said. "And we're going to have to continue to do things."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "The message is that the American people have gone through significant death before." He pointed to the first and second World Wars as examples of how "we've gone through it and we've survived it. We sacrificed those lives."
  • "We sent our young men during World War Two over to Europe, out to the Pacific, knowing, knowing that many of them would not come home alive," he said, adding: "And we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the American way of life. In the very same way now, we have to stand up for the American way of life."
  • "Those folks are going to have to be even more careful than the rest of the population," he added. "I don't know what the choice is."
alexdeltufo

GOP debate: Donald Trump-Ted Cruz 'bromance' is over - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 15 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Trump and Ted Cruz clashed Thursday in their sharpest -- and most personal -- encounters of the campaign season
  • The 2.5-hour event sponsored by Fox Business Network was filled with testy exchanges between the seven candidates on stage.
  • sparks flew between Marco Rubio and Chris Christie.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Cruz forcefully responded to Trump's accusations that he isn't eligible to be president because he was born in Canada -- a controversy that Trump has only recently embraced. Read More
  • "There was nothing to this birther issue."
  • Rubio slammed his fellow senator for hiding behind the pretense of conservative values.
  • has repeatedly questioned whether Cruz, whose mother was a U.S. citizen, is a natural born citizen.
  • Cruz noted that some of the more extreme theories on the topic would conclude that someone can only become president if both parents were born in the United States. Under that standard, Cruz noted
  • neligible for the presidency because his mother was born in Scotland.
  • onald, I'm not going to use your mother's birth against you," Cruz said.
  • "Because it wouldn't work."
  • "That is not consistent conservatism," he says. "That is political calculation."
  • "I've said from the beginning, we should take no Syrian refugees of any kind," Christie said.
  • Trump was more dominant Thursday than in previous debates
  • Asked to explain what that meant, Cruz said New Yorkers tend to hold "socially liberal" views
  • "Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan," he said.
  • "We rebuilt downtown Manhattan and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made."
  • ut if that's the best hit the New York Times has got, they better go back to the well."
  • "Unfortunately, Gov. Christie has endorsed many of the ideas that Barack Obama supports," the Florida senator said.
  • It appears that "same someone has been whispering in old Marco's ear, too," Christie said.
  • Two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed. That was before he was running against me."
  • Trump said, insisting he would not change his mind on the issue.
  • "All Muslims? Seriously? What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?" Bush said.
  • While there has been plenty of animosity between Trump and most of his rivals, the billionaire businessman and Cruz have been on largely friendly territory for much of the campaign season.
  • Christie, meanwhile, blasted the actions as inconsistent with democracy.
  • Fiorina's candidacy has largely been defined by memorable debate performances. And even though she was dropped from the prime-time stage at the debate, she still delivered. Right out of the gate, she dealt a sharp personal attack on Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.
  • "Despite Donald Trump's bromance with Vladimir Putin ... Russia is our adversary," she said.
rachelramirez

Donald Trump's Pathetic Fraternity - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rumps-pathetic-fraternity.html

election politics US opinion

shared by rachelramirez on 03 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump’s Pathetic Fraternity
  • Christie made that deal with shocking alacrity, apparently on the theory that by getting to the table first, he could snag the best seat. It was flawed thinking. Mike Pence was given the marquee assignment; Christie was subjected to repeated public humiliations, including an admonition by Trump to stay away from Oreos.
  • Over recent days, in a spectacularly ill-advised war of words with the former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, he and his minions sought to discredit her by essentially calling her a tramp. Isn’t that precisely what they’re complaining that the Clintons and their minions did to Monica Lewinsky?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It’s all wild hallucination, but he bellows nonetheless, because the television cameras eat it up
  • It’s not exclusive to Republicans. Howard Dean had a Giuliani moment all his own, suggesting that Trump, who doesn’t even drink alcohol, might have a nasty cocaine habit.
  • And it’s amazing how far they’ve fallen. For a significant stretch of the 2008 election cycle, Giuliani was the favorite for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, and not just any favorite.
  • If Trump fails, where does that leave Christie? He was once intent on proving the bipartisan breadth of his outlook and appeal, as his brief bromance with President Obama demonstrated.
Conner Armstrong

USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...4531707

US usatoday Christie

shared by Conner Armstrong on 17 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The legislative committee sent subpoenas to 17 individuals and three institutions. None was immediately named.
  • A New Jersey Senate committee is also investigating whether Christie's top advisers orchestrated or covered up lane closures near the bridge for political purposes.Two Christie appointees to the Port Authority, which operates the bridge and other bi-state transportation entities, have already resigned in the wake of the uproar over the abrupt reduction from three access lanes to one onto the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 9.
  • Christie, who said he had no prior knowledge of the lane closures, said last week that he would cooperate "with all appropriate inquiries to ensure this breach of trust does not happen again."David Wildstein and Bill Baroni, who claimed the closure was part of a traffic study, have already resigned from the Port Authority.
alexdeltufo

