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Obama optimism over climate pact tempered by GOP opposition - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/ition-080544928--politics.html obama optimism climate pact gop opposition yahoo news US Policy history
shared by katyshannon on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the newly passed international climate change agreement as a major achievement that could help turn the tide on global warming, but got a quick reminder that Republicans will fight it all the way.
  • Obama said the climate agreement made Saturday night by almost 200 nations "can be a turning point for the world" and credited his administration for playing a key role. He and Kerry predicted it would prompt widespread spending on clean energy and help stem carbon pollution blamed for global warming.
  • The immediate reaction of leading Republican critics was a stark reminder of the conflict that lies ahead.
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  • Obama said the agreement is not perfect, but sets a framework that will contain periodic reviews and assessments to ensure that countries meet their commitments to curb carbon emissions.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Obama is "making promises he can't keep" and should remember that the agreement "is subject to being shredded in 13 months." McConnell noted that the presidential election is next year and the agreement could be reversed if the GOP wins the White House.
  • And Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said that Americans can expect the administration to cite the agreement as an excuse for establishing emission targets for every sector of the U.S. economy.
  • Kerry said from Paris: "I have news for Senator Inhofe. The United States of America has already reduced its emissions more than any other country in the world."
  • In an interview taped for CBS' "Face the Nation," Kerry called the climate pact "a breakaway agreement" that will change how countries make decisions and "spur massive investment."
  • He acknowledged that a Republican president could undo the agreement, but said there is already plenty of evidence that climate change is having a damaging and expensive impact with more intense
  • storms, wildfires and melting glaciers.
  • Several Democratic lawmakers applauded Obama's efforts.
  • House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi hailed it as a "monumental moment" and praised Obama for his leadership on the issue.
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Donald Trump Just Posted His Most Massive Lead Yet - 1 views

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shared by katyshannon on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump began his Monday facing a spate of unflattering headlines, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) having officially snatched the top position in Iowa from the real estate tycoon. Then came the midday release of a national poll from Monmouth University, which showed Trump posting his most massive lead since entering the 2016 contest in June.
  • Trump crushes the Republican field with 41% support, the poll finds, with Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson far behind. Cruz garners 14% of Republican voters, while Rubio claims 10% and Carson wins 9%.
  • Further behind are Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former frontrunner Jeb Bush at 3%, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky earn 2% each. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sits at 1%.
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  • Most disconcertingly for the GOP establishment, the latest poll finds a hefty portion of its electorate, even beyond current Trump supporters, coming around to the idea of Trump as their standard-bearer. Two-thirds of GOP voters said they'd be either enthusiastic or satisfied if he captured the party's nod, while 65% said the brash billionaire had the right temperament to serve as president.
  • Trump's favorability rating stands at 61% — the best among the field and a nine-point jump from his 52% favorable rating in the October Monmouth poll. Only 29% of Republicans view Trump unfavorably, compared to 33% two months ago
  • The finding comes amid signs that Trump's call last week for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States is resonating with GOP voters. A Bloomberg Politics poll found that two in three Republicans back the ban, although an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed the Republican electorate more divided. 
  • What's clear, though, is that after briefly surrendering his national polling lead to Carson, Trump is back on top. Of the 12 national polls conducted since November, Trump has led in all of t hem.
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Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem. - The Washington Post - 4 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...gIQAxCVUlT_print.html conservativism Republican ideology partisan science
shared by Javier E on 03 May 12 - Cached
  • We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
  • The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
  • When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
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  • the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress.
  • While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
  • What happened?
  • the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.
  • It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
  • political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.
  • Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.
  • In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington,
  • Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.
  • No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking.
  • Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.
  • The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible.
  • We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
  • Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.
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To Do List: What Each GOP Candidate Must Achieve in Thursday's Debate - Washington Wire... - 1 views

blogs.wsj.com/...st-achieve-in-thursdays-debate candidate gop politics US crisis
shared by zachcutler on 14 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Just seven Republican presidential candidates will take the debate stage Thursday night in South Carolina,
  •  In a word, energy. The former Florida governor has made no secret of his ambivalence about debates
  • His brand is pragmatism, and the smaller debate stage may give him a chance
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  • The New Jersey governor has clawed his way back into the race by winning over New Hampshire primary voters one town hall and diner at a time
  • that made him the early favorite to be the GOP nominee as far back as 2011
  • : The Ohio governor has been an after-thought for much of the Republican race, and yet, he is just as well-positioned for a strong finish in New Hampshire as Messrs. Bush, Christie and Rubio
  • The retired pediatric neurosurgeon is a case study in the physics of presidential politics: Candidates that surge quickly tend to fall to earth just as fast. He has lost so much altitude since his shaky performance
  •  Solid. That is how the pundit class has rendered each of Mr. Rubio’s five previous debates. Of all the candidates on stage, the Florida senator seems to have passed the credibility test
  • The Texas senator likes to tell supporters you only take flak because you’re over the target, attributing his rivals’ recent attacks to his surge in the polls, both nationally and in Iowa. It’s one thing to expect incoming
  • The celebrity businessman has defied just about every rule in American politics
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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.
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  • 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
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The GOP's Laboratories of Oligarchy | The New Republic - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 05 Dec 18 - No Cached
  • In the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, the titular characters occasionally play a game known as “Calvinball.” The rules are simple: Hobbes makes them up as he goes. In one strip, the imaginary stuffed tiger declares mid-game that Calvin has entered an “invisible sector” and must cover his eyes “because everything is invisible to you.” The six-year-old boy obeys and asks Hobbes how he gets out. “Someone bonks you with the Calvinball!” Hobbes exclaims, chucking the volleyball at Calvin. And so it goes until Calvin, in the final panel, is dizzy and disoriented. “This game,” he notes, “lends itself to certain abuses.”
  • Now, one month later, GOP lawmakers in multiple states are using lame-duck sessions to hamstring incoming Democratic elected officials, either by reducing their official powers or transferring them to Republican-led legislatures.
  • Over the past decade, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina mastered the strategy of constitutional hardball to preserve their political muscle even as their electoral advantage shrank. The metastasis of this model today may be an even greater threat to the nation’s political health than Trump himself.
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  • Top Republicans in Wisconsin aren’t disguising the partisan aims of their legislation, which drew protesters to the state’s capitol building on Monday. “Most of these items are things that either we never really had to kind of address because, guess what? We trusted Scott Walker and the administration to be able to manage the back-and-forth with the legislature,” Scott Fitzgerald, the Wisconsin Senate’s majority leader, said in an interview with a conservative talk-radio host. “We don’t trust Tony Evers right now in a lot of these areas.”
  • This approach to governance was devastating enough in North Carolina. Its spread to other states is a grim sign for purple and red states. If Republicans are unwilling to be governed by another political party, one need not be a political scientist to understand how harmful that will be to democracy itself.
  • Gerrymandering is as old as the republic itself, and neither party’s hands are clean when it comes to drawing legislative districts for partisan advantage. What distinguished the post-2010 wave of Republican gerrymandering was its sheer aggressiveness. In Wisconsin, the GOP commands near-supermajorities in the state assembly and state senate despite drawing roughly even with Democrats in the statewide popular vote. North Carolina Democrats won nearly half of the statewide popular vote in congressional races but captured only three of the state’s House seats.
  • Democracy, both as a system of government and as a way of life, needs more than just legislation and constitutions to function. It also requires a shared understanding of the bounds of acceptable political action. Without that shared understanding, the laboratories of democracy, as Justice Louis Brandeis once put it, become breeding grounds for oligarchical rule
  • “The only permanent rule in Calvinball,” Calvin exclaims in one strip, “is that you can’t play it the same way twice!” That may work with an imaginary friend, but it’s a dangerous way to run a country
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Want to save the GOP, Republicans? Vote for every Democrat on this year's ballot. - The... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ery-democrat-this-years-ballot gop vote election 2018 trump
shared by Javier E on 04 Sep 18 - No Cached
  • lock-step adherence to a party leader is why it’s now illogical to say: “I’m not a Trump supporter, but I’ll still vote Republican.” Every seat Republicans keep in 2018 will be a signal to the national party, and to GOP leaders in Congress, that they should continue supporting Trump, no matter how outrageous his antics, and no matter how much they privately disagree.