Seven pols who could be Donald Trump's VP pick (and two who won't) - The Boston Globe - 0 views

www.bostonglobe.com/...story.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • “I have the business, let’s call them talents, and I think I’ll probably go the political route,”
  • He has been one of the most visible Trump supporters on Fox News and reportedly met privately with Trump for 90 minutes last week.
  • Haley has publicly criticized Trump; Capito has not. The latter has more than 14 years of experience on Capitol Hill and hails from an economically depressed state that’s been receptive to Trump’s populist message.
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  • Inside Washington, D.C., Corker is seen as a serious policy pro. Most importantly for Trump, perhaps, he’s been one of the few Republicans in Washington who has said he would be fine with supporting Trump.
  • She didn’t endorse anyone ahead of the Iowa caucuses — although she introduced US Senator Marco Rubio at an event. Ernst was also quite critical of Trump’s comments about women, but that might actually be an asset as he seeks to make up ground with female voters.
  • No matter what words have been said during the primary, a Kasich pick would makes sense for both Kasich and Trump.
  • Consider this math: If the Democratic nominee wins all the states the party won in the last six presidential elections, and then wins Florida, Trump will lose in the Electoral College.
  • It does make some sense politically: Christie was the first establishment politician to endorse Trump, and he took a lot of heat for it.
  • Trump doesn’t need Christie anymore.
  • here is no indication that Ryan would ever accept another ride on the national ticket as a vice presidential candidate, let alone for Trump.
maddieireland334

Senator Mike Lee Fears Enrolling Women in the Selective Service Could Lead to Mandatory... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484571

Mike Lee Women Military US Policy

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • (a) Lord, save us from this herd of retrograde, sexist swine; (b) Thank heavens a few leaders are still willing to stand up to such PC nonsense; (c) Wait! There hasn’t been a draft since 1973.
  • Back in February, after White House contenders Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio voiced support for the move, National Review denounced this “step toward barbarism.” “Men should protect women,” the magazine asserted. “They should not shelter behind mothers and daughters.”
  • And presidential wannabe Ted Cruz was aiming straight at his base’s paternalistic gut when—after calling Christie, Bush, and Rubio “nuts”—he raised the specter of his own wee daughters being forced into military fatigues and decried the very notion as “immoral.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Specifically, the senator has become convinced that the push to register every young American for the draft, women included, is in fact a stalking horse for Big Government’s push to establish a system of compulsory national service.
  • One is the move (championed by Senator John McCain) to open the draft to women. The other aims to create a “National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service” that would “consider methods to increase participation in military, national, and public service in order to address national security and other public service needs of the nation.”
  • Today, more funding is made available to create additional Americorps jobs; tomorrow, 18-year-olds are being forced to man soup kitchens in the name of patriotism.
Javier E

How Jeb Bush Triggered an Iraq War Watershed - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...riggered-an-iraq-war-watershed

iraq war origins partisan consensus politics history mideast

shared by Javier E on 15 May 15 - No Cached
  • It was one thing when John Kasich and Chris Christie said they would not have invaded Iraq - guys who would run as relative moderates and either aren't running or don't realize they're not running for president. (Rand Paul said the same but that's no surprise.) But now we have Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz saying they would not have either. Rubio is the big tell here since he among all the 2016 contenders is angling for the support of the neoconservative foreign policy intelligentsia. If he can say categorically that it was a mistake, the debate is probably really finally over.
  • With everything that has happened over the last dozen years, including events of just the last year, it's very hard to say that the invasion was a good idea. But people say lots of things that are either hard or downright ridiculous to say. Indeed, we should note that as recently as two months ago, Rubio was saying just the opposite, that invading Iraq was the right thing to do.
  • In the years just after the war, support for the war was an article of faith for most Republicans. That fixed much of the public debate in place. Many elected Democrats, meanwhile, were trapped by their own votes in favor of Bush's authorization to use force.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the 2008 presidential race, the Iraq 'debate' was largely fought over who was right about the surge.
  • We all sort of know that the ground has shifted on this issue. We can see it clearly in public opinion polls. But it is as though it's been years since we actually had a show of hands - especially among national Republicans. Good idea? Bad idea? As I was writing this, Jeb Bush himself has now come forward and, on the fourth try, said the Iraq War was a mistake. What I've called that showing of hands seems to show virtually no one of any consequence standing up for the decision to invade. Maybe we all kind of knew that that was where people had gotten to. But seeing people say it is a transformative event.
  • the ground has shifted not just on the facts of the issue, but on what is in many ways a more consequential front: Time has passed and Republicans simply don't feel the same sort of partisan responsibility for the conflict. It's drifting back into history. The sense of ideological and partisan commitment has just loosened - the intuitive reflex that says our guy did it so it must be right and I need to defend it
  • Cruz and Rubio especially are fighting for base Republicans. If they were still committed to the wisdom of the Iraq War, they wouldn't be saying this. And yet they are. That is a major watershed in the country's reckoning with the war. If Republicans running as hawks say it was a mistake, then the debate is really over.
  • with a consensus in place that the Iraq War was a bad idea, the whys and hows of just how we made this decision are up for discussion in a very new way.
Javier E

A Mandate? Not Really - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...10governors.html