  • By definition, a vote for any Republican candidate in 2018 is a vote for family separation, tax cuts without corresponding budget cuts, daily insult theatrics in the Oval Office and porn-star payoffs. It’s a vote to ignore Russian corruption of our elections.
  • And make no mistake: It’s a vote giving Trump license to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III the day after Election Day.
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  • There are Republicans who’ll try to split the difference here, and say they’re still voting for Republicans only to maintain policies they like. But, this year, that is little more than a convenient dodge. Trump’s words and deeds — you can’t really call them “policies” — aren’t conservative. They’re statist, anti-law enforcement, anti-national security and run counter to American ideals.
  • Conservatives who insist on voting Republican this year are, in effect, arguing that Democrats are worse than a president who has prostrated himself to Putin, started trade wars with our allies, cruelly separated families at the border, failed to deliver adequate aid to Americans in Puerto Rico and who has, as retired admiral Bill McRaven recently wrote for The Post, “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children.
  • Yes, taking the road I’m proposing means that a lot of Republican projects, many of which I support, will come to a halt; that some laughable, maybe even destructive Democrats will come to Washington, possibly remaining there for a long time. So be it. When a political party loses its way, as the Republican Party has, and becomes the instrument of someone like Trump, divided government is the Constitution’s best remedy.
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The GOP's Problems Are Bigger Than Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...558305 gop problems trump resentment anti-intellectualism
shared by Javier E on 20 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • if Trump starts to seem like he’s hurting the GOP’s popularity more than he is helping it, he has no reserve of personal goodwill or substantive support for his ideas on which to fall back
  • Trump’s unpopularity was illustrated most colorfully by an unnamed GOP representative quoted by conservative commentator Erick Erickson. “I say a lot of shit on TV defending him,” the legislator said. “But honestly, I wish the motherfucker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, shits all over Twitter, shits all over us, shits all over his staff, then hits golf balls. Fuck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town.” The unnamed congressman even declared of the president he has defended on television, “If we’re going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherfucker.”
  • The populist right of 1994 to 2014 might have seemed rudderless, insofar as it appeared to drift from the Contract with America to late 1990s anti-interventionism to panicked anti-jihadism to Iraq War boosterism to the Tea Party to Donald Trump-style white nationalism.
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  • That isn’t to say that various iterations of right-wing populism were without earnest adherents of substance
  • Those clashes were like whales: Populist entertainers like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Andrew Breitbart could be relied upon to spot the biggest one, take aim, and attempt a ramming maneuver.
  • But all the while, its captains were going full-throttle toward a consistent sort of destination that the populist right cared about more than any policy agenda: culture-war clashes with liberal elites.
  • But anti-leftist ressentiment was always the lodestar of right-wing populism, so much so that successive iterations could be substantively different or even contradictory, yet still be led by the same entertainers and backed by similar coalitions.
  • Who could champion George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump as if there were no contradiction in doing so? Rush Limbaugh, for one. And much of his audience.
  • “Paradoxically, the right’s ideological diversity is often what breeds intellectual conformity,” Douthat wrote in 2010. “It’s precisely because American conservatism represents a motley assortment of political tendencies united primarily by their opposition to liberalism that conservatives are often too quick to put their (legitimate, important and worth-debating) differences aside in the quest to slay the liberal dragon. After all, slaying liberalism is why they got together in the first place!”
  • that brings us to the bad news for the Republican Party: Dumping Trump won’t actually get rid of the pathologies that made his rise to president possible. Republicans will remain vulnerable to takeover by charismatic hucksters without a substantively constructive policy agenda, an ability to successfully govern, or a vision for a coalition that transcends ressentiment
  • And the populist entertainers will keep getting filthy rich in the process.It is they who’ve come closer to taking over the GOP.
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GOP fears this man could be Senate nominee - CNN Video - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...nate-nominee-bash-dnt-lead.cnn US politics
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  • Republicans fear a 2018 GOP primary win by ex-con coal executive Don Blankenship may hurt their chances to knock off incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. CNN's Dana Bash reports.