US politics reform partisan ideology mandate

shared by Javier E on 11 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • In truth, though, none of these elections had all that much to do with the orthodoxies of liberalism or conservatism; they were, rather, the manifestations of long-building frustration with the status quo, and with whatever party happened to embody it at the moment.
  • One of the first things that struck me about Mr. Christie’s strategy when I spent time with him last winter was the royal blue banner that seemed to hover behind him wherever he spoke. “Christie Reform Agenda,” it said. “Rethink, Reform, Rebuild New Jersey.”
  • By constantly harping on this theme of reform, Mr. Christie has been able, to a large extent, to reshuffle traditional alliances in the legislature. The dynamic is no longer simply about Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other, but rather about forcing lawmakers of both parties to choose between Mr. Christie’s agenda and the large public unions he viciously excoriates.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Similarly, Mr. Cuomo struck the chord of nonpartisan reform in his inaugural speech, vowing to make government less bureaucratic and more accountable, and hasn’t let up since.
  • legislators in a state where reform seems to be gaining momentum must think twice before letting themselves get left behind.
  • as Mr. Obama seems to grasp, the party — or the candidate — that ultimately embodies a less predictable, less doctrinaire kind of reform will be the one that changes politics for good.
Javier E

G.O.P. Donors Seek to Anoint a 2016 Nominee Early - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dential-candidates-to-one.html

GOP president candidates financing

shared by Javier E on 09 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • With the midterms over, Mr. Christie and Mr. Bush have begun pushing top bundlers to commit to them in advance should they announce a White House bid, according to several donors, putting intense pressure on the corps of contributors who helped Mr. Romney and the Republican Party raise a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign. Those requests have intensified the discussion in some circles about whether to coalesce behind a candidate early or, alternatively, delay until after the early Republican debates next summer.
  • “When you get that call” to commit to Mr. Bush or Mr. Christie, said one prominent Republican fund-raiser, “the answer to that question is yes.”The fund-raiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationships with all three men, added: “Anything else and you’re on the B team. You’re on the second list. People that like to do this want to be on the A team.”
Javier E

Will the Republican Party Survive the 2016 Election? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...419118

GOP conservatism tea party middle-class white election strategy

shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • In the 1996 presidential election, voter turnout had tumbled to the lowest level since the 1920s, less than 52 percent. Turnout rose slightly in November 2000. Then, suddenly: overdrive. In the presidential elections of 2004 and 2008, voter turnout spiked to levels not seen since before the voting age was lowered to 18, and in 2012 it dipped only a little. Voters were excited by a hailstorm of divisive events: the dot-com bust, the Bush-versus-Gore recount, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the bailouts and stimulus, and the Affordable Care Act.
  • Putnam was right that Americans were turning away from traditional sources of information. But that was because they were turning to new ones: first cable news channels and partisan political documentaries; then blogs and news aggregators like the Drudge Report and The Huffington Post; after that, and most decisively, social media.
  • Politics was becoming more central to Americans’ identities in the 21st century than it ever was in the 20th. Would you be upset if your child married a supporter of a different party from your own? In 1960, only 5 percent of Americans said yes. In 2010, a third of Democrats and half of Republicans did.
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • Political identity has become so central because it has come to overlap with so many other aspects of identity: race, religion, lifestyle. In 1960, I wouldn’t have learned much about your politics if you told me that you hunted. Today, that hobby strongly suggests Republican loyalty. Unmarried? In 1960, that indicated little. Today, it predicts that you’re a Democrat, especially if you’re also a woman.
  • Meanwhile, the dividing line that used to be the most crucial of them all—class—has increasingly become a division within the parties, not between them.
  • Since 1984, nearly every Democratic presidential-primary race has ended as a contest between a “wine track” candidate who appealed to professionals (Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and Barack Obama) and a “beer track” candidate who mobilized the remains of the old industrial working class (Walter Mondale, Dick Gephardt, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton).
  • The Republicans have their equivalent in the battles between “Wall Street” and “Main Street” candidates. Until this decade, however, both parties—and especially the historically more cohesive Republicans—managed to keep sufficient class peace to preserve party unity.
  • The Great Recession ended in the summer of 2009. Since then, the U.S. economy has been growing, but most incomes have not grown comparably. In 2014, real median household income remained almost $4,000 below the pre-recession level, and well below the level in 1999. The country has recovered from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Most of its people have not. Many Republicans haven’t shared in the recovery and continued upward flight of their more affluent fellow partisans.
  • What was new and astonishing was the Trump boom. He jettisoned party orthodoxy on issues ranging from entitlement spending to foreign policy. He scoffed at trade agreements. He said rude things about Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers. He reviled the campaign contributions of big donors—himself included!—as open and blatant favor-buying. Trump’s surge was a decisive repudiation by millions of Republican voters of the collective wisdom of their party elite.
  • It’s uncertain whether any Tea Partier ever really carried a placard that read keep your government hands off my medicare. But if so, that person wasn’t spouting gibberish. The Obama administration had laid hands on Medicare. It hoped to squeeze $500 billion out of the program from 2010 to 2020 to finance health insurance for the uninsured. You didn’t have to look up the figures to have a sense that many of the uninsured were noncitizens (20 percent), or that even more were foreign-born (27 percent). In the Tea Party’s angry town-hall meetings, this issue resonated perhaps more loudly than any other—the ultimate example of redistribution from a deserving “us” to an undeserving “them.”
  • As a class, big Republican donors could not see any of this, or would not. So neither did the politicians who depend upon them. Against all evidence, both groups interpreted the Tea Party as a mass movement in favor of the agenda of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
  • Owners of capital assets, employers of low-skill laborers, and highly compensated professionals tend to benefit economically from the arrival of immigrants. They are better positioned to enjoy the attractive cultural and social results of migration (more-interesting food!) and to protect themselves against the burdensome impacts (surges in non-English-proficient pupils in public schools). A pro-immigration policy shift was one more assertion of class interest in a party program already brimful of them.
  • The Republican National Committee made it all official in a March 2013 postelection report signed by party eminences. The report generally avoided policy recommendations, with a notable exception: “We must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.
  • Republicans’ approval ratings slipped and slid. Instead of holding on to their base and adding Hispanics, Republicans alienated their base in return for no gains at all. By mid-2015, a majority of self-identified Republicans disapproved of their party’s congressional leadership
  • In 2011–12, the longest any of the “not Romneys” remained in first place was six weeks. In both cycles, resistance to the party favorite was concentrated among social and religious conservatives.
  • The closest study we have of the beliefs of Tea Party supporters, led by Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, found that “Tea Partiers judge entitlement programs not in terms of abstract free-market orthodoxy, but according to the perceived deservingness of recipients. The distinction between ‘workers’ and ‘people who don’t work’ is fundamental to Tea Party ideology.”
  • Half of Trump’s supporters within the GOP had stopped their education at or before high-school graduation, according to the polling firm YouGov. Only 19 percent had a college or postcollege degree. Thirty-eight percent earned less than $50,000. Only 11 percent earned more than $100,000.
  • Trump Republicans were not ideologically militant. Just 13 percent said they were very conservative; 19 percent described themselves as moderate. Nor were they highly religious by Republican standards.
  • What set them apart from other Republicans was their economic insecurity and the intensity of their economic nationalism. Sixty-three percent of Trump supporters wished to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil—a dozen points higher than the norm for all Republicans
  • More than other Republicans, Trump supporters distrusted Barack Obama as alien and dangerous: Only 21 percent acknowledged that the president was born in the United States, according to an August survey by the Democratic-oriented polling firm PPP. Sixty-six percent believed the president was a Muslim.
  • Trump promised to protect these voters’ pensions from their own party’s austerity. “We’ve got Social Security that’s going to be destroyed if somebody like me doesn’t bring money into the country. All these other people want to cut the hell out of it. I’m not going to cut it at all; I’m going to bring money in, and we’re going to save it.”
  • He promised to protect their children from being drawn into another war in the Middle East, this time in Syria. “If we’re going to have World War III,” he told The Washington Post in October, “it’s not going to be over Syria.” As for the politicians threatening to shoot down the Russian jets flying missions in Syria, “I won’t even call them hawks. I call them the fools.”
  • He promised a campaign independent of the influences of money that had swayed so many Republican races of the past. “I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”
  • Trump has destroyed one elite-favored presidential candidacy, Scott Walker’s, and crippled two others, Jeb Bush’s and Chris Christie’s. He has thrown into disarray the party’s post-2012 comeback strategy, and pulled into the center of national discussion issues and constituencies long relegated to the margins.
  • Something has changed in American politics since the Great Recession. The old slogans ring hollow. The insurgent candidates are less absurd, the orthodox candidates more vulnerable. The GOP donor elite planned a dynastic restoration in 2016. Instead, it triggered an internal class war.
  • there appear to be four paths the elite could follow, for this campaign season and beyond. They lead the party in very different directions.
  • Maybe the same message and platform would have worked fine if espoused by a fresher and livelier candidate. Such is the theory of Marco Rubio’s campaign. Or—even if the donor message and platform have troubles—maybe $100 million in negative ads can scorch any potential alternative, enabling the donor-backed candidate to win by default.
  • Yet even if the Republican donor elite can keep control of the party while doubling down, it’s doubtful that the tactic can ultimately win presidential elections.
  • The “change nothing but immigration” advice was a self-flattering fantasy from the start. Immigration is not the main reason Republican presidential candidates lose so badly among Latino and Asian American voters, and never was: Latino voters are more likely to list education and health care as issues that are extremely important to them. A majority of Asian Americans are non-Christian and susceptible to exclusion by sectarian religious themes.
  • Perhaps some concession to the disgruntled base is needed. That’s the theory of the Cruz campaign and—after a course correction—also of the Christie campaign. Instead of 2013’s “Conservatism Classic Plus Immigration Liberalization,” Cruz and Christie are urging “Conservatism Classic Plus Immigration Enforcement.”
  • Severed from a larger agenda, however—as Mitt Romney tried to sever the issue in 2012—immigration populism looks at best like pandering, and at worst like identity politics for white voters. In a society that is and always has been multiethnic and polyglot, any national party must compete more broadly than that.
  • Admittedly, this may be the most uncongenial thought of them all, but party elites could try to open more ideological space for the economic interests of the middle class. Make peace with universal health-insurance coverage: Mend Obamacare rather than end it. Cut taxes less at the top, and use the money to deliver more benefits to working families in the middle. Devise immigration policy to support wages, not undercut them. Worry more about regulations that artificially transfer wealth upward, and less about regulations that constrain financial speculation. Take seriously issues such as the length of commutes, nursing-home costs, and the anticompetitive practices that inflate college tuitio
  • Such a party would cut health-care costs by squeezing providers, not young beneficiaries. It would boost productivity by investing in hard infrastructure—bridges, airports, water-treatment plants. It would restore Dwight Eisenhower to the Republican pantheon alongside Ronald Reagan and emphasize the center in center-right
  • True, center-right conservative parties backed by broad multiethnic coalitions of the middle class have gained and exercised power in other English-speaking countries, even as Republicans lost the presidency in 2008 and 2012. But the most-influential voices in American conservatism reject the experience of their foreign counterparts as weak, unprincipled, and unnecessary.
  • “The filibuster used to be bad. Now it’s good.” So Fred Thompson, the late actor and former Republican senator, jokingly told an audience on a National Review cruise shortly after Barack Obama won the presidency for the first time. How partisans feel about process issues is notoriously related to what process would benefit them at any given moment.
  • There are metrics, after all, by which the post-2009 GOP appears to be a supremely successful political party. Recently, Rory Cooper, of the communications firm Purple Strategies, tallied a net gain to the Republicans of 69 seats in the House of Representatives, 13 seats in the Senate, 900-plus seats in state legislatures, and 12 governorships since Obama took office. With that kind of grip on state government, in particular, Republicans are well positioned to write election and voting rules that sustain their hold on the national legislature
  • Maybe the more natural condition of conservative parties is permanent defense—and where better to wage a long, grinding defensive campaign than in Congress and the statehouses? Maybe the presidency itself should be regarded as one of those things that is good to have but not a must-have, especially if obtaining it requires uncomfortable change
zachcutler