  • Republicans fear a 2018 GOP primary win by ex-con coal executive Don Blankenship may hurt their chances to knock off incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. CNN's Dana Bash reports.
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In Texas-sized congressional primaries, most GOP candidates run toward Trump - The Wash... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html politics Conservatism Texas
shared by runlai_jiang on 04 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • In Texas-sized congressional primaries, most GOP candidates run toward Trump
  • In several crowded Texas congressional primaries Tuesday, Republican candidates have decided that the best way to stand out is to stand squarely in Trump’s shadow — a campaign strategy that has been only slightly scrambled last week by the president’s sudden embrace of gun control and protectionist tariffs.
  • Isaac’s “Make America Like Texas” message is calibrated to couple Trump’s charisma to the more traditional Lone Star brand of small-government conservatism: “When I talk to people that move to Texas, I say, ‘Welcome to Texas, vote accordingly,’ because it’s not a mistake,” he said. “Our model works
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  • “There’s been resistance even from our own party on helping him out, and they don’t want to elect somebody in this district that’s going to be a hindrance.”
  • Stovall said in an interview that he is unique in squarely backing Trump even before he won the Republican nomination in 2016 — bucking, among others, the state’s dominant figure in national GOP politics, Sen. Ted Cruz.
  • Smith, who is retiring after 16 terms, has not made an endorsement in the race. “Half of them I’ve never heard of before,” he said in an interview, adding that Trump remains popular among his constituents: “They appreciate what the president has done. They appreciate the tax cut, and they appreciate the president’s efforts to enforce immigration laws.”
  • Having a unique message, he said, is less of a factor: “Of the real contenders, there just hasn’t been a lot of distance from Trump on any real issues.” Cruz’s shadow looms over the 21st district primary thanks to his aggressive backing of Chip Roy, a former top aide to Cruz and other high-profile Texas officials.
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GOP senator: Trump did not make 's---hole' comment | TheHill - 0 views

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  • I’m telling you he did not use that word, George. And I’m telling you it’s a gross misrepresentation. How many times do you want me to say that?” Perdue said after host George Stephanopoulos pressed him for an answer.Perdue was one of several lawmakers participating in a meeting with Trump last week when the president reportedly referred to immigrants from African nations, El Salvador and Haiti as coming from "shithole countries."
  • Trump allies see 's***hole' controversy as overblownTrump allies see 's***hole' controversy as overblownPlay VideoPlayMute0:00/0:43Loaded: 0%0:00Progress: 0%Stream TypeLIVE-0:43 SharePlayback Rate1xChaptersChaptersDescriptionsdescriptions off, selectedCaptions
  • "Following comments by the President, I said my piece directly to him yesterday. The President and all those attending the meeting know what I said and how I feel. I've always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals," Graham said. 
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The GOP has reached its sad, inevitable destination - The Washington Post - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 24 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • The Trump captivity of the GOP has reached its sad, inevitable destination: a failed presidency defended by a cowed party.
  • As President Trump’s malignant narcissism and incompetence have been fully revealed — and can be objectively measured by the level of needless death from covid-19 — his approval among Republicans has remained strong. Across a continent filled with elected Republicans, only a few have taken a stand for sanity and effective governance.
  • Yet none of this is likely to change the minds of partisan Republicans. Some ignore or dismiss Trump’s cruelty and deception because conservative judges need to be appointed and the culture war needs to be fought. Some embrace his cruelty and deception because conservative judges need to be appointed and the culture war needs to be fought. And Trump naturally takes continued Republican job approval as an endorsement for his handling of the coronavirus crisis. In this way, Republican tolerance for Trump’s ineptitude and ignorance has made these traits more lethal.
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Roy Moore: Another GOP calamity - The Washington Post - 0 views

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  • The Republicans Party stumbles now from one crisis to the next, never learning that vetting candidates, demanding qualifications and rejecting bizarre characters is mandatory. The alternative is a trail of humiliating defeats. The impression of untrustworthy amateur is now firmly affixed to Trump’s GOP.