Republican debate: 6 takeaways - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics history republican debate

shared by zachcutler on 15 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped their buddy-buddy act
  • The two stole the show the Fox Business Network debate in North Charleston,
  • "I guess the bromance is over," Trump told CNN's Dan
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Cruz was ready to attack Trump over the real estate mogul's assertion that Cruz's Canadian birth (to a U.S. citizen mother) makes him vulnerable to accusations he is ineligible for the presidency,
  • As Cruz rebutted Trump for raising the issue -- effectively winning the moment -- Trump essentially held his hands up and said he's not the one who's concerned.
  • And he succeeded in keeping the question alive -- a loss, in and of itself, for Cruz. Trump asked: "If you become the nominee, who the hell knows if you can even serve in office?"
  • Trump and Cruz were at the center of the night's most memorable exchanges, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie traded blows as well.
  • That Christie was even a target suggests he has a leg up on the two other governors in the race -- Ohio Gov.
  • Kasich, meanwhile, got the most engagement of the night from 89-year-old former Democratic Rep. John Dingell,
  • No, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul didn't change his mind and show up for Thursday's 6 p.m. undercard round. But skipping the debate worked for him.
  • "If you're designated as someone who is not in contention, that is very disruptive to a campaign that is about three weeks out,
katherineharron

The Liz Cheney fist bump that will launch a thousand negative ads - CNN Politics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

biden

shared by katherineharron on 29 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • As President Joe Biden made his way toward the House dais to deliver his speech on Wednesday night, he and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (Wyoming) exchanged a very brief fist bump.
  • Cheney was one of at least 20 people – and that is a low-end estimate – whom Biden fist-bumped or elbow-bumped on his way to the podium
  • Despite all of that, as soon as I saw it happen, all I could think to myself was: Donald Trump (and his acolytes) are going to have a field day with this. Here’s why: We are a visual people. Which means videos have power in our society. And the video of Biden fist-bumping Cheney is going to be used by every Trumpist who wants Cheney to lose her seat next year as evidence that she is a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and a sellout of conservative principles.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • But Cheney has become the No. 1 target of the former president because she had the audacity to vote for his impeachment following his incitement of a riot that led to an armed insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6
  • In an interview with Punchbowl News on Tuesday – before the fist-bump – Cheney was both pragmatic and optimistic about her political future. She acknowledged that she is likely to face a “challenging primary” following her vote against Trump, but quickly added: “Anybody who wants to get in that race and who wants to do it on the basis of debating me about whether or not President Trump should have been impeached, I’ll have that debate every day of the week.”
  • “Liz Cheney is polling sooo low in Wyoming, and has sooo little support, even from the Wyoming Republican Party, that she is looking for a way out of her Congressional race,” said Trump in a statement released Tuesday. “Based on all polling, there is no way she can win.” (Sidebar: Yes, he really wrote “sooo,” not once but twice.)
  • If you don’t think a moment – caught on tape – matters, just ask former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) about his decision to embrace former President Barack Obama during a presidential visit in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.
Javier E

Fintan O'Toole: Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands - 0 views

www.irishtimes.com/...destroy-still-stands-1.4435655

trump mission 2020 legacy politics crisis

shared by Javier E on 28 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • All of this was to grossly underestimate Trump. He may have done plenty of the cheeseburgers and Fox News stuff. But he also kept his eye on the great strategic prize: the creation in the US of a vast and impassioned base for anti-democratic politics.
  • It is hard, after such a relentless barrage of outrage and weirdness over the last four years, to remember what the broad consensus about Trump was at the beginning of 2016.
  • Why? Because a timetable for action and a commitment to appoint, to the thousands of positions filled by the incoming president, people with expertise and experience, would constrain him. He was not going to be constrained.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The political message was one that took longer to sink in. A transition plan implied some kind of basic institutional continuity, some respect for the norms of governance.
  • At the beginning, as at the end, the idea of an orderly transition of power was anathema to Trump.
  • Bannon told Christie that he was being fired with immediate effect “and we do not want you to be in the building anymore”. His painstaking work was literally trashed: “All thirty binders”, as Christie recalled in a self-pitying memoir, “were tossed in a Trump Tower dumpster, never to be seen again”.
  • Arguably, these two things – building infrastructure and starting a military conflict – might just have got Trump re-elected. So why did he not do either of them?
  • His personal laziness is certainly one explanation: galvanising and directing such huge efforts is hard work.
  • But there is a deeper reason. Great building projects and military engagements validate the idea of government itself. Trump’s overwhelming instinct was to destroy that idea.
  • It is not just that Trump really was not interested in governing. It is that he was deeply interested in misgovernment.
  • He left important leadership positions in government departments unfilled on a permanent basis, or filled them with scandalously unqualified cronies. He appointed people to head agencies to which they had been publicly hostile.
  • Beneath the psychodrama of Trump’s hourly outbursts, there was a duller but often more meaningful agenda: taking a blowtorch to regulation, especially, but by no means exclusively, in relation to the environment.
  • the replacement of political institutions by personal rule was precisely the point.
  • With this discrediting of democratic governance, it is not just that we cannot disentangle the personal motives from the political ones
  • Trump’s aim, in the presidency as in his previous life, was always simple: to be able to do whatever the hell he wanted. That required the transformation of elective office into the relationship of a capricious ruler to his sycophantic courtiers.
  • Power is proven, not when the sycophants have to obey reasonable commands, but when they have to follow and justify the craziest orders.
  • Democracy is not just about voting – it is a system for the rational articulation of ideas about the public good. Trump set out to lay waste to that whole system, from the bottom up, poisoning the groundwaters of respect for evidence, argument and rationality that keeps it alive.
  • he knew how to tap into a hatred of government that has been barely below the surface of American culture since before the foundation of the US.
  • This is his legacy: he has successfully led a vast number of voters along the path from hatred of government to contempt for rational deliberation to the inevitable endpoint: disdain for the electoral process itself.
  • Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands. It is, for him, not goodbye but hasta la vista. Instead of waving him off, those who want to rebuild American democracy will have to put a stake through his heart.
Javier E

'The Sleepwalkers' and 'July 1914' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...leepwalkers-and-july-1914.html

WWI origins historiography

shared by Javier E on 10 May 13 - No Cached
  • In “The Sleepwalkers,” Christopher Clark, a professor of modern European history at Cambridge, describes how within 10 days czarist Russia’s ministers had created a narrative to justify Russia taking up arms for its “little Serbian brothers” should Austria-Hungary try to punish them. The dead archduke was portrayed as a stooge of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and a warmonger (which he wasn’t). The intent was to shift the moral onus from the perpetrator to the victim. France bought into that stratagem, and England more or less went along, the three bound by the Triple Entente of 1907. Austria-Hungary in turn had by July 4 sent an envoy on the night train to Berlin, where the Kaiser had just rebuked an official urging calm: “Stop this nonsense! It was high time a clean sweep was made of the Serbs.” So Austria-­Hungary got its famous “blank check,” and 37 days after Sarajevo the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire later in the year and eventually Bulgaria) were at war with the Entente powers
  • Russia’s ­mobilization, he says, was “one of the most momentous decisions of the July crisis. This was the first of the general mobilizations.” McMeekin says that Russia’s crime was first in escalating a local quarrel by encouraging Serbia to stand up to Austria-Hungary and then accelerating the rush to war. He faults Barbara Tuchman in her classic “Guns of August” for misdating Russia’s mobilization two days later than it was ordered. He is no apologist for Germany. In “The Berlin-­Baghdad Express” (2010), he nailed the Kaiser as a half-crazy jihadist inciting Muslims against Anglo-French interests in the faltering Ottoman Empire, but his 2011 book “The Russian Origins of the First World War” lived up to its title. Clark lends authority by citing Russian-French falsifications of documents. The Russians backdated and reworded papers in the records. The French were even more inventive, fabricating a telegram reporting six days of war preparations by Germany that weren’t happening. In Clark’s phrase, both Russia and France were at pains, then and later, to make Berlin appear “the moral fulcrum of the crisis.”
  • By a stringent line-by-line analysis of the terms of Austria’s 48-hour ultimatum to Serbia and the Serbian reply, Clark demolishes the standard view that Austria was too harsh and that Serbia humbly complied. Austria demanded action against irredentist networks in Serbia. It would have been an infringement of sovereignty, yes, but Serbian tolerance of the terrorist networks, and its laid-back response to the Sarajevo murders, inhibit one’s sympathy with its position. Clark describes Austria’s ultimatum as “a great deal milder” than the ultimatum presented by NATO to Serbia-Yugoslavia in the March 1999 Rambouillet Agreement for unimpeded access to its land. As for Serbia’s reply, so long regarded as conciliatory, Clark shows that on most policy points it was a highly perfumed rejection offering Austria amazingly little — a “masterpiece of diplomatic equivocation.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Clark declines to join McMeekin in what he calls “the blame game,” because there were so many participants. He argues that trying to fix guilt on one leader or nation assumes that there must be a guilty party and this, he maintains, distorts the history into a prosecutorial narrative that misses the essentially multilateral nature of the exchanges, while underplaying the ethnic and nationalistic ferment of a region. “The outbreak of war in 1914,” he writes, “is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol.” Not having a villain to boo is emotionally less satisfying, but Clark makes a cogent case for the war as a tragedy, not a crime: in his telling there is a smoking pistol in the hands of every major character.
  • Clark makes a fascinating point I’ve not seen before: not simply were all the political players in the drama male, but they were men caught in a “crisis of masculinity.” He cites historians of gender who argue that at this particular time “competition from subordinate and marginalized masculinities — proletarian and nonwhite for example” accentuated assertiveness. You’d expect the military men to exude testosterone, and they do, but Clark is struck by how ubiquitous in memoir and memorandums are pointedly masculine modes of comportment, and how closely they are interwoven with their understanding of policy. “Uprightness,” “backs very stiff,” “firmness of will,” “self-castration” are typical modes of expression.
  • The brilliance of Clark’s far-reaching history is that we are able to discern how the past was genuinely prologue. The participants were conditioned to keep walking along a precipitous escarpment, sure of their own moral compass, but unknowingly impelled by a complex interaction of deep-rooted cultures, patriotism and paranoia, sediments of history and folk memory, ambition and intrigue. They were, in Clark’s term, “sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.”
Javier E

Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-saved-from-obsolescence.html

Republicans crisis political right obsolete policy

shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • he Republican Party’s technological deficiencies barely begin to explain why the G.O.P. has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. The party brand — which is to say, its message and its messengers — has become practically abhorrent to emerging demographic groups like Latinos and African-Americans, not to mention an entire generation of young voters.
  • I flew with Anderson to Columbus, Ohio, to watch her conduct two focus groups. The first consisted of 10 single, middle-class women in their 20s; the second, of 10 20-something men who were either jobless or employed but seeking better work. All of them voted for Obama but did not identify themselves as committed Democrats and were sufficiently ambivalent about the president’s performance that Anderson deemed them within reach of the Republicans.
  • “I’m going to write down a word, and you guys free-associate with whatever comes to mind,” she said. The first word she wrote was “Democrat.” “Young people,” one woman called out. “Liberal,” another said. Followed by: “Diverse.” “Bill Clinton.”“Change.”“Open-minded.”“Spending.”“Handouts.”“Green.”“More science-based.” When Anderson then wrote “Republican,” the outburst was immediate and vehement: “Corporate greed.”“Old.”“Middle-aged white men.” “Rich.” “Religious.” “Conservative.” “Hypocritical.” “Military retirees.” “Narrow-minded.” “Rigid.” “Not progressive.” “Polarizing.” “Stuck in their ways.” “Farmers.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The session with the young men was equally jarring. None of them expressed great enthusiasm for Obama. But their depiction of Republicans was even more lacerating than the women’s had been. “Racist,” “out of touch” and “hateful” made the list — “and put ‘1950s’ on there too!” one called out.
  • What could they say or do to make you feel more positive about the Republican Party?” “Be more pro-science,” said a 22-year-old moderate named Jack. “Embrace technology and change.” “Stick to your strong suit,” advised Nick, a 23-year-old African-American. “Clearly social issues aren’t your strong suit. Stop trying to fight the battle that’s already been fought and trying to bring back a movement. Get over it — you lost.”
  • that’s where the left has beaten us, by giving smart people the space and trusting them to have success. It’s a fundamentally anti-entrepreneurial model we’ve embraced.”
  • the dilemma faced by Republicans in Congress. “What forces them to vote that way, 9 times out of 10, is a fear of a primary challenge,” he said. “What we hope to accomplish is to bring more voters into Republican primaries, so that it isn’t just the far right that shows up at the polls.” The dilemma, Goodwin acknowledged, is that the far-right rhetoric may well repel such voters from participating in G.O.P. primaries to begin with. “We recognize that this isn’t something that’s going to happen anytime soon,” he said.
  • Young Republicans now lament that no one from their side has stepped up to organize a conservative version of RootsCamp. Michael Turk, a 42-year-old Republican digital guru, suggested that the failure of G.O.P. technologists to do this springs from a uniquely Republican trait. “They all wanted to make money,” he said. “And so as a result, Katie Harbath, who was one of my deputies at the R.N.C., is now at Facebook, and Mindy Finn” — a longtime G.O.P. digital operative — “is at Twitter, and Patrick and I each started our own companies. We all found ways to parlay that into a living for our families, as opposed to just doing it for the cause.”
  • Several G.O.P. digital specialists told me that, in addition, they found it difficult to recruit talent because of the values espoused by the party. “I know a lot of people who do technology for a living,” Turk said. “And almost universally, there’s a libertarian streak that runs through them — information should be free, do your own thing and leave me alone, that sort of mind-set. That’s very much what the Internet is. And almost to a person that I’ve talked to, they say, ‘Yeah, I would probably vote for Republicans, but I can’t get past the gay-marriage ban, the abortion stance, all of these social causes.’
  • In the previous few days, the pollster interviewed Latino voters in San Diego and young entrepreneurs in Orlando. The findings were virtually unanimous. No one could understand the G.O.P.’s hot-blooded opposition to gay marriage or its perceived affinity for invading foreign countries. Every group believed that the first place to cut spending was the defense budget. During the whiteboard drill, every focus group described Democrats as “open-minded” and Republicans as “rigid.” “There is a brand,” the 28-year-old pollster concluded of her party with clinical finality. “And it’s that we’re not in the 21st century.”
  • To win, a reincarnated Reagan — or a Rubio or a Chris Christie or a Bobby Jindal — would still have to satisfy his base of hard-line conservatives and captivate a new generation of voters at the same time. I ran this quandary by Kristen Soltis Anderson. “It’s a big challenge,” she acknowledged. “But I think that if you can earn the trust of the people, there are ways you can say, ‘Here’s why I take this position.’ I don’t know that someone like Rubio, who may be young and attractive and well spoken, could attract young voters despite his views on gay marriage. I do think that in the absence of a very compelling reason to vote for a candidate, those social issues can be deal-breakers for young voters. The challenge is: Can you make a case that’s so compelling that you can overcome those deal-breaker issues? And I don’t know the answer to that question.”
rachelramirez