  • Once upon a time conservatives believed in a set of principles and understood the demands of governance. No more. The freak show that now plays out is the foreseeable consequence of a party that has abandoned standards, morphed into a cult of personality and chosen to curl up in the right-wing media bubble.
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Education Budget Hearing Highlights Gulf Between GOP and Trump | Education News | US News - 0 views

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  • Education Budget Hearing Exposes Chasm Between GOP and Trump
  • When Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee Tuesday regarding the president’s budget proposal, her remarks that private schools must follow federal law if they receive federal funding received the lion’s share of attention. But the hearing, during which nearly every GOP members criticized aspects of the spending plan, also exposed just how far apart the Trump administration’s education agenda is with that of Republicans in Congress, perhaps foreshadowing how likely – or not – the White House is to achieve any of its policy priorities.
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White House social media director Dan Scavino violated Hatch Act with tweet targeting G... - 0 views

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  • White House social media director Dan Scavino violated Hatch Act with tweet targeting GOP congressman
  • White House social media director Dan Scavino Jr. violated a federal law that bars public officials from using their positions for political activity when he urged President Trump's supporters to defeat a GOP congressman, the Office of Special Counsel has concluded.
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There Is No GOP Establishment or Base. Just Massive Resistance. - Talking Points Memo - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 29 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Concretely, they were making claims and promises that were either factually ridiculous, politically unviable or unacceptable to a broad swath of the voting public. Eventually, you get elected and need to produce. By definition that’s never really possible: both because the claims and promises are nonsensical and unviable but also because a politics based on reclamation, revenge, and impulse is almost impossible to satisfy through normal legislative politics.
  • it’s not really a matter of two groups battling each other. It’s the fallout of a conservative movement engaging in massive resistance against the rest of the country and the inevitable cycle of extremity and betrayal that goes with that.
  • Last year we discussed at some length the way that the core of Trumpism was a revolt against social change in America driven overwhelmingly by white voters outside the major urban center
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  • Regardless of the interpretation, there’s broad agreement over the dynamic itself: it is a tactically aggressive but strategically defensive action by people who feel they are being overrun and losing what should be theirs.
  • A mix of partisan polarization, the built-in electoral advantages enjoyed by rural America, hyper-efficient gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic voters in urban enclaves all give Republicans and the Trump base power significantly greater than its numbers. In the House and the Senate, Democrats can easily get more votes and remain in the minority. A GOP nominee can lose the popular vote and become President. It’s happened twice in the last five elections. So while I expect 2018 and 2020 will go quite badly for Trump and the Republicans, it is not at all impossible that they will get a minority of votes and retain all power.
  • the essential dynamic of early 21st century conservatism, an infinite loop of inflammatory and engaging promises, claims and demands which are mostly entirely unrealizable, creating a permanent cycle of establishmentism and grassroots’ betrayal which continues spinning forward even as the players in each category change.
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Democrats spar over COVID-19 vaccine strategy | TheHill - 0 views

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  • Publicly, House Democrats are largely united behind a simple message surrounding COVID-19 vaccines: Get one as soon as you can and take whichever one is offered.   
  • Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiGOP senator applauds restaurant stimulus money after voting against relief bill McCarthy calls on Pelosi to return Capitol to pre-pandemic operations Jayapal asks for ethics investigation into Boebert, Gosar, Brooks MORE (D-Calif.) has sided with those Black Caucus leaders, arguing on a recent conference call that underserved communities, including Black and brown populations, should get to pick which vaccine they receive, according to sources on the call.  
  • Rep. Kim SchrierKimberly (Kim) Merle SchrierThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by the National Shooting Sports Foundation - At 50 days in charge, Democrats hail American Rescue Plan as major win Democrats spar over COVID-19 vaccine strategy Democrats point fingers on whether Capitol rioters had inside help MORE (D-Wash.), a pediatrician, issued a stern warning to her colleagues that demanding choice would not only buck the advice of public health experts and muddle the Democrats’ vaccine message, it would also heighten the the doubts of many Americans already skeptical about taking vaccines — doubts that threaten the arrival of herd immunity and a return to social normalcy.
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  • The Democrats’ message, Schrier said, should be clear and simple: All vaccines are good. And the best thing American can do to protect themselves and their loved ones is to get a shot.
  • Pelosi spokesman Henry Connelly said the Speaker was simply reflecting concerns in her diverse caucus about whether minority communities were being treated equitably in the aggressive push to vaccinate all Americans.
  • That disparity has been attributed, in part, to the fact that the earlier Moderna and Pfizer vaccines each require two shots and colder refrigeration, complicating storage and distribution. That’s created additional barriers for getting the vaccine to poorer, historically underserved populations and rural communities.
  • Black people are nearly three times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than white people and nearly two times more likely to die from the disease; Hispanics are more than three times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than whites and 2.3 times more likely to die. 
  • White people have been vaccinated for COVID-19 at two times the rate of Black people, according to a New York Times analysis. The figures are worse for Hispanics. 
  • The disagreement among Democrats comes during a pivotal moment in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic as states like Texas and Mississippi end their mask mandates and lift restrictions on businesses, and health experts worry about a surge in cases driven by COVID-19 variants.
  • Because the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot and regular refrigeration levels, some officials like New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) have ordered that shipments of that vaccine be prioritized for harder-to-reach Black and brown communities. 
  • But while Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have an overall efficacy of about 95 percent in preventing moderate to severe disease, that number for the Johnson & Johnson version is just 66 percent — though experts point out the J&J vaccine was being tested after more contagious variants had begun spreading in the U.S., unlike the Pfizer and Moderna versions. 
  • That's led to some in those minority communities voicing concerns in recent days that they are being given a less-effective vaccine than more affluent, white communities.
  • Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.), another CBC member, noted that those suspicions have historic roots, pointing to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study — a deadly federal research project that targeted poor Black people in rural Alabama in 1930s — as evidence of the "painful history" of biomedical mistreatment of African Americans in the United States. 
  • Despite such reservations, the broad consensus in the caucus appears to favor efforts to maximize vaccinations in the shortest possible time, regardless which shot is available in a given community.
  • On Wednesday, Kelly is set to join Rep. Joyce BeattyJoyce Birdson BeattyDemocrats spar over COVID-19 vaccine strategy Black Caucus backs Biden's pick to head DOJ Civil Rights Division Sole GOP vote on House police reform bill says he 'accidentally pressed the wrong voting button' MORE (D-Ohio), head of the Black Caucus, in an online forum with medical experts designed to educate minority communities on best vaccine practices. 
  • Rep. Anthony BrownAnthony Gregory BrownOvernight Defense: Pentagon chief to press for Manchin's support on Colin Kahl | House Dems seek to limit transfer of military-grade gear to police Democrats spar over COVID-19 vaccine strategy 140 lawmakers call for Biden administration to take 'comprehensive' approach to Iran MORE (D-Md.) said officials should monitor the distribution of vaccines to identify “patterns” that might indicate prejudices in the dispensation. But he’s also encouraging all of his constituents to get whatever vaccine is available first, and he highlighted the advantages of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot, particularly in hard-to-reach populations like the homeless. 
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Opinion | The GOP is facing a sickness deeper than the coronavirus - The Washington Post - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 30 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • A recent study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina — analyzing every day of data between March 15, 2020, and Dec. 12, 2020 — calculated the chances of getting covid-19 or dying from covid-19 in every state (and D.C.). After adjusting for factors such a population density, ethnic composition, poverty and age, a clear picture emerged. Democrat-led states were hardest hit early on, as you’d expect given the places where the disease took hold in the United States. But then the balance shifted. By June 3, Republican states had higher case diagnoses. By July 4, higher death rates. By Aug. 5, the relative risk of dying from covid-19 was 1.8 times higher in GOP-led states.
  • All pandemic policy involves a trade-off between the level of deaths and the level of commercial interaction. But concerning covid, Republican governors tended to put a greater value on economic activity than preserving the lives of the elderly and vulnerable (and others) when compared with Democrat-led states. In doing so, they elevated their views above the sober judgment of experts.