Even Trump's Kids Haven't Donated to His Campaign - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...t-donated-to-his-campaign.html

trump politics US policy

shared by rachelramirez on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Even Trump’s Kids Haven’t Donated to His Campaign
  • With less than two weeks until the election, Donald Trump has amassed an impressive army of small donors, fueling his bid with individual contributions of $200 or less. But noticeably absent from the list of contributors is basically anyone with the last name Trump, many of the surrogates who represent The Donald on national television, and members of his own campaign staff.
  • On Sept. 7, 2016, Eric Trump appears to have contributed $376.20 listed only as “meeting expense: meals.”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Ben Carson, another staunch Trump defender, gave Mitt Romney $1,000 in April 2012 but nothing to Trump this cycle.
  • t. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency director turned Trump warm-up act, has not given the candidate a dime. Neither has Governor Chris Christie
  • Many of Trump’s surrogates, who have been generous in previous campaigns, this year have kept their wallets closed to The Donald.
  • Ivanka Trump, who previously contributed to Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2007 and 2008 respectively, does not appear to have given to her father.
  • And contributions below $200 are not required to be reported by presidential campaigns.
  • The kind of anything goes rule when it comes to donations applies evenly to both candidates in the race and some of Clinton’s team is not on record providing contributions either.
  • However, Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta appears to have given $2,700 on April 16, 2015. And Chelsea Clinton gave her mother’s campaign $2,700 on Jan. 21, 2016. There are also documented contributions from newly-appointed Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook, and former strategist for President Obama David Axelrod.
  • One major Clinton surrogate who is noticeably absent from her extensive list of contributors is billionaire Mark Cuban who has been a public thorn in Trump’s side.
  • And by September, Trump had paid his own businesses around $8.2 million, comprised of rent, food, and facilities and payroll for corporate staffers. He even used tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to buy copies of his own book.
  • Meanwhile, Trump is still asserting that he will invest $100 million in his own campaign
Javier E

The Party Surrenders - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-party-surrenders.html

gop conservatism demagogue politics

shared by Javier E on 12 May 16 - No Cached
  • a wide array of figures whose own commitments seemed incompatible with Trumpism decided that he was worth defending and eventually supporting.
  • These figures, strikingly, came from both sides of the pre-existing civil war
  • Early in the campaign, when it seemed as if Jeb Bush had a chance to coast to the nomination as the standard-bearer of the establishment, it was mostly voices from the professional base — talk-radio voices, Fox News voices and for a time Cruz himself — who worked to build up Trump as a populist alternative
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Then as it became clear that the most establishment-friendly candidates (Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, even the more right-wing Rubio) weren’t going to hack it, it was the establishmentarians and self-conscious moderates who decided that Trump was a man they could do business with, not like that crazy Tea Partier Senator Cruz.
  • Which is how Trump ended up as the candidate of Sean Hannity and John Boehner, Ann Coulter and Jon Huntsman, with Rush Limbaugh running interference for him with the grass roots, and various lobbyists doing the same on Capitol Hill.
  • many were clearly motivated by grudges and fears instilled by the party’s civil war, and by a sense that even though Trump might represent a grave threat to their vision of Republicanism, it would still be better to serve under his rule for a season than to risk putting their hated intraparty rivals in the catbird seat.
  • The narcissism of small differences, in other words, led both the professional establishment and the professional base to surrender to a force that they had countless ideological and pragmatic reasons to oppose.
  • So to catalog my wrongness: I overestimated the real commitment of both factions’ leaders to their stated principles and favored policies.
  • ) I overestimated their ability to put those principles ahead of personal resentments
  • And yes, since to acquiesce to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is to gamble recklessly with the party’s responsibilities to the republic, I overestimated their basic sense of honor.
  • it’s possible that the establishment and the Tea Party are more like Byzantium and Sassanid Persia in the seventh century A.D., and Trumpism is the Arab-Muslim invasion that put an end to their long-running rivalry, destroyed the Sassanid Dynasty outright, and ushered in a very different age. Write A Comment No doubt many thought at first that those invaders were a temporary problem, an alien force that would wreak havoc and then withdraw, dissolve, retreat.But a new religion had arrived to stay.
  • It is possible that a dishonorable, cowardly, unprincipled course will yield the result that many in both G.O.P. factions clearly crave: Trump defeated in the general election, his ideas left without a champion, and then a reversion to the party’s status quo
  • Before Trump’s emergence, the Republican elite was in the midst of a long-running civil war, pitting the much-hated “establishment” against the much-feared “base,” the center-right against the Tea Party, the official party leadership against a congeries of activists, media personalities and up-and-coming right-wing politicians
  • But beneath the noise of battle, the establishment’s leaders and the base’s tribunes were often in near-agreement on policy (or, in some cases, on the absence thereof)
  • on many issues they were fighting about how to fight, as much as about what specifically to do.
  • Because of this underlying agreement, the G.O.P. elite’s civil war actually covered over many of the deeper ideological divisions within the party’s rank and file.
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