  • How is this performance by many Republican governors not discrediting, even disqualifying? Does it not concern people in GOP-led states that, at a key moment in the crisis, they were nearly twice as likely to die of covid than their counterparts in Democrat-led states?
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  • Why does it not generate more outrage that many Republican governors are continuing these policies even as infections spread and virus mutations accumulate?
  • Realistically, this is because the economic benefits of covid irresponsibility are immediate and obvious to everyone. And even twice a very small risk is still a very small risk.
  • But this reasoning requires us to abandon our social solidarity with the elderly and vulnerable, who bear a disproportionate cost in Noem’s vision of liberty. And I fear it indicates a wide streak of social Darwinian callousness in the American right.
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Lindsey Graham should beware of Trump's 'magic' (Opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html Trump US Politics Culture gop
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  • "There's something about Trump," Graham, told "Axios on HBO." "There's a dark side -- and there's some magic there."
  • Appearing on CNN in 2015, he told Alisyn Camerota that Trump was "a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot," that didn't represent his party .
  • What Graham seems to find magical is that despite his many failures, which include not just Trump's defeat at the polls but his failed effort to help the GOP hold onto a Senate majority and his abysmal handling of the pandemic, Trump has a firm grip on millions of GOP voters.
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  • After the attack, Pence went silent for a while, but returned to public view by publishing an article that echoed Trump's false claims about "election integrity." Having escaped the mob, he now seems to be courting it.
  • To that end he wants to "harness the magic" of Trump. "He can make it [the GOP] bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse. And he also could destroy it."
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Jayapal asks for investigations into three GOP members for their role in instigating th... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html politics US history crisis Culture Policy gop Jayapal Capitol-Riots
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  • Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington has sent letters to the House Committee on Ethics and the Office of Congressional Ethics requesting they launch investigations into three Republican lawmakers, over accusations of the trio "instigating and aiding" the deadly January 6 riot on the Capitol.
  • Jayapal asks the two groups to "thoroughly investigate" the activity of the three members of Congress -- Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama and Paul Gosar of Arizona -- in the time leading up to the insurrection and refer all potential criminal wrongdoing to the Department of Justice.
  • For each member, Jayapal lists examples of their conduct in the weeks before January 6.
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  • Boebert filming herself carrying a concealed firearm around the Capitol Grounds, the fiery speech Brooks gave at the Trump rally on the day of the insurrection and Gosar's ties to extremist groups. The letter also makes note of Boebert's tweets regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's location on the day of the insurrection.
  • "It's clear what I believe to be clear violation of our ethical standards and our responsibilities as members of Congress. That is what the House Ethics Committee can look at," Jaypal said in an interview with CNN. "But I also think that there are other pieces here that are even beyond just service in the House that are federal statutes. And so that's why we asked for the referrals to the Department of Justice."
  • "I still worry about my safety and my security when I'm inside Congress, not just when I leave," Jaypal said. "And that is very troubling. I've only been here for four years, but I've not felt that before. And, and I feel it from my colleagues. I don't know, who my colleagues are engaging with, I don't know what their role was. And I do think that that is part of the reason these letters are so important."
  • Gosar's denials have been less clear. In a tweet on that day he posted a photo of rioters scaling a wall of the Capitol "let's not get carried away."
  • Federal authorities have said they are investigating the possibility that some of those that participated in the riot may have been given tours ahead of time, but have stopped short of saying any lawmakers did so with the express purpose of helping the rioters prepare to attack the Capitol.
  • "These three members seem to be emboldened by the fact that there hasn't been really any accountability for them. There hasn't been any accountability at all," she said. "And that is unacceptable I think and that's why I'm asking for these investigations."
  • In a tweet on January 18, Boebert wrote "All claims of my involvement with the attacks on January 6th are categorically false. These lies are irresponsible and dangerous."
  • Jayapal is not the only Democrat looking into the role her colleagues may have played in the events leading up to January 6th. Rep. Zoe Lofgren recently released a 2,000-page report that outlined the social media activity of several GOP members ahead of the insurrection.
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